STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator BROCKMAN (Western Australia—Deputy President and Chair of Committees) (13:42): If you needed any more proof that the Labor government had taken a chainsaw to the living standards of Australians, it came out again in the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures. We see real wages going backwards yet again for full-time workers and, in fact, for all workers across the economy.

This adds to a repeated failure of this Labor government to do what it promised to do, and that's to get real wages moving. They have failed because they are addicted to spending. In fact, Australians have gone backwards around five per cent since they came to power.

That's just a number, but what does that mean? It means around $1,200 a week for the average Australian in terms of less money they have to spend in their pay packet. That is a lot of money for most average Australians.

Australians are feeling poorer under Labor because they are. What do the economists say about this? Shane Oliver from AMP said: The relative stagnation in productivity and real wages since early 2023 is cleaner and indicative of the malaise in the economy over the last few years.

Jeff Borland, from the University of Melbourne, said that the data was 'striking'. He said: Real wages have fallen for two main reasons: first, nominal wage growth has failed to keep up with price inflation; second, there has been zero growth in labour productivity … Martin Parkinson said: Where we are in the economic cycle, we should be running significant structural surpluses, and yet we've got a structural, and headline, deficit.