Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note of answers by Senators Minchin and Scullion to various questions relating to economic matters, the cost of living and the like. One must say at the outset that there is not any doubt that in the last 12 months or so the cost of living and the costs to families have been spiralling out of control. You only have to look at the latest CPI figures, recently released, to see the price hikes in food, education and health. You cannot consider a more basic package of the three items for ordinary families than food, health and education, and the latest figures show their costs rising up and up and, it is fair to say, heading out of control. Just to put this in a bit of context and to set the environment: vegetables are up by six per cent, petrol is up by an astonishing nine per cent and medical services are up by nearly four per cent. These are staple items for every ordinary working family in Australia.

To address the other side of the ledger, an independent study report from the University of Sydney shows how millions of Aussie workers are facing another cost, and that is their reducing wages intake. This report released today and reported in the press today shows how Work Choices has cost thousands and thousands of battlers in the retail and hospitality industries a third—30 per cent—of their salaries. In other words, we pay more, we take home less. So much for the Prime Minister’s flippant remark, oft quoted, that we have ‘never had it so good’ in this country. The only good thing coming up in the immediate future is the likelihood of an election. Then, hopefully, this government will pay the ultimate price for its draconian Work Choices legislation.

Let us look at that study more carefully. Twenty researchers examined the wages and working conditions of thousands of sales assistants and bar staff. After scrutinising, examining, studying and analysing every collective agreement in their industries registered in the first nine months of Work Choices, they found that that group of workers had lost up to 30 per cent of their income under these draconian new laws. These new laws have seen basic conditions of employment stripped away and they have stripped workers of both penalty rates and overtime.

But it is not just the academics, the researchers from Sydney University, who have this terrible news for the current government. Leaked data from its own departments show that 45 per cent of individual contracts, AWAs, have stripped away all of the conditions the government promised to protect, 52 per cent of workers lost public holiday pay and 51 per cent of workers lost overtime pay. What standards does that show this government has brought to ordinary working people over the last 12 months? Very low standards—that is the obvious and only answer. Indeed, there is now a mountain of evidence showing how Work Choices has ripped off and continues to harm Australian families. That is how the Prime Minister and his cohort of conspirators, Mr Hockey and Mr Costello, treat the average battler doing it tough out in the suburbs. Their unfair and extreme workplace laws have gone too far this time. They have cut the conditions, take-home pay and working standards of ordinary families.

Earlier this year, Labor, to get on top of the matter, was forced to start a Senate inquiry into the cost of living. We were concerned then and we remain concerned now at how hard older Australians are finding it to make ends meet. Mr Deputy President, you and I both know that if Labor is elected we will get the balance right. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.