Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very glad you asked me this question, Senator, because this gives me the opportunity—an opportunity I haven't had for some time, since changing portfolios—to say that one fundamental difference between the Liberal Party and the Labor Party when it comes to productivity is that the Labor Party does not accept that cutting people's wages is the route to higher productivity. There is plenty of factual evidence that backs up that position. The decade prior to our coming to office, when the coalition pursued a strategy of wage suppression, delivered the lowest productivity growth over a decade that we had seen in Australia for 60 years. So, if cutting wages or keeping wages low were the route to higher productivity, then we would have seen the coalition deliver much higher productivity than the lowest productivity growth over a decade that we had seen in 60 years.

The way we get higher productivity growth in Australia is not by cutting wages but by investing in people, through competition reform, through the renewable energy transition and through the various other things that the government is doing to lift productivity.