Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Sterle, you really belled the cat there. You are one of my favourite senators on the other side but you really belled the cat there when you said, 'I will start telling the truth.' That's all we are asking for, Senator Sterle; we are just asking the government to start telling the truth. It would be really nice. I'm not going to focus on the litany of broken promises we have seen from the Albanese government in its first year and a bit. I will just focus on a couple because they are the ones I think are most important. They are the mistruths we hear repeated in this place day after day, question time after question time, speech after speech, from those opposite.

The one that is most egregious because it's just completely denied by reality is about wage rises. Real wages increased under the former coalition government; real wages went up. The Labor government, coming into office from opposition, promised they would see real wage rises and, instead, they have overseen the greatest declines in real wage rises, certainly in my lifetime and probably longer than that. Real wages plummeted thanks to the inflation and cost-of-living crisis that has impacted Australia over the last 12 months. Everybody out there knows that. They know that, whilst their pay packet may have been going up, it has not been going up fast enough to combat the inflation rises that have been forced on them and exacerbated by the poor handling of the economy by this Labor government. That is the first one. It's a clear broken promise of this Labor government. They promised real wage rises. They have delivered real wage declines, and they know it. They know it.