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

We constantly come in here and hear this question put by the opposition on the cost of living. Yet here are the same people who wouldn't support a $1 increase for the lowest paid people in this country. Here are the same people who opposed childcare support for 1.26 million people. Here are the same people who didn't support and didn't act on gender pay inequity. And these are all things that we're doing—we're turning around and taking actions that have a real effect on cost of living for our community.

Let's look at the jobs and skills in this community. Let's talk about the hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs that were lost under this opposition when they were in government. Over nine years, jobs were lost. Of course, when a consensus is being built in this country, they don't want to turn up. The Leader of the Opposition refused to turn up to the Jobs and Skills Summit. That's the reality. That's what they think. They just don't have a policy or an answer.

But, then again, I should actually withdraw that comment, because they did have a policy; they had a clear policy to drive wages down in this country! This is a design feature of that government. When they were in government, they said it was a design feature. Of course, the consequence of that was having to see, for the first time in the history of this country, the middle class shrink under your watch—not with a solution, not with an answer, not with a plan to turn it around and make sure that working people and small businesses, and businesses generally, can compete in the markets that you've managed to do so much damage to. They went with trend; they had waste and rorts—