Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I will resist the urge to point out that there are $21 billion of new taxes in the budget that we talking about today. I want to go to the macro-economic forecasts in the budget, and to ask some questions about the nature of those forecasts. As context, I point out that right now in this country we have wages growth at record lows; we have underemployment at record highs; work has never been less secure—or has never been more precarious; we have the wages share of GDP at the lowest level in history, if you read the report put out by the Australia Institute earlier in the week—all of these things paint a very clear picture about people who have precarious workplaces. Those opposite love the idea of lower wages—that is why they are having a chuckle, Acting Deputy Speaker. But we have profits going through the roof, and we have wages at historic lows. And that is because work is so precarious; it is because people cannot get the hours that they want work.

In that context, it is very intriguing to see in the budget these extraordinary forecasts for wages growth. Wages growth is 1.9 per cent, inflation is 2.1 per cent—so real wages in this country are actually going backwards. But despite that, and despite them being around 1.9 for some time, we have these forecasts in the budget that are: 2.1, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, and 3.75 per cent wages growth. That is a pretty extraordinary thing, when you consider what is actually happening to wages—for the government to assume that—despite the fact that they are supporting cuts to penalty rates—all of a sudden, miraculously, we are going to have this wages growth. A lot of the macro figures are relevant to that wages number; I will get back to that in a minute and ask some questions.

When you look more broadly at the jobs elements of this budget, I think one of the most damning figures—beyond those that I have just mentioned—is that this budget actually forecasts 95,000 fewer jobs in the economy than the previous budget. At the same time as the Treasurer is patting himself on the back for jobs, his own budget from one year to the next forecasts 95,000 fewer jobs. That is a pretty extraordinary statistic, on top of the other statistics that I have talked about. In addition to those others that I have mentioned, the number of hours worked per week at 34.5 is the lowest on record, and there are issues around business investment as well.

When you consider how far the government has fallen in the people of Australia's estimation since the election, I think it really comes to the fact that they do not understand that people are doing it tough. They are working hard but not getting ahead and, at the same time as penalty rates are cut, they are told that people who earn over $180,000 get a tax cut in this budget and big business in this country gets $65 billion handout, of which $10 billion of that goes to the four big banks. You can see why people are unhappy about that, particularly in that first weekend in July where on the Saturday someone earning a million dollars gets a $16,000 tax cut, and on the Sunday up to 700,000 Australians lose $77 a week when they have their penalty rates cut. You can see why people are pretty filthy about the economic performance of those opposite. Right through the budget papers you can see evidence for why that unhappiness in the community is warranted, and no wonder people are unhappy with the government.

The question I really wanted to ask the assistant minister, in addition to the ones that he so far has failed to answer from the member for Wakefield and my earlier questions around record levels of debt and half a trillion dollars of gross debt tomorrow—a new record—and the interest paid on that debt, on what basis, or on what planet, he thinks in the budget that wages will reach 3.75 per cent growth by the end of the forward estimates when the wages performance has been so poor in the last couple of years? Can he explain those forecasts, and what is the basis of that optimism at the same time as penalty rates are being cut? More fundamentally, I would also like him to explain to the chamber on what basis, and again on what planet, does he think the economy can grow when ordinary working people are not earning, when their wages are going backwards in relation to inflation—when their real wages are going backwards? And why don't we ever hear about those record low wages and that record high underemployment, and the implications they have for the budget?

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