Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. What steps has the Albanese Labor government taken to get wages moving after a decade of wage stagnation?

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

I thank the member for Boothby for the question. She is someone with a real commitment to getting wages moving in this country. For 10 years, low wages were a deliberate design feature of the previous government in their management of the economy and it was one of the few commitments they managed to deliver on. The pace of wage growth under the previous government, at 2.1 per cent, wasn't just slower than the decade before, or slower than the decade before that, it was the slowest pace of wage growth since the Second World War. And it was delivered quite deliberately by those opposite.

What do we have now? Instead of the 2.1 per cent that averaged over their decade, wages are now at 3.7 per cent. If you're on an award, the latest increase was 5.75 per cent. If you're on the minimum wage, the latest increase was 8.6 per cent. If you work in the aged-care sector, on top of those increases, there was a further 15 per cent improvement in your wages.

The party of robodebt didn't just go after people on welfare. They went after people on wages as well, and they succeeded. All those workers that I described are now getting more in their bank accounts for one simple reason—the government has changed.

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

The member for Casey is now warned.

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

Those opposite refused to turn up at the Fair Work Commission and argue for an improvement in the minimum wage. They refused to turn up at the Fair Work Commission and argue for an improvement in award wages. They refused to turn up at the Fair Work Commission and argue for an improvement in the wages of aged-care workers. All of this was part of the wage stagnation story of that decade.

In opposition, they've continued. Part of getting wages moving is to close the gender pay gap. And yet, when we introduced stronger gender equity laws, they opposed them. When we introduced access to flexible work, they opposed it. When we had legislation to ban pay secrecy clauses, they opposed it. We put to the parliament a law to ban job ads from being below the legal minimum. Think about that. That one might not have been so controversial—

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

The member for Deakin will cease interjecting.

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

a job ad should be banned if it's advertising a wage rate that is illegal. But even that was a step too far for them. Even that was too much, and they had to oppose that as well. Sunsetting the zombie agreements, where people are on pay and conditions from the Howard WorkChoices era: they had to oppose that and having workable bargaining rules as well. There will be more tests to come on your commitment to caring about whether people are getting more pay when we look, later this year, at closing the loopholes that undercut wages.