Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Families and Social Services (Senator Ruston), the Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business (Senator Cash) and the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Payne) to questions without notice asked by Senators Walsh, Ciccone and Sheldon today relating to household income, poverty and wages.

Early this afternoon a number of us senators had the pleasure of asking ministers across the bench about the state of our economy and also about the word that the government continues to refuse to use, which is wages—and I know Senator Watt also made mention of it a couple of times in his points of order.

I want to set the record straight about wages in Australia. Wages growth nationally had been at or below 2.5 per cent for almost the last five years. Real medium household incomes have declined by almost $500 in the latest year, according to the HILDA Survey released today. The percentage of the population living in relative poverty has increased to 10.4 per cent and more than one million Australians are underemployed. On top of that, we have over 700,000 Australians who are underemployed and youth unemployment is at a staggering 12 per cent. To top all that off, penalty rates continue to be cut under this government's watch.

As a former union official at the SDA, I know that the cuts to penalty rates have had a major impact on many retail workers, especially those in the hospitality sector that I know a number of other senators in this place had also previously represented. Those costs may not be a lot for many people in this place, but I know that it does matter to many of those members and retail workers where they've lost between $2,000 to $6,000 every year. Some will argue that that is good. It is good for business, because it will allow employers to employ more people. But recent research from the University of Wollongong shows the complete opposite. In fact, the number of shifts that have been offered under the recent cuts to penalty rates has not produced any extra jobs. In fact, earlier this year the council of small business chief executive, Peter Strong, described the cuts to penalty rates as a waste of time. He stated that, 'Not one single job will be created.'

Some will also argue that the world is changing and that it's becoming increasingly normal to work on Sundays. But surely the argument in favour of a robust and competitive environment, and providing compensation to workers, is something that must be reflected, especially when you are doing irregular hours outside of the normal Monday to Friday, nine to five workplace.

Regardless of what will be argued, and no doubt there will be others who will argue against this, for those who do work on Sundays and rely on those penalty rates they cannot survive. They definitely do need the lost wages that they were earning before the 2017 Fair Work Commission decision.

To top it all off, we've also had the Reserve Bank of Australia recently come out and say that, 'Our economy is weak.' Wages are stagnant and consumption growth is weak, and this has resulted in a sluggish growth in the economy under the coalition's watch. To quote the central bank, 'Wages growth has remained at record lows and the GDP growth has been well below trend over the year to the March quarter.' This is one of the other reasons the RBA has given: growth in household disposable income has remained low, and this has contributed to low growth in consumption, which was also well below average.

So, the Reserve Bank of Australia is also stating the obvious: wages are low, the economy is slow, yet the government, on the other side, seems to think there are no issues on how things are tracking. The RBA has also remarked that the growth in business investment was 'weaker than expected' and that the retail and transportation sectors had experienced well-below conditions. The government has vacated the field when it comes to fixing this mess—and it's made the mess, thanks to the policies set by the now Prime Minister and former Treasurer.

On top of stagnant wages growth, our unemployment level is also not looking too crash hot. Earlier this month, figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that both unemployment and underemployment remain too high. Economic growth is slowing, and serious structural issues in the labour market continue under this government, with an increase in insecure work, soaring unemployment and growing levels of youth employment to top it off. (Time expired)

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Finance, Charities and Electoral Matters) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's great to be able to respond to Senator Ciccone's motion to take note of answers. I want to pick up a couple of the points he made. I thought it was extraordinary, coming from a Labor senator, that he would decide that he wanted to talk about unemployment, because we know what the record of the Labor Party has been, not just when they were last in government but also the time before that and every time they're in government. We see unemployment going up under the Labor Party and unemployment coming down under coalition governments, and we've seen that again in recent years. We've seen strong employment growth under this Liberal-National government. It hasn't been helped by the Labor Party and those opposite. We haven't been helped in our quest to grow the economy, whether it is free trade agreements, whether it is cutting taxes, whether it is cutting red tape for small business or whether it is things like the instant asset write-off.

On most of those measures, it must be said, we have had either resistance or downright hostility from the Labor Party. We saw their attitude when it came to tax cuts. They talk about middle-income earners, middle-income families working hard. What is the Labor Party's attitude to middle-income families? Well, they think they should be paying more tax, and we saw that during the debate in this place and in the House of Representatives. We saw the sort of Vicar of Dibley approach from Anthony Albanese: the 'No, no, no, no, no, no, no—yes' approach, where they were against the tax cuts, until we had the number in the Senate, and then they were in favour of them. That's the Labor Party's view of cutting taxes for middle-income earners and middle-income families. It is, 'No, no, no, no, no, no, no—yes.' When did the 'yes' come? The 'yes' came when we had 39 votes here in the Senate, and they thought they might jump on the bandwagon; they didn't want to be voting against something that was going to go through anyway.

But in their heart of hearts, they don't support middle-income earners. And as they've been reflecting on their election loss and the disaster that was their election campaign, there have been more sensible voices in the Labor Party saying: 'Gee, maybe we didn't understand the aspirations of Australians. Maybe we didn't understand that when Australians work hard and sometimes make $80,000, $90,000 or $100,000 a year and are raising a family then in fact those people are not rich.' No, those people are not rich. They are in fact hardworking Australians, trying to get ahead for their families. And what is the Labor Party's prescription? What did they take to the community for them? Well, it was higher income taxes and, for those who saved for their retirements, paying more tax when it came to the retiree tax.

But I want to focus on one aspect that I don't think has had enough attention. If you look at the analysis of who particularly rejected the Labor Party, whether in places like Queensland or in other parts of the country, it was in many low- and middle-income households and seats with many low- and middle-income earners and a higher proportion of renters. I wonder why that was. One of the other approaches of the Labor Party, when it came to middle-income earners and middle-income families, was to increase rents. They went to the people of Australia with a tax on houses which would have seen the rents of ordinary working Australians going up.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's rubbish.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Finance, Charities and Electoral Matters) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, it's not rubbish. Senator Bilyk can say that it's rubbish all she likes but, when it came to Labor's housing tax, every analyst pointed out that higher rents would have been the outcome. SQM, who I think did some of the numbers, went city by city on what we would see in increases in rents. We saw them across the board. Under Labor's policy, rents in Perth would have gone up by $73 a week. In Brisbane, it was $91 a week. In Darwin, we would have had $15 extra a week. In Melbourne, it was $65 extra a week. It would have been $50 a week extra in Sydney, $56 a week extra in Adelaide and $44 a week extra in Hobart. In Canberra, it was around $56 extra a week. The prescription of the Labor Party was higher taxes on income, higher taxes on capital such as housing and higher taxes on those who had saved for their retirements. That doesn't help middle-income earners. It doesn't help people get out of poverty. All it does is crush their aspiration. It sees less jobs. Every time the Labor Party is in government there are fewer jobs, a slower economy and higher taxes, and ordinary Australians do it tough.

We're not going to be lectured to by the Labor Party. Wages growth is starting to pick up. It's starting to pick up through a range of factors which we've been working on. There is more work to do, but the prescription of $387 billion in higher taxes— (Time expired)