Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Grogan, for the terrific work you and your colleagues are doing on the cost-of-living committee. As Senator Wong said earlier today, it was very pleasing to see the new jobs figures yesterday that show that more than 465,000 jobs have been created since the Albanese government was elected just over 12 months ago, and a whopping 385,000, or 83 per cent of them, have been full-time jobs. What's also pleasing is that more jobs are getting decent pay increases, with 60 per cent of all jobs recording a higher wage than the year before. It's the fastest annual wage growth we have seen in Australia for over a decade, since September 2012. In fact, our softest quarter for wages growth is equal to the former coalition government's strongest quarter. Our worst was their best. The system had been sitting neglected with entrenched inequality for 10 years under the coalition government, a government who openly admitted that low wage growth was a deliberate design feature of their economic architecture.

There is nothing complicated about it. Our government will always stand up for workers and protect their pay, but unfortunately not everyone agrees with this approach. Who can forget Senator Cash as the shadow industrial relations minister warning us that the 'secure jobs, better pay' legislation would take us back to the Dark Ages? I had another look at the Dark Ages and what they were all about. I am not surprised that those opposite have an affinity for the Dark Ages.