Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Assistant Treasurer. I refer the minister to reports today in the Financial Review that former ACCC chair Rod Sims said multi-employer bargaining raises issues for competition and consumers. Can the minister guarantee that consumers won't pay higher prices as a result of the government's extreme industrial relations changes? T

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hume for his question. What I can guarantee and what every member of the Albanese Labor government can guarantee is that we stand for higher wages. We stand for workers having a fair go, being able to negotiate on an equal basis with employers and being able to get wages moving again. This is in stark contrast to the policies of those on the other side of the House, because for nine long years on their watch we saw wages stagnate.

For households which are struggling with cost-of-living increases there are two ways to deal with this, and one of them is to ensure that we get wages moving again. We've heard time and time again from employers in the childcare sector, in the aged-care sector and in other caring sectors across the economy that they cannot attract workers, and one of the reasons they cannot attract workers is that their wages aren't able to compete with other comparable jobs across the economy. So what we on this side of the House can confirm is that our policies—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister is being relevant to the question and specifically is talking about employment bargaining, so I will hear from the shadow Treasurer on a point of order.

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On relevance. Consumers just want to know if they're going to pay more.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Speaker, I just refer to your earlier rulings about abuse of points of order. When you have a situation where a minister is already clearly being relevant and abuses like that continue, I'd simply ask for it to be taken into account in future.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the point of order, the question was about consumer prices, asked of a minister who has responsibility for consumer protection, and we've had not one mention of consumers and prices consumers will pay.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There were two parts to the question, and one was clearly about multiemployer bargaining and industrial relations. Just because you don't like the answer does not mean you can jump up and take a point of order on relevance. If the minister were not being relevant, I would bring him back to the question. I just want to make it clear that I will always hear points of order, but they need to make sure that they are the correct points of order. I'm just going to ask the assistant minister to return to the question.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll tell you one lot of price increases that they don't want us to talk about—that's the 40 per cent increase in childcare costs that occurred on their watch. There's one set of price increases that they don't want to talk about. We have already implemented policies which are going to address the 40 per cent increase in childcare costs that they were very happy to see occur on their watch. One of the first priorities that we addressed when coming into government was to ensure that households could make a choice of whether they wanted to go back to work three days, four days or five days a week, because we are addressing the price increases in child care by ensuring that the majority of Australian households can afford to pay for child care.

I can understand that the Leader of the House got a bit jumpy when I was talking about negotiations, and we are concerned to ensure that low-paid workers are able to access a bargaining stream which enables them to negotiate fairly. I can understand why the Leader of the House is very jumpy whenever we talk about negotiations, because the last negotiation he was involved in didn't go so well. He was able to provide $27 million worth of taxpayer money for a block of land worth only $3 million in Leppington, so whenever we talk about negotiations he gets very jumpy over there, because the last negotiation he was involved in didn't go very well at all. (Time expired)