Amanda Stoker (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Sterle, I share your interest and your concern to make sure that people who are working in trucking have safe and fair working conditions. It's entirely important. I am a little bit at a loss to see, or to recall, Senators Gallagher or Wong asking anything about the trucking industry in the course of their questions today, and so I might help you out by bringing you back to what Senators Gallagher and Wong asked about today, and that was the economic indicators that we have in this country. There was a concern expressed, in the course of those questions, about wage growth in this country. It's understandable that people are interested in wage growth. It goes to the take-home pay of all Australians. You'll notice that I'm not getting carried away. I'm not getting cocky. This is serious stuff, things we should not get inflammatory or theatrical about. It matters too much to the lives of Australians for us to be carrying on and scoring political points.

So let's break it down to the facts. We know that inflation over the September quarter has been 1.7 per cent. That's not high. But, importantly, the wage price index exceeds that number. Over the same period, September quarter of 2019, it rose by 2.2 per cent. So what does that mean? Well, it means that while people's wages went up a little, the cost of living went up less. It means that people, in net terms, got a little bit ahead. Did they get a lot ahead? Did they earn a whole lot more than the cost of living went up? They earned a little bit more than the cost of living went up. But the important thing is that growth in wages exceeded inflation. It meant Australians got ahead.

Would I like the difference between those two numbers to be greater, so that Australians were earning a whole lot more? Of course I'd like to see Australians earn more, but we should remember that if we have wage growth that enormously outstrips inflation it does have an impact on pushing the price of everything up. So this can become a little bit circular. If we reach the point where, just by having runaway wages, we push up the cost of living enormously it doesn't get Australians ahead. To have a steady-as-she-goes, measured, sensible approach is actually not bad in circumstances where we have other advanced economies facing challenges to wages growth and other advanced economies facing slower growth than they have had across their economy. In circumstances where we face challenges as a nation in relation to dealing with drought, which has enormously hit our rural sector, then we aren't doing too badly against that global picture and against those local challenges.

In that context, it's important to point to the huge investment we have made in infrastructure to help Australian people have access to more work, to see more stimulation of our economy. There has been $100 billion in a pipeline of infrastructure that is to have an enormous impact across this country.

It isn't just the stimulus that comes from that spending itself but the economic opportunity that is unlocked by the fact of the strategically-chosen projects, because of the way that they empower other businesses to grow, the way that they open up the potential for other projects to grow. And then, once we add to that enormous infrastructure pipeline of projects that are happening now across this country, we can also look to the stimulus effect of drought support in rural communities that are doing it tough.

We have put forward a record passage of assistance for people who are trying to deal with the impact of drought. Since the last budget, we have committed an additional $355 million to step up yet again our drought response, and that means we can add to the more than a billion dollars since the election. (Time expired)