Workers would be $8,700 worse off today if Peter Dutton had his way

Australian Unions are releasing a new report today outlining how workers would be $8,700 worse off by now, if Peter Dutton had achieved his goal of blocking the Government’s major reforms to get wages moving.

Wages grew by just 2.1 per cent in the decade from 2013- 2022, when the Coalition government was in power, with Peter Dutton as a senior minister due to a deliberately designed policy to keep wages low.

Since 2022, due to legislative and policy changes by the Albanese Government, there has been consistent wage growth averaging 3.7 per cent, leaving workers with more money to deal with the cost-of-living crisis they’re experiencing.

The report shows that the turnaround in wages since 2022 has occurred across all industries, in contrast to the slow rate of wage growth in every industry in the decade prior and outlines the policies that have been enacted that have brought this about:

1. The Government’s strong intervention into the past three Annual Wage Reviews that resulted in Australia’s award and minimum wage workers receiving wage increases.
2. Improving collective bargaining through the Secure Jobs, Better Pay reforms that are now delivering the strongest pay rises in nearly 30 years, for a rapidly growing group of workers.
3. Reducing insecure work by introducing a sensible definition of casual work and the Same Job Same Pay laws ending the corporate practice of paying labour hire workers less than directly employed workers and limiting the use of fixed term contracts.
4. Lifting public sector wage caps and bringing public sector work back in-house, ensuring Australia’s public sector workers are getting paid their worth and ending the practice of wasting billions on expensive consultants.
5. Strengthening equal pay and work value laws so that Australia’s previously undervalued care workers, the majority of whom are women, are finally getting paid what they deserve.

The Coalition voted against every single one of these policy changes.

In addition, Peter Dutton is promising to axe the jobs of 41,000 public sector workers, cut rights for casuals, repeal the right to disconnect and refuses to back real wage increases for 3 million minimum and award wage workers.

The report demonstrates the clear contrast between policies that will keep wages moving, and the policies of a Dutton Coalition Government that are a clear risk to wage growth.

Quotes attributable to ACTU Secretary, Sally McManus:

“This report confirms just how much lower wages would have been had Peter Dutton’s policies been in place. While workers are doing it tough, he would have made things a lot worse by keeping wage rises low and allowing big business to continue using their wage-cutting loopholes.

“At a time of global uncertainty, it’s even more important for workers to have the confidence that the gains they’ve been making over the last three years continue. We do not need Peter Dutton importing more of that uncertainty here. Working people cannot afford to have any rights at work cut.

“Peter Dutton has demonstrated over and over, and again spectacularly with his backflips during this election, that he cannot be trusted with Australian’s rights at work.  

“He voted against every single Labor reform driving wage growth, and nothing is surer than that he will reverse these reforms given the chance. The biggest risk to wage rises is a Coalition Government.”