QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Dr CHALMERS (Rankin—Treasurer) (14:14): Thanks to the member for Sturt for her question but also for the very significant role that she plays in our team in her first term, representing a really beautiful part of Adelaide. This is a really important week for our economy, with the national accounts coming out tomorrow. In the context of all of this global economic uncertainty, any growth will be welcome in those figures.
Any through-the-year growth with a two in front of it would be a welcome outcome. We've got investment booming in the first quarter, we've got exports off quite substantially and we've got public demand making no contribution to growth in the first quarter. We know that already.
We'll see the rest of the numbers tomorrow. But this week is also very significant for a couple of other reasons. This week and this government are all about higher wages and lower taxes for workers and a fair go for first home buyers.
In that context, as the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations said, we welcome the Fair Work Commission decision today. This is the pay rise that millions of Australian workers need and deserve. This is the sustainable real wage increase that the minister and I sought when we made the submission on behalf of the government.
Because of this decision and because of this government, more Australians will be earning more and keeping more of what they earn. Because we're cutting income taxes five times in three different ways, the average worker will be better off by up to $2,800. Opposition members interjecting— Dr CHALMERS: I hear those opposite chirping away.
They have not changed a bit since they said low wages were a deliberate design feature of their economic policy. They have not learned a thing since the last time the member for Hume told them to vote against tax cuts in this place. They don't support pay rises.
They don't support tax cuts. They don't support first home buyers, and neither does the other part of the three-ring circus over there, the One Nation party. They always vote the way that Gina Rinehart tells them to and not the way that working Australians need them to in this parliament.
When the country is crying out for change, those opposite cling to a broken status quo which has been locking too many Australians out of housing for too long. When they see the legitimate concerns and pressures that people have around this country, they seek to benefit from that politically. We seek to address those legitimate concerns that people have, and that's what the budget is all about.
When they look around the world at the social dislocation and political division in other countries, they want to replicate it here. We want to avoid it. Their strategy is to talk down the economy, to talk up division in our society and to vote against tax cuts and first home buyers.
We'll learn more about our economy tomorrow in the national accounts, but we already know that this side supports workers and first home buyers, and that side does not.