Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

One of the things I've noticed over the course of the last couple of months—I've been in the Senate for just a few moments, really—is the refusal of those opposite to acknowledge the basic facts in the Australian economy, a refusal to engage with the real issues. As I said yesterday, that really is a precondition for being effective: acknowledge what the problem is, work out what the sources of the problem are and then act.

The truth is, wage growth is at its lowest level in recorded history. Since wage growth has been measured, we haven't had a period where it's grown so little. In fact, we've achieved a small economic miracle in the Australian context. We've got skills shortages and low wage growth. We've got unemployment hovering, stubbornly, between five and six per cent, skills shortages and low wage growth, all at the same time. That isn't supposed to be a feature of a modern economy, but I think it's becoming the new normal under the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government. It shouldn't occur.

Profits have been rising around 4.5 per cent over the course of the last quarter, but wages have grown at half or 25 per cent of the rate of profit growth over the last couple of years. It is true that profit growth is more volatile, and you can't look at quarter-by-quarter measures of firm profitability. And it is important that Australian firms remain profitable over a sustained period of time. But what's happened, clearly, over the course of the last period is the wage-profit share—the wages share of the economy—has declined year on year on year. There are serious consequences for our economy and for our democracy if that continues to occur.

As I said before, skill shortages and unemployment remaining where it is are the conditions where the economy and workers ought to be banking wage increases. It's the right time in the economic cycle for workers' wages to rise and for people to build a decent standard of living. We are missing an opportunity to build incomes and the wealth of ordinary Australians because of the government's wilful blindness on these questions. There is no wages policy. In fact, the only alternative that's been offered is that the current settings are a deliberate design feature to keep wages low. Despite the Leader of the House's denials, you'd have to say that that is the logic of the industrial relations system from 1996 to 2019, with hyper-regulation of collective bargaining and denying people the capacity to effectively bargain and to lift their wages.

We are operating in an environment where every economic indicator is pointing in the wrong direction, with vehicle sales down, retail turnover down, labour productivity down, household debt up and GDP growth decreasing year on year. In fact, some economists say that we're in a per capita recession. Apparently that is cause for celebration on the other side. Job ads are down, household income is down, underemployment is up, the long-term unemployment rate over the course of the last few years is tracking up and electricity prices across the National Electricity Market are tracking up 158 per cent. These are all domestic factors that the government has some control over, that the government should have a policy to deal with. The government's only plan is politics and to point the finger at global economic headwinds.

I appreciate that there is not a yachting analogy that the crowd opposite wouldn't love to get hold of, but it's not an excuse for economic failure. It is not an excuse for a policy agenda that has run out of steam. It is time that the government turned up to the parliament with a plan that is about the economy and jobs and not just about politics. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.