Labor to ask Fair Work for ‘sustainable real wage increase’ for award workers

Labor will lobby the minimum-wage-setting authority to give low-paid workers a pay rise above inflation, as it seeks to make workplace relations a feature of the election campaign and highlight its sharp policy contrast with the Coalition.

In a submission to the Fair Work Commission’s annual wage review, which shapes not just the national minimum wage but also the pay and conditions for 2.9 million award workers, the Labor Party will call for an “economically sustainable real wage increase”.

Labor has made similar submissions on behalf of the federal government throughout its time in office, asking that award workers “do not go backwards”, but has made this submission in its capacity as a political party because it falls during the campaign.

The Coalition has typically avoided making specific suggestions to the Fair Work Commission in government or in opposition.

Instead, it will seek to shift the focus to private-sector investment and economic growth on Wednesday, with Treasury spokesperson Angus Taylor to use a major address at the National Press Club to announce an election policy to establish a new government agency to coordinate efforts to garner investment in Australia.

Mr Taylor will tell the press club the proposal, which echoes similar ideas floated in the past by John Howard and Joe Hockey, will be “one of the most significant changes to how government facilitates private-sector investment in decades”.

The agency would be housed within Treasury and combine existing foreign investment screening functions, the Takeovers Panel and the Major Project Facilitation Agency.

“Investment Australia is a structural reform that will provide lower costs and send a lasting message that Australia is open for business,” Mr Taylor will say, according to a copy of his remarks seen by the ABC.

The proposal forms part of the Coalition’s economic pitch to voters, focused on the need to revive flagging productivity growth.

Central to that pitch is its plan to wind back much of the Albanese government’s workplace relations agenda, starting with its changes to the definition of casual work, designed to give greater security to workers but resisted by employer groups.

But Mr Taylor last month appeared to walk back his party’s earlier suggestions it would seek to repeal the right to disconnect and the expansion of multi-employer bargaining in the first term of a Dutton government.

Labor sees those policies, especially the right to disconnect, as fruitful ground for an election campaign, and highlighted its workplace changes in its Fair Work submission.

“Labor believes that wage increases can be both economically responsible and fair … [and wants] a dynamic and inclusive labour market that enables workers, employers and communities to thrive and adapt,” the submission reads.

Employment Minister Murray Watt told the ABC that award workers “deserve a pay rise so they can keep pace with cost-of-living pressures and actually move forward … This is a real challenge now for Peter Dutton and the Coalition to say whether they want to see wages increase in Australia.”

The Fair Work Commission makes its decisions independently and is not required to give any special weight to the submissions of the government or major political parties.

It also receives submissions from employer groups and unions, who often propose specific percentage increases.

The current national minimum wage is $24.10 per hour, which equates to $915.90 per 38-hour week. The award worker cohort skews young and contains more women than men, with a large proportion of award jobs concentrated in retail, hospitality and the care sector.

Shadow-boxing continues over Trump

The economy has emerged as a campaign theme in the first week, with each of the major parties seeking to find advantage in the Reserve Bank’s decision to keep rates on hold.

Labor’s Jim Chalmers seized on the RBA Board’s more positive language about progress on inflation, while Mr Taylor said the absence of a second rate cut was evidence there was “no fast pathway back to the standard of living” that prevailed before the onset of inflation.

Meanwhile, the two major party leaders set the ground for the possibility that sweeping tariffs will be imposed on Australia and other countries by the Trump administration.

The US trade office released a list of American trade grievances with Australia on Tuesday Australian time, with the news media bargaining code, biosecurity rules and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme among the practices singled out to earn Australia possible “reciprocal” tariffs.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would not contemplate “cutting off your nose to spite your face” in negotiations with the Trump administration, refusing to make concessions on any of the policies on the American list.

That position was backed in by Peter Dutton, who said he was “not going to compromise on issues of national significance and importance”.

But Labor has sought to compare Mr Dutton to the US president after he dangled the prospect of funding cuts to “backroom” functions of the Department of Education and using the leverage of federal funding to influence schools if he believed they were pushing political agendas.

Mr Chalmers said this was borrowing from the “DOGE playbook,” a reference to Mr Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency and his decision to abolish the US Department of Education.

Loading…

Having trouble seeing this form? Try this link.