Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The national accounts did come out today. They certainly do show that there's uncertainty in the global economy today, but they show that our economy is steady. We do have an ongoing inflation challenge around the world, and we all know that. We have ongoing supply chain challenges around the world too, and we know that Australia is not immune from those challenges. That's why it is so important that the Albanese Labor government became the government last year. It's why it's so important that, since May last year, we've had our shoulder to the wheel to build a strong economy that Australians can rely on. That's why, when it comes to our economy and when it comes to the standard of living for Australians, it's so important that Australia has now ended the completely wasted decade of the coalition government. For a decade, the former government was absolutely missing in action for all of the fundamentals that matter to our economy and to our people. They were completely missing in action for a decade.

We all remember the former government choosing to push Australian manufacturing off a cliff instead of investing in it. We all remember the former government pretending that they had an energy policy 22 times while doing absolutely nothing empowering our nations with cheap, clean energy. Of course, it's Australian families and businesses who are paying the price for that today. We all remember the way in which the coalition government treated Australian workers. I remember the Prime Minister saying that if you think you're not earning enough in your job to then just go and get another one. The problem was, of course, that the coalition government chose low wages as a deliberate design feature of their economy, with the slowest wage growth on record under those opposite.

But they come in here and lecture us about the economy and they lecture us about economic management. The former government chose to ignore women as economic actors in our society and in our country. We would struggle to find a single policy that advanced women's economic security from those opposite. What we can remember from those opposite is that when women stood up and protested for their rights, their Prime Minister told them they were lucky not to be met with bullets! We choose a different path.

We're getting on with doing exactly what we said we would do. We're dealing with the fundamental problems and challenges that Australians face. We're bringing people together to find the opportunities of the future. We came into office just over a year ago and, yes, we came in and found challenges—challenges of global economic uncertainty, of broken supply chains and of inflation already on the rise. What we also came in and found was a zero long-term agenda from those opposite to set Australia up for the future. A zero long-term agenda. Our job is to get on with meeting the challenges of this particular moment in time. Our job is to get on with seizing the opportunities in front of us in the decade ahead, and that is absolutely what we are doing.

There was discussion in the debate today about our closing the loopholes legislation. I, for one, am very proud of that legislation, which was introduced into the House this week. That's because we were elected on a promise to get wages moving and that's exactly what we're doing. Wages are now moving faster than they had been over the last decade. But to maintain that we have to close the loopholes that are undermining people's wages and working conditions. That's all this bill is about: making wage theft a crime. How can anyone argue with that? It introduces minimum standards for gig workers, closes the forced permanent casual worker loophole and closes labour hire loopholes. That's because we believe that everyone deserves a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.