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

Thank you, Senator Polley—and again we hear laughter from the other side, when you ask about workers choosing between their safety and their pay. Well, there are nine quarters in the history of the wage price index where wages increased by less than two per cent. Guess who was in government on every single one of those nine occasions? That's right: it was the coalition. The coalition was in power for all of those nine quarters when we saw wages increase by less than two per cent I guess that's because they were for once telling the truth when they admitted that low wages were a deliberate design feature of their economic strategy. They delivered. Congratulations! You delivered the low wages that you said you were dedicated to—nine quarters.

We know that those opposite don't stand up for workers, we know that low wage growth is a deliberate design feature of their economic architecture and we know that the previous Liberal and National government did nothing to stop the wage theft epidemic, despite dozens of underpayment scandals on their watch.