Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Sheldon for the question, and it's an important one because it goes to how we can make sure people are earning more for the work that they do. For too long, under the former government, workers weren't getting a fair wage increase. We saw wages stagnate. We saw annual wages growth of around two per cent. In the public sector it was in the order of about 1.2 per cent over the decade, so they were falling behind.

What we've done in our first 18 months is support those cost-of-living measures which don't add to inflation, but we've also put in place the architecture to make sure that workers are getting a fair pay rise. Our cost-of-living policies have helped to deliver that sooner because our policies have helped put downward pressure on inflation, and we saw that in the ABS data. Because we're putting downward pressure on inflation, we've seen those good wage figures in the last week. But we know people are under pressure, which is why we remain focused on the job at hand, which is to ease cost-of-living pressures on the Australian community.