Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I understand that, and I will get an answer for that. In my experience with Senator David Pocock—I'm certainly not going to attack him, like you did—I found someone who is diligent, who is thorough, and who applies himself to the task. He obviously was engaged in discussion with the government and made the decision to support this legislation because he thinks that this is going to deliver for the Australian people, and it's also going to be the focus from our government of getting wages moving again.

The bemusing thing for me is that I hear people say, 'We all want to get wages moving.' I'd be sceptical about the opposition doing that, given their record in government, but when we actually put something forward to do something about it, it's not the right thing. How do you think Australian workers are feeling about that now? For ten years, low wages were a deliberate design feature of the previous government. But, now that we have a government that wants to do something about it and has put forward legislation to do something about, people are saying, 'This isn't the right thing to do.' No-one has put forward any other alternative. This is what we put forward as the government. I've run through some of the reasons we think it will be successful, particularly targeting some of those lower-paid industries and feminised workforces, which we think are so important, and those people who are doing it tough. That's the legislation that we've put forward.

In terms of the Public Service, the Fair Work Act covers the Public Service, as it does other workers in the country.