Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

That was a very interesting motion from the member opposite. As the member for Riverina said, it has that important big title that sounds impressive: Secure jobs, better pay review. It's clear the government were required to do this review, but what those opposite don't want to talk about is how the reviewers were selected. This is a really important thing to understand, because when you're forced to do a review and you're not confident about the outcome what do you want to do? You want to make sure that you have control of those that are doing it.

Normally, what would happen is the department would put suggestions for the reviewers forward. That is the traditional process. However, under FOI we know that Minister Watt himself took control of who would do the review. Why would he do that? Why would he be so desperate to ignore departmental advice unless he was worried about the outcome? Let's be clear. This wasn't once. This wasn't a corridor conversation. This was in writing.

What did the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations write to Minister Watt? They said:

We recommend you do not personally act as the decision-maker for the procurement process, despite you having the power to do so.

They also said:

There may be probity and reputational concerns if you as the Minister are directly involved in the procurement process, as this may adversely impact on the impartiality and integrity of the review.

The greater the involvement from you and your office in the procurement office, the greater the probity risk and increased risk of deviation from government policy that Ministers are not to be involved in the procurement process.

The department has reviewed the publicly available material, and it is likely that some stakeholders would agree with Professor Bray's commentary or may raise concerns about the impartiality of his consideration of the issues for review.

Classic Labor. They know the outcome. They ignore the department and put their own person in. Twelve months later, they're standing here talking about how great the review is and how lucky the Australian people are, that they've never had it better, never had it so good. How out of touch can you be?

It gets worse. The minister is asked in estimates about all this written advice. He said:

… we'll go and check the records as to exactly how the employment process came to be. But my recollection is that the two reviewers were recommended in some form, whether it be written or verbal or whatever it was, by the department. But we'll go and check that.

That's three written pieces of advice saying exactly the opposite.

What is this government so keen to hide? It is the fact that their policies are not working. It is the fact that they're making it harder for Australians to earn a suitable wage to pay their bills. There is no Australian doing it better today than when this government came to power in 2022.

You can tell the review was twisted. Those opposite talk about these great outcomes, but within the review there was a really interesting observation made, about three or four times, by the handpicked reviewer of the minister:

The review was constrained by significant data limitations caused by the short period of time between the commencement of the reforms and the review.

The fix was in.

The minister knows that the outcome of this legislation wouldn't be great. So what has he done? He's handpicked his own reviewer, ignoring departmental advice: 'Put the shortest amount of time in, before the data starts to show the real implications and unintended consequences of the legislation.' Those opposite pat themselves on the back and say what a great job they've done.

Again, the problem with so much of this government's legislation and so much of their spin is that spinning these outcomes 12 months later doesn't actually make a difference for the Australian people. Consistently, this prime minister will spin outcomes and put impressive-sounding names on bills that actually don't deliver anything, but, again and again, it's the Australian people that pay the price, because the reality is that this prime minister doesn't actually have any solutions that are making it easier for the Australian people. He's making it harder for Australians to get ahead. They have to hide the outcomes from the Australian people, but everyone at home knows it, because their costs are going up and their wages aren't keeping up at the same time.

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