Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to join my colleagues in speaking to Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021 and associated bills. A number of Labor colleagues have already done so, and, like them, I indicate at the outset that Labor will be supporting these bills but not without reservation and not without making some comments about this year's budget and, most importantly, what it does not do.

As my colleague Senator Bilyk just outlined, even before the COVID pandemic hit our shores the Australian economy was performing below par. If you speak to any Australian worker they will tell you that their wages have not been growing in recent years, and the data backs that up. The data backs up Australian workers' experience, which is that under this government wages have grown at a lower rate than we have ever seen. I've seen many graphs indicating that while some in the economy are doing well, particularly corporate Australia, those benefits have not been shared equally with the working men and women who actually drive and achieve profits. In recent years we've seen significant growth in corporate profits. They are being shared with shareholders, in the form of dividends, and with executives, in the form of bonuses, but they are not being shared with the working men and women whose daily work produces them. It's about time this government took some action to make sure the economic benefits that some in this country have received in recent years are more fairly shared.

One reason for the inequity is that there is far too much insecure work in this country. This is something which we've been talking about at length for a long, long time over here, and we continue to see this government fail to take any action to ensure that Australians' work is more secure and that they have a more even bargaining position when they're trying to achieve wage rises. It's no surprise, therefore, that wages continue not growing in this country in the way that they should be.

Of course, that situation is only being exacerbated now that we've had the pandemic hit, wreaking havoc across the economy. Again, it's working Australians who are bearing the brunt of the recession that this government has overseen. It's working Australians who are losing their jobs, whose wages are still not growing and who remain in fear of hanging onto their jobs if, indeed, they have so far been able to retain them. Even in the time today since I agreed to speak on this bill, we saw another announcement from another big Australian company indicating that more jobs are going to go. Of course, I'm talking about Qantas. I'm pretty disgusted, frankly, with the actions of the Qantas management, who themselves receive salaries in the millions of dollars, along with bonuses, but who continue to strip jobs and to outsource jobs from their own company.