Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

For too long in this economy, ordinary Australians and their living standards have been going backwards. That's because those opposite, over almost a decade in office, deliberately went after people's wages and job security and working conditions. They even admitted in a burst of candour that low wages were a deliberate design feature of their economic policy.

We take a different approach to wages. We think that stagnant wages are a defining feature of the failure of those opposite to manage the economy in the interests of working people. What we want to do—what the jobs summit was about, what our government is about, what our Prime Minister is about and what our cabinet is about—is to get wages moving again in this economy, because people find it too difficult to keep up with the skyrocketing costs of living. The changes that we are consulting on, the changes which were discussed at the Jobs and Skills Summit, are all about looking for more agreement, not more conflict. We want to get wages moving again. We think that's the best way for Australians to deal with the substantial cost-of-living pressures that they face.

I understand that, when the shadow Treasurer demanded an invite to the Jobs and Skills Summit, it was humiliating for him when mum and dad said he couldn't go to the formal. I know that it was humiliating for him, but that doesn't excuse the kinds of rubbish questions which attempt to whitewash and gloss over the fact that those opposite were responsible for a decade of stagnant wages.

We think something has to change when it comes to wages in this country, because we don't want to cop ordinary working people getting further and further and further behind. There's an appetite in this country to get wages moving again. We want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. If you lot had your way, we'd have another decade of wage stagnation and ordinary Australian working people copping it in the neck.

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