STATEMENTS BY SENATORS
Senator BARBARA POCOCK (South Australia) (13:46): Well, I want to talk about workers. Workers out there are suffering. They are suffering because their real wages are falling.
The OECD has recently told us that Australian workers have suffered a five per cent fall in their hourly rate of wage in the last five years when, across the OECD, many countries have seen a five per cent increase in the wages of their workers. At the same time, we haven't seen a reduction in working time for Australian workers for nearly 50 years—since the 38-hour week campaign.
We need to see improvements in pay. We need to see reductions in working time. In saying that, I want to congratulate the new secretary elect of the ACTU, Melissa Donnelly, on her position.
I look forward to working with her. In her opening comments, as she accepted the new position, she talked about the need to reduce the hours of Australian workers. We need to see Australian workers get a share of what they create, and a bigger share than they've received in the last 30 years, where we've seen the profit rate increase and the contribution of workers increase but their share of what they take home decline relative to what their bosses get.
While we're on the subject of improving those conditions and welcoming the new secretary elect of the ACTU, I look forward to working with her to make sure that our Australian workers—our young workers under 18—get their full entitlements. Our private member's bill, introduced this week, says that no worker under 18, regardless of the hours they work, should be knocked back on their super.
They deserve the same conditions and the same superannuation pay as everyone they work alongside. Unless we do that, we are putting more and more millions of dollars into the pockets of very wealthy big billionaires and big multinational companies. We're talking about Woolies.
We're talking about Coles. We're talking about Maccas. They need to be making a contribution into the pockets of those hardworking young people.