Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Wilkie, you would be familiar with this analogy: in 2003, on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, George Bush stepped out in front of a banner that said 'mission accomplished'. That is what it felt like listening to the member for Moore giving his erudite speech right then. I'm afraid the right to disconnect wasn't the right of the government to disconnect from economic reality, but that is what we just heard. We heard boastfully about the direction of wages under this government, but, unfortunately, there is a brutal reality. If you actually adjust for inflation, real wages in Australia haven't gone up for the past 15 years, including under this government. In fact, we have consistently trailed the OECD average. That is not something to be proud of, and it shows how much work needs to be done to boost wages in this country, because around this nation right now so many Australians feel like, no matter how hard they work, they aren't getting ahead. No matter what this government does and no matter how much they crow about their achievements, we aren't seeing that materialise or improve in people lived conditions.

You just need to look at what's happening with small business. We have record small business insolvencies, which is a tragedy not just because of the impact it has on the owners but also because small business is the gateway for so many young Australians to get their first job. It's the pathway where they get their first foot on the ladder of economic opportunity and, of course, the pathway they go on to get their next job as part of their pathway to success in life. It's because this government is focused more on what they need to do to feed the outcomes for union bosses rather than improving workers' wages. We saw this very explicitly in an article in the Daily Telegraph today that did an analysis looking at what has been happening with union bosses' wages over the last five years. It shows that CFMEU officials' wages have gone up by 26 per cent. Meanwhile, construction workers' wages in the same time have gone down by around five per cent. That is not something to boast about, Member for Moore. It suggests that this government's policy is trickle-up economics towards union officials at the expense of workers' wages. It suggests to me very clearly that we have a problem where the government's focus is not on what it needs to do to boost the interests of Australian workers but rather, of course, on their political patrons.

We're seeing this in other areas of the legislative agenda of this government. Just look at what they've done with penalty rates. We literally had an industry association apply to increase the base rate of wages in the retail sector by 35 per cent, but Labor wasn't going to have that, because, if they had that, what would it have done? It would have cut out the union interest in the decision-making power of wages and penalty rates. So what did they do? They outlawed a pathway to increase wages for retail workers, because it would have undermined the power of the unions and increased the power of wages for workers. These are the disgraceful priorities of this government. They are focused more on what they need to do to boost union bosses' pay at the expense of workers.

We're seeing this now. Another report, just today in the Australian Financial Review, said:

Labor's multi-employer bargaining regime has received a dual setback, with the collapse of the mining industry's first negotiations—

This was the big crow out of their first jobs-and-skills summit. Remember that? We had a tax hike talkfest recently. They had the Jobs and Skills Summit at the end of 2022, and their first big outcome from that was the multi-employer bargaining regime. According to the Australian Financial Review:

The Australian Financial Review can reveal that almost all the air-conditioning manufacturers that signed up to the first multi-employer agreement are now seeking to exit the deal in the face of opposition from a rival union.

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After bargaining for 12 months for one agreement for critical site supervisors in NSW, the Collieries' Staff and Officials Association last week opted instead to pursue single agreements …

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During the five bargaining meetings held since last year neither side could reach consensus on any potential terms.

The other part is that the mining sector has said that multi-employer agreements are 'unworkable'.

The collective noun for clowns is a chuckle. I think we need to officially adopt, as part of this parliamentary procedure, chuckle as the collective noun for multi-employer bargaining agreements, because it is turning into a joke. Under this government, the focus of industrial relations laws is on how to boost the interests of union bosses at the expense of workers. There is nothing to chuckle about.

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