QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator WONG (South Australia—Minister for Foreign Affairs and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:17): Thank you, Senator Shoebridge. I'll take the opportunity to congratulate you, Senator Shoebridge and Senator Hodgins-May, on your election. It's a real honour to lead the party in this place, and I acknowledge your election.

In relation to real wages, we obviously have done an enormous amount of work to do what we could to improve Australians' wages, and you've seen the benefits of that. You've seen the benefits of that particularly in the care economy. You've seen the benefits of that for early childhood educators.

You've seen the benefits of that in a whole range of care economy professions that Senator Walsh speaks about regularly. As a consequence of that, we have seen the gender pay gap reduce. That is a good thing.

We have also, as a government, ensured that there have been increases in the minimum wage, and, unlike those opposite, we do not take the view that low wages are a deliberate design feature of our economy and that we want them to continue. But you would know, Senator, that the government does not control inflation, particularly inflation that is primarily driven by the largest impact on global energy markets that the world has seen, with consequences throughout our economy.

We also know that continuing to invest to remove the capacity constraints in the economy is a focus of this government—hence our investment in infrastructure and in human capital. There is no magic wand which will ensure that we can simply wave away inflation— (Time expired)