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

In fact, there are provisions within this bill that seek to treat workers who have been mistreated for the past 10 years under the opposition to receive employee-like conditions. I understand that your life's mission is to keep workers' wages low. I understand that your economic policy was to deliberately keep wages low. Australians voted against that, and they kicked you out.

At some point you've got to recognise that the party that had a low-wages policy lost the last election. The people of Australia didn't want your 10 years of low wage growth, low productivity and conflict based workplaces. They voted for cooperative workplaces that were going to lift wages, and we're already doing it. Even in the time we've been in power we've had the strongest jobs growth for the first year of any Australian government. We've created half a million jobs, 85 per cent of them full-time, and wages are growing at their fastest rate for a decade—and we're only getting started. (Time expired)