Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment) Share this | Hansard source

We get a churlish, silly interjection, as we always expect, from Senator Cameron, but does he actually want the parliament to set wages? That is the issue—and now he falls silent. Of course he does not want to. If we do not want the parliament to set wages, then we should not come rushing in here with populist agendas to try to get wage increases. It is interesting that in this bill we do not have the reverse—that parliamentary salaries should, as a matter of fact, be linked to CPI. The financial situation in this country, regrettably, meant that I was duty-bound on behalf of the government to go to the Remuneration Tribunal and say that parliamentarians, secretaries, the Chief of the Defence Force and the Minister for Defence must all have any wage increases that were to come to them frozen and, for this coming year, set at zero. Why did we do that? Because the money simply is not there. When we seek to make more generous payments to anyone in Australia, that money first has to come out of the pocket of one of our fellow Australians.

In summary, there is an agenda that needs to be dealt with here. We do not want the parliament setting people's wages when there are remuneration tribunals and other tribunals designed to do that. I invite senators to oppose the motion. (Time expired)