Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

We say unashamedly to the people of Australia that we think it is good if an unemployed person can get a job that gives them a normal 38-hour working week and a payment based on the safety net decision made by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission last year—and, incidentally, the Fair Pay Commission can raise that pay rate in the future. The Leader of the Opposition was quite wrong when he said there was ‘no prospect of a pay rise for five years’. When the Fair Pay Commission adjusts pay rates in the spring of this year, if those pay rates are adjusted upwards—as one would expect in the current economic environment—that will prove that that aspect of what the Leader of the Opposition said is wrong.

But let us look at the reality of this. The Leader of the Opposition was a senior minister in a Labor government that presided over a fall in real wages in Australia. In the 1980s, what were the prospects for Australians as far as their economic future was concerned? Their real wages went down under the accord implemented in conjunction with the then Labor government, of which the Leader of the Opposition was a senior cabinet member. At the end of the 1980s, this country had the most prescriptive industrial relations system it had ever had. At the end of the 1980s, how many of the one million people in this country who were out of work were saved by that prescriptive industrial relations system?

See this speech in context