Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to Senator Sheldon for the question. I thank him and many on this side for their continued commitment to ensuring Australian workers get a decent share, both before they were in the parliament and subsequently. We have a different view from those opposite about the importance of getting wages moving again.

The reality is, as Senator Sheldon outlined in his question, that for 10 years Australia had a government for whom low wages were a deliberate design feature of the Australian economy. They've never resiled from that. They didn't resile from it in the federal election campaign, where they opposed a dollar wage increase, and they don't resile from it now. They continue to argue that ensuring that Australian workers get a decent share of the economic benefits that this nation produces is somehow a disaster for the Australian economy.

Well, we on this side have a different view, and so, too, do so many working people across Australia. With our IR policy and legislation, we are making a choice—a choice to end the era of deliberate wage stagnation, a choice to get wages moving again, a choice to work to close the gender pay gap and to take long-overdue steps to put gender equity at the heart of our workplace laws, a choice to improve job security, and a choice to wind up those institutions established with nothing more than a political agenda to promote conflict. It is a bill and policy agenda that will help real people and workers across this country who for too long who have paid the price of the coalition's view that we weren't allowed to get wages moving again in this country.