Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Warren Buffett once said that it is only when the tide goes out you can work out who is swimming without any clothes. As the tide starts to go out on the Australian economy, it's not a pretty look for the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. At the heart of the problems with the Australian economy is lacklustre wage growth, which is running now at half the level it was before the global financial crisis. Productivity in Australia has been, according to the Productivity Commission, 'mediocre'. That's because the government is failing to put in place essential investments in education and in infrastructure. We're also seeing a falling back in demand which means that our employment rate is a full percentage point higher than Britain, New Zealand, the United States or Germany. The government needs to bring forward infrastructure projects to ensure that we support demand right now.

In the ACT, they could give the ACT our fair share of infrastructure funding by supporting stage 2 of light rail. Across the country, they need to stop funding projects out into the never-never, in the mid-2020s, and start ensuring that infrastructure spending flows now—to give the economy the support it needs, to ensure that we get a lower unemployment rate and to ensure that workers start to get a pay rise. We've got wage theft going on, from celebrity chefs to 7-Eleven, but we also have outright wage theft going on from a government that has only slogans and no plan to support the Australian economy.