Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Hansard source

Oh, the minimum wage is not good enough to pay for people’s rent or mortgage! There are a lot of people who are surviving on the minimum wage, and you fought every increase in the minimum wage when you were in government. Every increase in the minimum wage was opposed by the previous government—and now you are saying it is not enough for people to pay the mortgage or the rent. It might have been worth remembering that when you opposed increases to the minimum wage at every opportunity you got.

Let us talk a little bit about the record of the opposition when it comes to Work Choices. It was fascinating to hear the questions today from members of the opposition who were asking, ‘How are these people on middle wages going to survive when they are on paid parental leave?’ When they were in government, did they ever take the opportunity to improve people’s pay and conditions? Every single change they made was detrimental to the interests of workers, particularly low- and middle-income workers. Let us think a little bit about what happened under Work Choices and AWAs. Sixty-three per cent of AWAs cut penalty rates, 52 per cent cut shift work loadings, 51 per cent cut overtime loadings, 48 per cent cut monetary allowances, 46 per cent cut public holiday pay, 40 per cent cut rest breaks, 36 per cent cut declared public holidays and 22 per cent provided workers with no pay rise—some for up to five years. It is worth remembering, isn’t it, what happened when they were in government and the record that they have for delivering worse pay and worse conditions than previously.

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