Senate debates

Thursday, 13 August 2026

Questions without Notice

Wages and Salaries

3:04 pm

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

Well, Senator Dolega, the Albanese Labor government is about higher wages and tax cuts for working Australians. And, in contrast, what we saw yesterday from Senator Bragg was floating raising the GST.

Personally, when I look at Senator Bragg, I see a little bit of Matt Damon over there. He's the Liberal Party's Odysseus. You can picture it now, Senator Bragg strolling out of Hoyts Broadway cinema in Sydney last weekend after watching Christopher Nolan's three-hour epic and thinking to himself: 'What would Odysseus do? I'll just put all my wacky personal policy ideas into a big trojan horse and wheel it into the National Press Club, and we'll see how it goes. That'll show 'em!' But, unlike the movie, Senator Bragg, our modern Liberal Party Odysseus, was not successful. He was cut down by the Trojans in the Liberal Party, shamed for his original thinking and panned by his colleagues, including a stinging rebuke today from his opposition leader. What an absolute mess. Cuts and chaos from Liberals and One Nation—that's what we would see. (Time expired)

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