ADDRESS TO PARLIAMENT - MOTIONS - Wages

I rise to speak on this motion put forward by the member for Lalor, and, in doing so, I note that from today, 1 July 2024, the national minimum wage will increase to $915.90 per week, or $24.10 per hour, and award minimum wages will increase by 3.75 per cent. Other award wages, including junior apprentice and supported wages that are based on adult minimum wages, will get a proportionate increase. What Labor members don't understand—because not too many of them have ever run businesses—is that someone pays for that. Small business, like every other sector of the economy, are hurting at the moment. They're very much doing it tough, and those small-business owners and operators didn't get much, if any, relief in the recent federal budget handed down in May. They did get a slight increase in the instant asset write-off, but it is down considerably from what we'd put in place when we were in government.

I heard the Treasurer today in question time again—and I will say it—being deliberately misleading by saying that there was a trillion dollars of Liberal Party debt. Well, when Labor came to office in May 2022, there was nowhere near a trillion dollars worth of debt. It'll probably, ultimately, get to that under Labor. But we had had something called COVID-19 to deal with, and, despite the global pandemic, 1.1 million jobs were created since that global pandemic hit in 2020 and 11½ million Australians benefited from tax relief. There's been no mention of that. We talk a lot in here, and I hear Labor members talking about stage 3 tax cuts, but there's been no mention of stages 1 and 2. They were important to put into place. Of trade and exports, 71.3 per cent are covered by free trade agreements. We know that one in five—perhaps even as high as one in four in regional Australia—jobs are covered by an FTA. There were 815,600 female business operators, which is something that we should be very proud of as coalition members, and that was a figure from August 2021. That is significant—a record high of 220 trade apprentices.

Labor goes on ad nauseam—it's almost boring in its repetition—about the deliberate design feature of keeping wages low. I remember that interview by former Minister for Finance Senator Mathias Cormann as well, and there was no deliberate design feature. But what we were achieving with our economic policies was a balance. I heard the member for Spence say that I was a union member for 21 years. The fact that he can recall my exact number of years in a trade union movement is kinda scary, but, anyway, it's accurate. There is a balance between unions doing what they do in workplaces, employers being able to employ more people to be able to actually take home money themselves and people being paid a fair day's wage for a fair day's work. I don't think any of us in this parliament would dispute that, but it's about getting and achieving the right balance.

At the moment, we shouldn't be talking about minimum wages. We should be talking about real wages. Real wages are lower now than what they were when we lost office, and I'll tell you why. It's because the disposable income for the average everyday Australian is being eroded by higher power prices, by higher grocery bills and by the mere fact that the cost-of-living crisis is very much biting and hurting people, particularly in the regions. We've got a government which is paying farmers to stop farming. They've given $107 million to Western Australian sheep farmers to phase out the live exports.

Ms Price: Shame.

Mr McCORMACK: It is a shame, member for Durack, and I see the member for O'Connor sitting there nodding in agreement too about the fact that this is a terrible piece of legislation. It won't just have effects in Western Australia; it will be right across the nation, because our farmers will be earning less. Our farmers are copping it in the neck all of the time. But this should not be a debate about minimum wages; it should be a debate about real wages and what Labor is doing to address the cost-of-living crisis which has come about on their watch.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Wilkie ): I thank the member for Riverina. The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.