Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I always love the titles Labor give their motions and their bills. 'Secure jobs, better pay review'—I mean, seriously! They might as well call some of them 'More rainbows and fairy floss'. It's just nonsense. Out there, where people are doing it really tough, where workers are struggling to pay their bills, where families can't balance their budgets, they've got a cost-of-living crisis and they've got real wages falling. That's what we should be talking about—real wages, what you actually take home and what you actually get to keep of the money you earn.

The member for Cunningham—and I do like her; she's a good egg—talked about the increased number of jobs and workers. Let me tell you that, in regional Australia, they're not working too much at the moment on infrastructure projects, because they have all stalled or stopped. And I know that, when I was the Deputy Prime Minister and responsible for that portfolio, we had more than 100,000 people relying on the $110 billion of infrastructure that we were rolling out, a third of which or more went to country areas. But, under this government, it has all ceased. And, when you've got food up 15 per cent, health up by the same amount, education up 17 per cent, insurance and financial costs up by 20 per cent, electricity before rebates up 39 per cent and gas up by the same amount, you can see why it's eating into the wages of everyday, ordinary Australians.

But there is hope on the horizon, because the Daily Telegraph reports today that there are people who have got an increase in their wages. Oh, yes. Who might they be? The Daily Telegraph said:

The pay of union top dogs has soared compared with workers in the industries they represent over the past six years, headlined by—

wait for it—

the embattled CFMEU.

Of course, the good old CFMEU. That's the introductory sentence of the Daily Telegraph's report. It continues:

Analysis of wage growth between union leaders and their workforces show how the two have decoupled between 2019 and 2024, with the pay for the CFMEU national secretary growing by—

wait for this—

47.49 per cent in that time.

Good if you can get it! It continues:

Union documents show former national secretary Chris Cain earned $367,255 in 2024 …

I'll tell you what—that's more than the average backbencher by a long way, and don't even start about the average worker out there, the average minimum wage earner.

These unions—and that's who the government is beholden to—are out of control. They are dominating worksites, and that's why we've got a freefall in the construction sector. They are dominating the transport industry, and that's why we've got trucking companies going to the wall every single week, and workers are doing it tough. And then you've got Michael O'Connor, who is Chris Cain's predecessor. He was on $248,999, so you can see how much Mr Cain earns more than his predecessor. According to the Daily Telegraph:

Real wage growth for the union boss role—which strips out inflation—shows their pay still increased by 26.95 per cent in that time.

Meanwhile, analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics' median statistics show the nominal wage increase for workers in construction rose by 16.28 per cent between 2019 and 2024.

At the same time manufacturing pay rose 24.22 per cent …

It just goes on and on, but the devil is in the detail. The fact is that unions are stripping their sectors blind.

And, speaking of blind, Labor are just turning a blind eye to it, because they kowtow to the unions. It's their union masters. Everything revolves around what the union bosses tell them to do. He who pays the piper calls the tune. And the piper is, indeed, the union bosses. Yet, out there in voter land, we've got people struggling, particularly in regional Australia. And the policies by this government are not helping those people who provide the food, who provide the fibre, who go into mines every day and get dirt under their fingernails to get the resources to pay, to keep the balance of payments going, to keep the lights on. That is the great shame.

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