Portfolio — 31 March 2026

The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Ms Rishworth, used both a ministerial media release and Question Time on 31 March to advance the government's worker-pay agenda across two distinct fronts — one an independent tribunal ruling on youth wages, the other a direct executive expansion of the PALM scheme's training investment.

The more immediate development was the Fair Work Commission's ruling that workers aged 18 to 20 should receive adult wages, abolishing junior rates for retail, fast food and pharmacy workers [TA-260331-house-66782c600be9:s149]. The Minister told the House the commission recommended phasing in the pay rises to give employers time to adjust, and the government welcomed the decision as benefiting tens of thousands of young adult workers facing cost-of-living pressures.

Ms Rishworth credited the SDA union for prosecuting the case before the commission and used the ruling to reinforce a broader framing: that the government is systematically restoring balance at the Fair Work Commission between workers and employers [TA-260331-house-66782c600be9:s149]. She cited the government's concurrent submission to the commission seeking an economically sustainable real wage increase for the 2.7 million workers on minimum wages, alongside earlier record of Fair Work Act reforms embedding gender equality, funded pay rises for aged-care and early childhood educators, and penalty-rate protections.

The PALM scheme announcement, released the following day, extended this worker-advocacy framing into the international labour mobility context [TA-260401-dewr-122ef6cf2d30]. The government lifted its contribution for job-specific training from 40 per cent to 60 per cent and doubled the annual funding cap from $300 to $600 per worker, with more than 31,000 PALM scheme workers now eligible for tier 3 nationally recognised training in forklift operation, safe food handling, working safely at heights, and chemical safety [TA-260401-dewr-122ef6cf2d30].

Since late 2023, the Australian Government has approved more than $500,000 through the PALM Skills Development Program, and the expanded rates take effect immediately for employers in horticulture, meat processing and care [TA-260401-dewr-122ef6cf2d30]. The Minister for Pacific Island Affairs co-announced the measure, characterising it as a direct response to Pacific and Timor-Leste partner priorities and positioning skills development as central to a fair and inclusive scheme.

The two streams share a structuring logic. Both position the government as acting in response to worker need — domestic workers through the independent commission process, and Pacific and Timorese workers through direct program funding — while framing employer adjustment as accommodated rather than obstructed. The portable-credentials rationale for the PALM expansion mirrors the real-wage rationale in the domestic setting: credentials and pay that workers carry beyond their immediate employment.

The joint announcement with the Minister for Pacific Island Affairs also signals that the PALM expansion is being managed as a foreign-policy instrument alongside its domestic labour-market function.