Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government is absolutely hopeless, isn't it? I think we can all agree that this is a particularly hopeless and ridiculous government. What did the now Prime Minister say before the election in the blue pamphlet, the 'real solutions' pamphlet? 'Our plan will deliver more jobs, higher real wages and better living standards for all Australians.' How is that going for the government? Those guys are just so hopeless. Unemployment got to 6.3 per cent. Was that higher than under the global financial crisis?

Opposition Member:

An opposition member interjecting—Yes!

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Was it? When was the last time unemployment was this high? Was it when the current Prime Minister was the employment minister in the Howard government? I think it might have been. And how about that unemployment rate? It has still got a six in front of it. How does this government intend to look in the eye the hundreds of thousands of people in this country who are in unemployment queues? How does this government intend to explain itself? And as for those people in work, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance might turn his mind to the fact that wages growth is at its slowest since the wage price index started being kept in the 1990s. Wages growth is at its slowest in 17 years. That is what his government is overseeing. That is the record of the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. That is the Abbott government record: one of terrible wages growth—slower than it has been in 17 years—and very high unemployment. He should be ashamed.