Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I absolutely stand by what I said. I stand by what the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, has said on this issue. On this side of the chamber, we know the only way to lift wages is through a stronger economy that is built on more jobs and lower taxes, which is exactly what we on this side of the chamber have been working on for the last six years. You will see the benefit of that to the nation in the delivery of the budget tonight. But it wasn't just my statement and what Minister Cormann said; it has also been many other people in the Australian community. For example, in The Australian, Ewin Hannan reported AiG as saying:

There is no point in having an independent tribunal to determine wages and working conditions if parliament is going to dictate what decisions the tribunal must make or is going to impose unbalanced criteria to ensure that the tribunal's decisions favour one party over another …

AiG also said Labor's policy would have 'perverse impacts on the Australian labour market and it overlooks the significant increases to the national minimum wage in recent years'. So I absolutely stand by what I said. Of course I stand by it.

Again, we know the only way to increase wages is by increasing the economy and increasing jobs—1.25 million jobs have already been created on this side of the chamber, and that is in stark contrast to the record of those opposite, and nowhere more so than in my portfolio— (Time expired)