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

(—) (): It is vital that Australians, like those sitting in the public gallery today, get the wages that they deserve, get the higher wages they deserve that enable them to deal with cost-of-living pressures. That is why we were so pleased to have seen two consecutive quarters of real wage growth—wages lifting above inflation. We know the job is not done. We know that Australians are dealing with cost-of-living pressures and more needs to be done but we also know on this side of the chamber that higher wages are part of dealing with that. But it would appear there are some members at least on the opposite side who still have yet to learn the lesson, because we all heard Senator Hume yesterday interject, saying that wage rises push up inflation too—talk about saying the quiet bit out loud! What we now know from Senator Hume, the shadow finance minister, and the entire opposition, is that, if they were ever re-elected to government, it would be back to low wages. They still oppose higher wages. They still think low wages are a deliberate design feature of their economic policy, and all those people in the gallery would be getting lower wages if they ever get back into government.