QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Dr CHALMERS (Rankin—Treasurer) (14:34): Thanks to the member for Spence for his question, and also for the time that we spent with the young workers in his electorate a couple of weeks ago. Our economic plan is all about boosting wages, and today we got some encouraging news on that front because average weekly earnings are up again and the gender pay gap is closing further.

They might not want to see that, but we do. Average weekly full-time earnings are up by more than 300 bucks a week since this government was elected. The gender pay gap has fallen to another record low, of 11.3 per cent, which is a source of pride for us and also a reminder that we have more work to do on that front.

Real wages growth is expected to return later this financial year as inflation subsides. Average annualised full-time earnings growth under this government is much stronger than it was under our predecessors. That's because, in their own words, lower wages were a deliberate design feature of their economic policy.

So workers are earning more under this government, and because of our tax cuts they're keeping more as well. As the Prime Minister said, that's because they are getting the tax cut that those opposite voted against and said they would repeal. This is just one way that the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation all share a dangerous and divisive antiworker agenda.

But it's not the only way. They also want to end compulsory super for workers. Yesterday Senator Bragg, at the Press Club, dismissed superannuation as a 'loss of liberty' and a 'strange experiment'.

And in the crowd, smirking and nodding and applauding, was the shadow Treasurer—the same shadow Treasurer who told Andrew Bolt that people on low and middle incomes should be taken out of the compulsory superannuation system. And a Tigger does not change his stripes! This is the policy of those opposite: to end super as we know it, to hack at and then destroy an essential part of our social and economic architecture and to make people poorer at work and in retirement as a consequence.

Their hatred of super would decimate the retirement incomes and the economic security of Australian workers. Their hatred of super should send a shiver up the spine of every working Australian in this country. We are delivering real and positive change in wages and in superannuation.

We got it to 12 per cent, we're paying it on paid parental leave and we're boosting it for low-income workers, because we know how important super is to a decent retirement. And we will defend superannuation forever from the dangerous antiworker, antisuper ideology of those opposite.