Senate debates

Thursday, 2 July 2026

Questions without Notice

Wages and Salaries

3:03 pm

Photo of Murray WattMurray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) | Hansard source

We know that enterprise agreements continue to be a key source of wages growth for Australian workers. Under the coalition, enterprise bargaining had crashed, and that was of course part of its deliberate strategy of keeping wages low. Well, under Labor, enterprise bargaining is back. If we look at the latest ABS wages data, we saw a solid 3.2 per cent annual wages growth in the private sector. But newly approved enterprise agreements are delivering even higher average pay increases in the private sector at 4.1 per cent, so the Labor Party is delivering for workers in every single part of the economy.

And while we're focused on delivering real change for Australians, the Liberal Party are only interested in real change to themselves. It got so bad this week that we saw the return of' Scotty from marketing' in the form of the member for Lindsay calling for the Liberal Party to completely rebrand itself. No wonder all of this mob over there are counting down the clock, have got the motors running in the car park to escape the parliament and to escape each other. They hate each other and they're not focused on the Australian people.

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