Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the ministerial statement on the economy delivered by the Treasurer earlier today. This is a time for us to be honest with the Australian people about the challenges ahead, and it's time for us to be honest about the opportunities that also lie ahead as we work together to meet those challenges head-on. Australians don't need us to tell them that times are tough. They don't need to track inflation figures to know that everything that they need in their daily lives is costing more—food, petrol, electricity. What they do need is to be part of a discussion with their government on the way forward, to have their voices heard, to know that the people that they put into this parliament will use every lever available to government to help them not just get through this period but do better into the future.

On the Labor team, on the government benches, that is exactly what we will do: listen, act and govern in the interest of everyday Australians. It's exactly what we have always done, because on this side of the chamber we bring the stories of the people who hold up our economy day in, day out. Right here, to the floor of this parliament, we bring into the policies that we create the stories and experiences of the essential workers of Australia who hold up this country. These are the people we're thinking of as we chart a path forward through difficult times because, as the Prime Minister says, we believe in an economy that works for people, and not the other way around. We know it's these Australians who have the least room to move when their wages don't go up but the price of everything else does. That is the reality too many Australians have experienced over the last nine years of the former government, and it is a reality which is hitting people hard right now.

Today the Treasurer outlined the pressures that are bearing down on all of us and most particularly on our lowest-paid workers, who have little buffer to protect them. I commend him for being honest with the Australian people, and I commend him for fronting up to the seriousness of these times, because, as he said today, problems don't solve themselves. A decade of inaction on the fundamentals of our economy—a wasted decade—by those on the other side has proven exactly that. Imagine if we were hitting these tough times today with an economy in the shape it should have been in, given we are one of the wealthiest countries in this world. Imagine if wages had not been flat for a decade. Imagine if those low wages had not been a deliberate design feature of their economy. Imagine if more people were secure in their jobs. Imagine if we had a stronger and more diversified economy. Imagine if that economy had a big strong manufacturing sector, making us less reliant on global supply chains. Imagine if the previous government had led a renewables revolution in this country and made us less vulnerable, rather than more vulnerable, to global shocks, less vulnerable to global gas prices and less vulnerable to skyrocketing global petrol prices. Imagine if they had invested in the skills which people need and which businesses are crying out for. Imagine if they had invested in social housing. Imagine if they had used their budgets to build this country up, instead of loading it down with a trillion dollars of debt with nothing to show for it. Just imagine!

Now it is up to us on the government benches to work hard and work fast to make the changes that should have started a decade ago. That is exactly what we will do, and it's exactly what we have already started doing. We have already started to get wages moving in this country for our most essential workers. The Prime Minister said during the election campaign that he supported a minimum wage pay rise that kept pace with inflation, so one of his first acts was to write to the Fair Work Commission to support that claim. The 5.2 per cent boost to the pay packets of our lowest-paid workers that resulted from that would just not have happened if Anthony Albanese had not been elected Prime Minister. But now, because Australians have voted for change, we can get to work and start bolstering our economy and repairing the damage that those on the other side have done. We can get to work and start implementing our plan to support the Australian people in better and more secure lives; to build resilience into our economy by powering that economy with cleaner, cheaper, more reliable energy; to support workers and businesses to have the right skills for today's jobs; to make more of what we need right here in Australia; and to offer more and different job opportunities to the next generation to strengthen and diversify our economy and to build our sovereign capacity to provide for ourselves.

We can now get to work to build a more resilient care economy too, recognising, as the former government refused to, that our care economy will be more efficient at caring for our children, our elderly and people with disabilities when those—mostly women—who perform that work are properly recognised. I spoke of essential workers who hold up our economy: the cleaners, the drivers, the hospo workers, the retail workers and so many more. Our care economy workers don't hold up only the economy; they hold up the sky for the people that they care for. When we properly value those workers, our society and our economy will be all the stronger for it.

I want to share with you just a few of the stories of essential workers I bring with me today to this parliament—the people I'm thinking about as we confront the challenges outlined by the Treasurer today. Sheree has worked in aged care for more than 20 years on insecure part-time contracts. She can't convince a real estate agent to give her a lease, she can't convince a bank to give her a home loan and sometimes she doesn't earn enough just to meet her own basic needs. She found herself living in temporary accommodation in a caravan park. She told me: 'As a low-income worker, I am not alone here. Where I live, most people are low-income, insecure workers.'

Mahali is a farm worker from my home state of Victoria, and she shared how she and her fellow workers are paid as little as $10 an hour to pick fruit, lettuce and herbs by contractors in this country. She and her co-workers are terrified of speaking out for fear of being reported to Immigration. And just this morning I met with Jenny and her two amazing children. Jenny is an NTEU member and an academic at Melbourne University. Despite working at the university for a number of years, Jenny is employed on a casual contract with no security of income. Her daughter suffers from epilepsy and her son from autism. She can't afford the medical appointments and education support that her children need. Jenny told me today, 'Sometimes I go without food just so my kids can eat.'

I ask you again to imagine if we had not wasted a decade not addressing the challenges that these people face. Imagine if the previous government had not led an economy based on low wages, on insecure jobs and on outright wage theft. As it stands today, we know that people like Sheree, Mahali and Jenny are making tough decisions in their own household budgets. As a government, we will have to as well, but we won't step back from the commitments we made to the Australian people to build a stronger economy that works for all. As the Treasurer said, we'll get on with the job, building an economy as resilient as the Australian people themselves. We'll get our economy moving and lift people up along with it. We'll invest in the people of this country. We'll invest in their potential, and we'll build a strong, more diverse and more resilient economy that Australians will be proud of.