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

Thank you, Senator, for your question. Only the Greens could be upset about a pay rise being provided by a Labor government to some of the lowest paid and most important workers in our community. Only the Greens could be disappointed about that. Do you know the reason they're disappointed about that? They can't use their favourite phrase, 'We did it,' because they didn't do it. It was a Labor government that delivered a much-needed, much-deserved pay rise for early childhood educators in our country, obviously in partnership with the trade union movement, who, along with members of those unions and those workers, have campaigned for this for a very long time.

Among our ranks, we have a number of people who've been campaigning for this a whole lot longer than the Greens, who like to jump on the bandwagon. I'm talking about people like Senator Bilyk, who actually is a former early childhood educator and has been campaigning for this for 40 years. I'm talking about people like Senator Walsh, whose professional career was devoted to assisting these workers get a pay rise that they deserve. The list goes on across our ranks. Don't come in here and try and be Johnny-come-latelies and all of a sudden say that you care about early childhood educators when you've done nothing about it until the last meme was available. Don't lecture us about supporting workers. Don't support us—