Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I condemned this government for presiding over an economy which has seen TheCourier Mail call my village of Nundah Village the 'village of the damned'. This week we've had revelations from the ABC that, at a cafe in Chermside, 11 workers who are visa holders and who are under 21 are being partially paid in meals, in drinks and in desserts. This is the economy that this government is presiding over, and all we hear day after day in question time is smugness and complacency. I condemn them for the retail crisis that they are presiding over. This is a crisis in wages that we are seeing, and we are failing to see any plan to address it.

We've got stolen wages, where two of my constituents have had $28,000 and superannuation stolen from them, and one of them had never been paid super in her entire life—nothing being done about it. We've got underpayment of wages, where vulnerable food attendants, those I've just been speaking about, being paid in food and desserts and drinks. We've got stagnant wages. With economic growth at its lowest since the GFC, people are crying out for pay rises. Yet today we find out from Alice Workman in TheAustralian that the government has some recognition that there are stagnant wages in this economy. They recognise that some people's wages are stagnant—in fact, their own staff, 52 advisers of this government who are paid above the top end of the EBA. So there was a recognition that their wages were stagnant but not the rest of the country's. How good is nepotism? How good is nepotism and looking after your own people? I condemn the government for your lack of a plan and I call upon you to look after actual Australian workers, not just your own.