Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) to a question without notice asked by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Wong) today relating to inequality in Australia.

It's a debate which I'm very pleased we are now starting to engage in. It's a debate which I think will create an important part of the political discourse over the coming years. It's a debate where both sides of the argument will be able to rely on many statistics to support the propositions that they may put. Indeed, today, Senator Brandis used some of the words and information that the Treasurer has used to simply dismiss the issue of growing inequality in this country by saying there has been some significant employment growth. While I'm not disputing those statistics at the time, they are simply statistics. They do not reflect much of the problem or much of the evidence that is growing for people to see. I'm going to use and quote some statistics to support my proposition that inequality is, in fact, rising. Again, as I understand, there will be other statistics used to support the proposition that it's not.

While we can have these arguments in this place and say, 'Our statistics are better than yours,' politicians in particular—from all parties—ought to be very wary of ignoring what the Australian people are experiencing themselves. I know my colleagues on my side of the chamber and, indeed, colleagues from across the chamber do engage in a very constructive way with the Australian people, and they see some of the inequality that's happening. They get feedback from Australians. It would be to everyone's peril to simply ignore that. Sometimes the feelings and the views of Australians are not exactly demonstrated by the facts and sometimes it is partially misguided. But, on the whole, when I go and talk to Australians and visit different communities, I see—from the very privileged position that I have—growing inequality. I see the wages share of GDP decreasing. I see the profit share of GDP increasing. I'll go to some of those statistical figures in a minute that were prepared by The Australia Institute.

Not only is the share of wages of GDP decreasing; wages themselves are in decline. Wages themselves are going backwards. When you factor in inflation, there are very few examples of wages increasing at all over the last couple of years. We have award reliance in this country increasing and agreement making decreasing. We have employers—and I have experienced this—saying, 'Oh, but we pay the award.' Since when did it become a badge of honour for an employer to say, 'We pay the lowest legal minimum wage we are allowed to by law' and say that this is a badge of honour and something that they should be proud of? Since when did that actually happen in Australia? It's been happening for some time. The reason a lot of those employers are proud of paying the lowest legal minimum wage is that a lot of employers are not paying that and a lot of their competitors are not paying that. We see noncompliance increasing, and the government acknowledges that. The Fair Work Ombudsman now employs around 800 people. It's an insatiable appetite. They cannot keep up with the level of complaints that are being made about wages theft, theft of superannuation and noncompliance with other provisions of employment.

We see at the same time union membership down. I know some people on the other side of this chamber celebrate that fact. I certainly don't because unions, historically in this country and today, play an absolutely essential role in compliance of industrial instruments and wages conditions. Yet we have seen the Fair Work Act restrict the ability of unions to conduct that essential role. We've seen that restricted. We've seen the Fair Work Act restrict the ability of workers themselves to enforce their own entitlements. I think that is something that we will also have to debate quite seriously. My personal view, after being substantially through a Senate inquiry into noncompliance with the Fair Work Act, is that the Fair Work Act is no longer fit for purpose and really needs to be readdressed.

We see agreement making now at an all time low and, as I said, award reliance up. We see housing costs up and people being pushed further and further out, increasing traveling time— (Time expired)