Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of questions and answers from the opposition to Senator Reynolds. I have to admit, I agree with my colleague from across the chamber, Senator Gallacher, on one issue and one issue alone—that is, I have extraordinary admiration for Senator Linda Reynolds, now the Minister for Defence Industry and the seventh woman in the coalition's cabinet in the Morrison government. I think that's an extraordinary achievement. She is a highly qualified and a highly capable minister. I tip my hat to her. I find it, however, terribly disappointing to see, in one of the last question times before the end of the life of this parliament, that the opposition could go so low and be so devoid of ideas that their question time was devoted entirely to issues about Senator Reynolds and about preferences. Surely there are bigger fish to fry. Surely today, of all days, there are more issues to talk about.

Now, I understand that budget day is not a day for the opposition. In fact, really, whatever their message is today is entirely drowned out by the very good news that will be delivered by the Treasurer tonight. We will be delivering a budget surplus—a budget surplus that will be the first that we've been able to deliver in a decade, after the mismanagement of previous Labor governments. We are not just delivering a budget surplus but demonstrating that you can deliver a budget surplus while decreasing taxes, not increasing taxes—that it can be done without $200 billion in new taxes, it can be done without damaging the economy and it can be done without causing property prices to crash and rents to soar by imposing housing taxes. It can be done without punishing self-funded retirees. It can be done without punishing investors. It can be done without punishing businesses. And it can be done while delivering the essential services that a prosperous country like Australia deserves. There is record investment in schools; there is record investment in the PBS, with new drug listings on the PBS that will treat things like melanoma and breast cancer; and there is record investment in health that will fund the NDIS fully and will fund aged care—the essential services that Australians deserve.

The only reason that the coalition can deliver those essential services is that we have a strong economy. And, indeed, the only way to lift wages is to maintain that strong economy, because a strong economy means more jobs. You simply cannot get a pay rise if you don't have a job. Under the coalition, 1.2 million new jobs have been created over the life of this government, over the last 5½ years, in fact. One point two million more people have a job than when we were elected in 2013. Under Labor, however, the unemployment queues increased. A stronger economy means higher wages. Indeed, under this government, real minimum wages have been rising faster than they did under Labor, and they've been rising faster than wages in the rest of the economy.

Don't get me wrong; there is certainly more work to do. But a living wage is not the answer. A living wage is Sally McManus's answer. I might add that the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Shorten, can't actually tell us what a 'living wage' is; no-one has been able to define what a 'living wage' is. He has, as we've seen, kowtowed to the wishes of the ACTU before—over and over again, in fact. Sally McManus's definition of a 'living wage' is 60 per cent of the average wage—with all her extensive experience in running businesses and her extensive understanding of economics! She's manning the puppet. She's pulling the strings. Poor old opposition leader Bill Shorten is simply the marionette. Sadly, though, he has form on this. He has a record of failure on wages. It was Mr Shorten who as a union leader stripped low-paid workers of their pay in exchange for benefits for him and for his union. In government, he did absolutely nothing when real minimum wages decreased and, in fact, wrote the Fair Work Act but never included the words 'living wage'. As I said, now he can't even describe exactly what a 'living wage' is. Certainly, Labor's $200 billion in higher taxes will cost jobs and will push wages down. (Time expired)