Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Albanese Labor government understands Australian workers are doing it tough right now. That's why it was encouraging to see the latest wage figures come through last week. The 0.9 per cent rise in the wage price index in the December quarter means wages were 4.2 per cent higher through the year—the equal fastest annual growth since 2009. For the first time since 2018 we've seen three consecutive quarters of real wage growth. And the gender pay gap is the lowest on record, down by 2.1 per cent since the government came to office.

But, predictably, we read in the Australian Financial Review this week that wage rises are the main driver of inflation in Australia—and, of course, that's been reiterated by the Liberals and Nationals over the last week. Innes Willox, chief executive of the Ai Group, was similarly alarmist, expressing:

… concerns over the direction of wages under the Government's new workplace relations arrangements.

But neither Treasury nor the RBA believe there is a serious risk of a wage price spiral. The Secretary of the Treasury, Dr Steven Kennedy, said, 'There has been no evidence of a wage price spiral emerging' as recently as February this year, at the Senate Economics Legislation Committee when he was answering questions. The Reserve Bank board said:

Wages growth has picked up but is not expected to increase much further and remains consistent with the inflation target …

This is more representation of the facts than we are seeing from the Liberals and Nationals.

The reason we're seeing this false dichotomy between improving wages and tackling inflation is: for the coalition, it's never the right time for real wages to rise. Former finance minister Mathias Cormann described low wage growth as a deliberate design feature of their economic architecture. More recently, the shadow Treasurer, Angus Taylor, said our industrial relations agenda will start a wage price spiral and damage the productivity of small and family businesses. Well, the facts don't hold up. What is factual is we are seeing real wage growth. What isn't factual is that the Liberals and Nationals have been arguing all week about the wage problems. The wage problem isn't when you can start turning around and paying your bills when you're getting paid extra; the wage problems are those that stand in the way of the cost-of-living relief Labor has put forward.

We always know that the Liberals and Nationals are always for low pay. Rather than wages growth, experts point to price gouging and big business profiteering as the real cause behind domestic inflation. A recent report and inquiry into price gouging and unfair pricing practices, handed down by Professor Allan Fels, found that business pricing has added significantly to inflation in recent times. He identified:

Not only are many consumers overcharged continuously, but 'profit push' pricing has added significantly to inflation in recent times—

Particularly in supermarkets, banks and airlines, he went on to say.

We understand Australians are getting slugged at the checkout by Aldi as well, and other big retailers. The government has clearly put out the line of fight to hold those supermarkets accountable for their pricing, and to make sure pricing is transparent and fair. Just last year we reviewed the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct dispute resolution provisions, and this year we've asked Dr Craig Emerson to review the code itself. We've increased the penalty for anticompetitive conduct and banned unfair contract terms. The Prime Minister has made it clear that if the price of meat, fruit and vegetables is going down at the farm gate then we should be seeing cheaper prices on supermarket shelves. We've established the competition task force in the Commonwealth Treasury, and they're already working on many of the issues raised in Professor Fels's report—merger laws and non-compete clauses, for example. We've consulted on prohibition against unfair trading practices and are considering stakeholder feedback. These are all important parts of the government's broader efforts to boost competition and put downward pressure on the price of essentials for Australians.

The coalition, being opposed to real wage increases, think that it's right and fair to make hardworking Australians foot the bill for corporate profiteering, rather than positively contribute to our competition agenda. Senator Hume has used the cost-of-living committee to reiterate their opposition to our industrial relations agenda, which is seeing real wage growth. Our government sees strong and sustainable wage growth as part of the solution to the cost-of-living challenge—not part of the problem, as expressed by the Liberals and Nationals throughout this week. We've seen speaker after speaker, Liberal and National, in the Senate and in the House, say that the sky is going to fall in because workers are getting a real pay rise. Senator Cash said in August 2022 that our secure jobs, better pay legislation was going to return Australia to the Dark Ages and lead to more industrial disputes. So the story goes on. From 2022, we've seen it proved to be utterly untrue, because the ABS data instead points to 168,100 fewer working days lost to industrial action than the previous year.

The coalition have voted against every measure to get wages moving and have now confirmed their workplace relations policy is, as Angus Taylor said on Insiders just in February this year, to 'take a targeted package of repeals to the next election'. The opposition's workplace relations policy is a targeted package against wage rises, against job security, against safer workplaces and against closing the gender pay gap. And of course Peter Dutton, the opposition leader, wants to end the weekend by forcing all workers to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week without a right to reasonably disconnect.

Teachers at the Senate inquiry into closing the loopholes said that they were overworked and raised the alarm on digital apps that literally can create connections between parents and teachers 24/7. Police officers at the inquiry warned that the pressures placed on their members in their roles are so intense that the right to disconnect or disengage is absolutely essential. While these rights are already contained in some enterprise agreements, the Police Federation of Australia was clear that it would greatly welcome harmonisation across the country. An Essential poll found in February that the vast majority of voters believe that employers should be legally prevented from unreasonably contacting employees after hours.

Employees and voters wanted a right to disconnect, but Peter Dutton has vowed to repeal it. There's not really a right they don't want to take off you, and there's not a right they want to give you, because they are the party for low wages. If there's ever an opportunity to cut the legs from underneath the community on paying wages, they'll be at it. If there's any way to oppose it, they'll oppose it, because that's what the Liberal Party and the Nationals are about—low pay, low wages and the inability to deal with the cost of living.

The Albanese government is committed to making sure that more Australians are in jobs and that they're earning more, and with Labor's tax cuts they'll keep more of what they earn in their pockets. I'll say this quite clearly: throughout the debates on both the personal tax decreases and closing the loopholes, we've seen a consistent argument from the Liberal and National parties about middle class Australia getting it in the neck. That's because, when wages go up, they should be going down, as far as those opposite are concerned. When tax relief is given to middle- and low-income earners in this country, they constantly bemoan the fact that all Australians are receiving a tax benefit in this latest announcement. Quite clearly, this government has, at the forefront of its mind, making sure that middle Australians keep more of what they earn in their pockets from tax decreases and obtain fairer, real wage increases in the future to deal with the cost-of-living pressures that every Australian is facing.