Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living Support and Other Measures) Bill 2022. Schedule 6 includes a one-off $420 pre-election bribe for individuals with a taxable income of less than $126,000. Schedule 8 of this bill includes a one-off $420 pre-election bribe for recipients of social security and veteran payments and for holders of certain concession cards. I say these are bribes because there is no real plan to turn around and deal with the cost of living. You purely turn around and do the important immediate steps of trying to pretend you're dealing with the cost of living. You don't have a plan for the future. You didn't have a plan before these one-off payments. There is nothing in this bill or elsewhere in the budget that grows wages. There is nothing in this bill or elsewhere in the budget to improve job security, which assists in growing wages. There is no long-term plan in this bill or elsewhere to improve the standard of living for Australian people.

This leads me to ask: why is the Prime Minister and the rest of this sorry government so desperate to hold onto power if, when they have power, they don't even try to improve the lives of everyday Australians? Isn't that why we're all here? Australians are being crushed by cost-of-living pressures. We're seeing skyrocketing costs of living and record low wages growth. Of course, they're also being crushed by record levels of high job insecurity. That's the track record of this government.

I listened earlier today, in question time, with some amusement to Senator Birmingham say, 'We have a long-term economic plan.' Guess what? Their long-term economic plan is to decrease your wages as part of an economic design they have put in place to keep wages low. To keep the standard of living low in this country is a design practice of this government. What does that mean for everyday Australians and what does that mean for Australia? It means middle-class jobs are disappearing. It means that, for the first time in the history of this country, this government has been shrinking the middle class. They have not put the plans and processes in place to make sure there is a real difference. There are so many examples of that. People are desperately suffering under this government's watch and under this government's program to make sure that people are not on a liveable wage.

As recently as 23 March this year, it was reported that new modelling shows that an aged-care worker with no partner or dependants has $112 a week left after covering the costs of rent, transport, groceries and health care. If the worker is a single parent, they are $148 behind. About 70 per cent of aged-care staff are qualified personal care workers with a certificate III qualification, and, after tax, they take home $770 a week. Those figures are for a feminised industry—the caring industry, which is so critical to our community and also to our economy. The Australian Aged Care Collaboration, which is a group of six aged-care peak bodies, examined the rising costs of living for affected workers, and that's what they found. This is not some propaganda sheet from some obscure source. This is the employers saying how desperate the situation is for the workers within their industry.

Clearly, you can go into so many more examples of what's occurring in our economy right now. I recall that, when I first started working as a cleaner and then a bar attendant as a full-time job in my late teens, I was working with people who were raising a family. For me, a middle-class job is when you have middle-class pay, and people in those jobs as cleaners and bar attendants were raising families. These day, they're still middle-class jobs, but they don't have middle-class pay. They don't have a government that cares about expanding, developing and supporting the middle class in this country.

Regardless of the rhetoric, let's look at the actual facts. The McKell Institute found that an average worker would be earning $307 more per week if the wages growth achieved under Labor between 2007 and 2013 had been sustained from 2014 to 2021. Almost $16,000 per year has been stolen from everyday Australian workers under this government's watch because they have a low-wage agenda. And, when you look at the low-wage agenda, how low can they go? How far can we turn it around and make sure that workers don't have the opportunities that they should have to earn a decent living? We only have to turn to comments that have been passed regarding workers in what is now our second-largest company, Uber.

There are 120,000 people working for Uber. Thank goodness they have been working, because they were on the front line of the pandemic. But what's their income? Their income is as low as $6.67 an hour. They have no worker's comp and no right to bargain. Wait a second! I did hear from the industrial relations minister who said she supports giving gig workers 'the freedom and flexibility to enter into contracts and negotiate their own rates of pay'. It sounds like digital WorkChoices, doesn't it? It sounds like digital WorkChoices as a design of this government. The person in charge of workplace laws in Australia thinks that an Uber driver getting paid $6.67 an hour can negotiate with the CEO in San Francisco to try to get a decent wage. The consequences are in black and white, from inquiry after inquiry, in report after report. An inquiry into job security went right to the heart of this issue of low wages. Uber drivers cannot negotiate their wages. But, for this government, it's too complicated to give basic rights to a fellow worker who is working in this country.

I know that this doesn't apply to everybody on the other side of this chamber, but it must apply to the people who cop the consequences of what you're doing. When you have industries—whether it be the ag industry, with exploited workers from the Pacific who are doing vital work in this country—where workers are getting as little in take-home pay as $100 a week, when you have Uber drivers getting paid $6.67 an hour and when you have industries that are dominated by people on temporary visas, particularly those where roughly 25 per cent are Australian nationals, it then starts to say that the government doesn't care. It doesn't care about the most vulnerable people within our community. What's clear from the McKell report is that it doesn't care about everyone else who is left, because it is a design practice of this government to turn around and keep our wages low right across the economy.

I'll let you into a little secret: a good economy doesn't create good jobs; good jobs create a good economy. And a good job is a secure job, where you're able to negotiate a decent wage. This government has said quite clearly, quite directly that, as a matter of policy, low wages are a fundamental ambition that it has. Congratulations! You've achieved that.