Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens could not agree more with this MPI on workplace relations. But it's clear that not only does the government want to allow employers to cut wages; it—that is, the government—is actually leading the charge to suppress wages in this country.

One of the biggest levers the government has to change wages across our society and across our economy is its setting of public sector wages, and it is using that lever ruthlessly to depress wages as quickly as it can. Public sector wage caps have helped ensure that wage growth for private sector workers has been flat for years. There has been no pressure on private employers to lift wages. The government's official policy is, and I'll quote from government documents, 'that Commonwealth public sector wage rises can no longer exceed wage rises in the private sector'. This policy locks in low wages and low wage growth for all workers in the country—public and private sector workers. By increasing wages to public sector employees, the private sector would have to follow and most workers would end up better off. But that's not what this government has chosen to do. We know that big businesses are pocketing more and more of their profits, and their servants in the Liberal Party want to keep it that way, and one of the ways they are doing that is by gutting protections in the already weak Fair Work Act.

Make no mistake, there is a growing gap between the rich and the poor in this country, and the Liberals are working to widen that gap at every opportunity. Colleagues, the combined wealth of Australia's billionaires rose by more than 50 per cent in the last 12 months, in the middle of a global pandemic, turbocharging the gap between the superwealthy and the not so well off in Australia. And that gap is still growing, because, while the billionaires get evermore obscenely rich, wage growth is flatlining and millions of Australians remain unemployed or underemployed. The Liberals want to keep wages low and they want to make sure house prices keep soaring. That's all well and good if you're a wealthy landowner or the CEO of a major corporation or a billionaire, but, if you're a renter and a worker, you're left to fight for the scraps; and, if you're currently out of work or underemployed, you've been left completely high and dry by this government.

We need to make sure that income supports rise in this country and we need to make sure that billionaires and the big corporations, particularly the big polluting fossil fuel corporations, pay their fair share of tax so we can fund quality public services in Australia. (Time expired)