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

Two points. The first is, as I said—and you know this—the factors driving fuel prices are international markets and the value of the Australian dollar. You have no policies whatsoever to deal with either of those issues or to change what the fuel price would be. That's the first point.

The second point is: What are the factors that a government can control? What can the government do? The first is that it can be a government that actually thinks we want to get wages moving. We want to get wages moving so that people have more capacity to deal with some of these really challenging economic circumstances that the global economy is imposing on this country. Those of us on this side actually think getting wages moving again is a good idea. What do you think? You're a low-wage party. You're the party of lower wages, a deliberate design feature. Senator Cash, who now is very quiet, put in a submission talking about the importance of lower wages. I mean, really! (Time expired)