Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the 1980s Australia made a choice. The choice was between being a low-wage, low-productivity economy and being a high-wage, high-productivity economy. It will surprise nobody in this place—or nobody on this side of the chamber—that we went for a high-wage, high-productivity economy and we put the reforms in place to ensure that would occur.

We know that we have a productivity challenge in this country. It absolutely went backwards under the people on that side of the chamber. Instead of putting in place the necessary reforms to do something about productivity—investing in higher education and investing in vocational education—their only answer to the productivity challenge is to go after people's wages and conditions. They are a one-trick pony: go after people's wages and conditions. If the students of this country were concerned about their $100,000 university degrees, they will have seen nothing yet when those opposite start going after their penalty rates, because penalty rates are how students pay their way through university.

In question time yesterday, the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, argued that union officials around the country for decades have been trading off one benefit for another. What he does not understand is that there is a world of difference between a union and its members bargaining for one thing in exchange for another and the government reaching into every pay packet— (Time expired)