Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Every day it becomes clearer that this is a government whose prime motivation is protecting and advancing the narrow interests of corporations and billionaires and unpicking the social contract that has made this country the envy of the world. This is a government that tells Australians that to pay down debt it must cut pensions and that it cannot afford better health care and education but can afford a $50 billion tax cut for corporations and banks.

This is a government that issues 20,000 letters a week to demand repayment of overpaid social security, no matter that many demands are wrong, but fails to pursue corporate tax avoiders in the same way. This a government that releases the confidential information of individual citizens who criticise it but refuses to release the diaries of its Attorney-General so that Australians might learn who has his ear. It is a government that gleefully welcomes a direct cut to the wages of more than 600,000 Australians who work Sundays and public holidays, claiming cheaper wages boosts jobs, but then it defends multimillion dollar pay for company executives. Every decision this government makes strikes at the heart of Australia's traditions as a nation of fairness. Every decision advances the interests of the wealthiest and the most powerful while further weakening the interests of our poorest and most vulnerable.

Australia's income inequality is at a 75-year high—the gap has not been wider since the Second World War—and the decisions this government makes and the action that it takes widen the gap further. The wealthiest one-fifth of households in Australia now have 12 times the wealth of the bottom one-fifth. The inherent unfairness of this income gap is bad enough, but it is also bad for our society and our economy. When the gap gets this big, social mobility becomes so difficult that it is almost impossible. If you are born to poverty in a society with entrenched income inequality, you can work hard every day of your life and remain in poverty. A great feature of our society has been that the circumstances of our birth do not predetermine our future. Children born to poverty or other disadvantage here can rise to any station through ability and application.

A key facet of the success of our society is a progressive tax system where those with the greatest means bear the greatest load. This government has been hell-bent on reversing that. Business must pay its way. In the words of US senator Elizabeth Warren:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory … Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea—God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Never has a truer word been said. If we all pay our way, we are all richer for the experience.

How on earth in these circumstances when we have record-low wage growth and record-high company profits can Australians sustain a wage cut? The McKell Institute did a paper called 'Who loses when penalty rates are cut?' Their research shows that these cuts are going to hit our whole community. That is because people who earn less spend less. They are less likely to head to the shops when they can barely keep a roof over their heads. The McKell Institute estimates that these cuts could potentially rip between $370 million and $690 million from regional communities like those in my electorate of Lyons.

Wage growth is already low. Even the Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has expressed concerns that record-high levels of household debt and record-low wage rises is constraining consumer spending, which in turn is slowing economic growth. A $77-a-week pay cut for some of the poorest people in our country who are on the lowest incomes already will only worsen the situation. The average food service worker earns $524 a week, and the average retail worker earns $687. These people cannot afford to lose a dollar more. Let's make business pay its way.