Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. After a decade of wages being kept deliberately low, how is the Albanese Labor government easing cost-of-living pressures by helping people to earn more and keep more of what they earn?

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

I want to thank the member for Blair for the question and also thank him for the opportunity in his electorate, during the break, to meet with workers at Goodstart—early childhood education workers—all of whom were aware that two things are about to happen, and now they're only seven days away. That is, people are going to be earning more and keeping more of what they earn, because they have a government that wanted them to earn more and to keep more of what they earn when those opposite were voting against the changes to the law for people to earn more, and were complaining about the changes to the law for people to get tax cuts.

For people on minimum wages and awards—2.6 million of them will get a pay rise, as well as energy bill relief for every household and a tax cut for every taxpayer. People should have a look at their payslip—the last one they get for this month. A lot of people will have one that goes across both financial years. It will be the one after that, which will probably be in August for some people, or late July, where there will be a substantial difference to what goes into people's bank accounts. If you're a minimum wage earner, the combination of the tax cut and the pay rise means that $38 more, for a full-timer, will be going into your account every week. If you're a cleaner or a retail worker, $40 more will be going into your account every week because of the pay rise, coupled with the tax cut. For registered nurses and aged care workers, $50 a week extra will be going into their pay packets and into their bank accounts because of the tax cut, combined with the pay rises.

This is how you help people with the cost of living—not by pushing up energy prices with expensive nuclear reactors. You back people's wages. You take action where you can to do something about different prices. But the last thing you do—the last thing you do—is push up energy prices with expensive nuclear reactors.

It's not just workers on minimum wages and awards who benefit. Under this government, because of changes made to the law under the Albanese Labor government, there are 360,000 extra workers on enterprise agreements. Take workers at Linfox and Toll Global Express. For almost 10,000 truck drivers and other transport workers, their pay rise will come through on the same day that the tax cut comes through. A standard rate of pay for a driver there is about $85,000 a year. They'll be getting $75 more into their bank account every week. When people are under pressure, they need a government that will back them to get pay rises and that'll take action on prices. It doesn't push them further up, which is exactly what expensive nuclear reactors do.