Page 3973 - Week 12 - Thursday, 20 October 2005
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Yesterday, Mr Seselja took up the point about this figure that Mr Howard uses all the time—there has been a 14 per cent increase in real wages—and said, “Isn’t this making the lives of people better; therefore, shouldn’t we support what the federal government has done?” That was the argument that he was running. It is easy to accept the argument that the figure that the Prime Minister is using of a 14 per cent increase in pay is a real figure that you can apply across the board.
The research that has been done on that figure shows that the average increase, if you take out senior managers—if we are looking at the impact that this will have on the disadvantaged, as this MPI does—between 1998 and 2004 was 3.6 per cent. That is according to an analysis of ABS data by Unions New South Wales. All right, you can disagree with that. But they are the figures. The figures are there; they are published. This is how you can use figures, I guess, to support each other’s argument. Workers in the lowest two percentiles received an average of 1.2 per cent over the six-year period, whereas workers in the high percentiles were the ones to enjoy the increase in real wages of 13.4 per cent.
You can take the 14 per cent increase argument if you want but, if you look across the board, these changes that the federal government is talking about are not changes that are necessarily going to affect that upper end of the job market because those people—and I include us in the chamber in that—are able to look after themselves; we are able to bargain; we have skills that make us employable, and employable under good conditions. But this MPI is about those members of our community that are disadvantaged.
Again, if you take the federal government: look at how real wages have increased; look at the increases to the minimum wage which the federal government is taking credit for, too. It is a bit of a funny argument because they are, on the one hand, saying, “The IRC is being too generous; so we need to have the fair pay commission, to set up a new regime to exert some control over the Industrial Relations Commission and the independence of it.” But in every single living-wage case that the federal government has been involved in, they have opposed the wage increase.
Mr Mulcahy: They have come up with a compromise figure.
MS GALLAGHER: A very low compromise figure, which the Industrial Relations Commission has not supported. The state and territory governments have been the closest. We argued for a $22 wage increase and there was a $20 wage increase given, or around that figure. Usually, the federal government is arguing for $9 or $10 and the unions are arguing for $27. But in the living-wage cases, the state and territory governments, which do some very comprehensive analysis—it is always published on the web site—of how our economy is going, what the wage movements in the public sector are and what we need to be able to compete, have been the ones whose figures have been accepted. It is a bit rich that the federal government now come and take credit for those wage movements, when they certainly have not been supportive of them and, after the decisions, have commented on the fact that they do not think the economy can afford to pay these kinds of wage outcomes.
I know Mr Mulcahy describes us as generating the doom and gloom, but listen to the federal government on those outcomes and you hear the doom and gloom. “This will
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