Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support this motion and congratulate the Member for moving such a good motion when it comes to real wage growth. I was listening to the previous member saying no-one's a winner when you have wage growth and increases in wages—well, the winner is the person who is getting more money in their pocket. That's what an increase in wages means; it means more money in your pocket. If you were to listen to the other side over the many years I've been here, and seen the many industrial relations policies that have been put forward—whether by the coalition or by us—with us it's about bettering the industrial relations area in terms of increasing wages and giving people the ability to earn a decent living, while on the other side it has always been about putting pressure downward, ensuring that wages remain low. We saw that for the 11 years they were in government—it was the lowest wage growth we have had in the history of this country, and every time that we spoke about increasing wages, the then coalition government opposed it. In fact, when we went in to support the increase in lower wages at the commission, they opposed it and said we shouldn't get involved in it.

What we need to understand is that we have an economy, and within this economy people buy and sell. The majority of people are wage earners. Eighty per cent of Australia's population would be wage earners. They need a decent wage to be able to pay their mortgages, to put food on the table, to get kids to school and to be able to buy consumable goods. That's what keeps our economy going. If we press wages down and ensure they don't go up then the economy starts to stop. Anyone who has done 101 economics knows that once people stop buying consumable goods, the economy goes southward. It's so important to ensure that we have real wage growth, and that's what this government is doing. Since being elected, average weekly earnings have increased by 8.7 per cent, or $153.60 per week. That was two years to May 2024, compared to when the coalition left office and there was only a 3.3 per cent increase per week over the two years prior to May 2022. The wage price index growth of 4.1 per cent in the June quarter of 2024 was the second largest annual growth rate since the December quarter of 2009, which was 4.2 per cent. You can see where we were from 2009 onwards.

We need to ensure that we have decent wages and that wages keep pace with our cost of living. Four per cent for the last four quarters has not occurred since Labor was last in government. There's proof for you; when Labor is in government, real wages grow. When we're not in government, they decline and remain at a level that doesn't keep people living with decent wages and proper pay. We've also seen the lowest-paid workers in our nation—childcare workers and aged-care workers—all receive a big increase. They're all quite happy about it. The aged-care premises I go to and speak to has many, many workers, and they tell me how grateful they are for this wage increase. It's the same for childcare workers—people who do an extremely important job, educating those children at a very early age so parents can either work while they're being looked after. We can repay that by paying them a decent wage, and that also attracts more people to those industries where we need them so much. There's such a shortage at this point in those industries.

In the short time I have left, I want to make sure that we are aware that over the last 10 years we had one of the lowest, slowest wage growths in the history of this country. That was because we need to put policies into place to ensure that wages keep up with the cost of living and a whole range of other things. Unfortunately, we had a government that, all those years, basically wanted to keep wages low. Some in economics argue that if you keep wages low it employs more people—that may be the case for a short time, but the reality is if people can't buy consumable goods and they can't pay for the things they require to live day-to-day then we're going backwards. We want to ensure that we go forward with government.

Debate adjourned.

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