Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

This motion is one of the least self-aware that I've seen out of the Labor Party. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I note that the median wage has not increased in real terms over the last 30 years, after adjusting for dramatic increases in the cost of housing, health care and education, yet Australia's gross domestic product per capita has increased over that period from $13,600 to $65,400 in real terms, as have all my figures today. Gross domestic product is up by a factor of five, and the wages of everyday Australians have not increased. Where's the money gone? Average wages for Australians at the upper end of the scale have seen an increase of 50 per cent, and at the very top end the increase is over 100 per cent. A graph of our median and average wages over time is untroubled by changes in government. Liberal, National, Labor or Greens—it makes no difference; workers just keep going backwards.

Wages as a share of GDP have fallen from $116 billion to $96 billion over 30 years. The share of our gross domestic product being paid to Australian workers is at an all-time low, yet corporate profits have grown from $20 billion to six times that amount, $120 billion. Globalist economics has crushed the wages of everyday Australians and deposited the spoils from an expanding economy into the pockets of the big end of town in salaries, bonuses and dividends. Globalist free trade agreements have seen more than one million high-paid, skilled manufacturing and heavy industry jobs moved overseas. Labor is a big fan of globalism, voting in favour of every one of those free trade agreements. Recently the Senate voted for a UN funding bill to direct money into funding economic development in countries with which we have a free trade agreement. This facilitates increases in their productive capacity to take yet more Australian jobs. One Nation was the only party to oppose the funding bill. The Labor Party voted in favour of losing yet more jobs overseas.

COVID restrictions have had a role to play as well. The government's COVID restrictions have moved consumer spending away from small businesses who employ everyday Australians to corporate retailers who pay the minimum wage. Online growth has gone to Amazon, owned by the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos. Social media are calling the COVID restrictions on businesses 'a war on capitalism'; they are no such thing. In corporate Australia, the biggest crony capitalists have record sales and profits and have paid higher dividends and bonuses. As a result of government coronavirus restrictions and measures, the world's 400 richest people have increased their wealth by $1 trillion. Much of this new wealth is money that was once spent in local communities—in hardware stores, community supermarkets, butchers and grocers. It was money that held up real wages paid by local businesses to their loyal staff. Now those businesses have been forced to close or to sack workers.

So the real outcome from coronavirus measures has been the largest transference of wealth from small businesses to foreign owned or controlled corporations in Australian history. We expect this sort of thing from the globalist Liberal Party and their sellout sidekicks the Nationals, yet this has been brought to you by Labor in Queensland, Labor in Western Australia and Labor in Victoria. Almost every government measure during the COVID period has been waved through the Senate by the Labor Party, working in conjunction with the Liberals and Nationals. Labor don't get to complain now; they should have seen this coming. The only thing that was not in this profligate spending was a permanent increase in JobSeeker. The constant pressure from One Nation in this place directly with the government across many years has today had a result. One Nation will continue to stand up for everyday Australians.

The destruction of wages and entitlements of Australian workers has many other causes. At the heart of the problem is supply and demand for workers. At the same time Australia is sending jobs overseas, we are importing workers. Over the last 30 years, Australia has added 10 million new Australians. While many of them do not go into the productive economy, the bottom line is simple: we are importing workers for jobs that have already been exported to lower cost destinations, especially China. There are more workers than jobs, and that can only have the effect of reducing wages. Labor defend Australia's high immigration rate and suggest One Nation are racists for wanting a reduction in the rate of arrivals. The use of the word 'racist' means they have no argument to counter us. All One Nation are doing is standing up for everyday Australians who will never get a decent pay rise as long as the government keeps bringing in more new arrivals than there are jobs. The Rudd Labor government and the Gillard-Rudd Labor-Greens government increased permanent migration from 160,000 in 2007 to 205,000 in 2013. Labor cannot pretend to care about workers when it was Labor that initiated the largest spike in arrivals in the last 30 years.

The other issue around stagnation in real wages is foreign temporary workers. The Senate inquiry into temporary work visas found temporary migrant workers experienced widespread wage theft and gross violations of Australian minimum work standards. These included the failure to pay minimum wages, long work hours and a lack of health and safety training, leading to workplace injuries. Temporary work visa holders are being exploited to drive down wages and conditions. Bill Shorten, as minister, set the record for temporary work visas in this country, a record that Labor still holds. I don't hear Labor complaining about this. This may be because their beloved free trade agreements facilitate foreign workers. The Indonesian free trade agreement section 12.9 removes labour market testing and allows additional contract workers across 400 skilled occupations. It allows for 4,000 temporary working holiday-maker visas per year, and these workers are highly exploited because they'll be deported if they lose their jobs. Wage theft is not entirely restricted to vulnerable foreign workers, although it does account for most of the cases.

The problem of falling real wages, job insecurity and wage theft, which Senator Walsh mentions in this motion, results from Labor Party policies. One Nation is accused of wanting to wind the clock back. Well, on this issue we do want to wind the clock back, back to when workers got a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. We need to start putting Australia and Australians first, back to when workers settled here, became Australian citizens and contributed to the future of our marvellous country. (Time expired)