Labor will promise a new measure to close the gender pay gap and attack the government for promoting “the importance of low paid work” in the campaign’s final fortnight.
On Sunday the shadow minister for women, Tanya Plibersek, confirmed another policy push on gender pay inequity, while the shadow industrial relations minister, Tony Burke, signalled a plan to weaponise the Coalition’s submission to the minimum wage review.
With runaway inflation and a mid-election campaign interest rate rise, cost-of-living pressures and wage stagnation have emerged as the most important issues for voters ahead of the 21 May election.
The Morrison government has claimed to be the superior economic managers, but Labor has countered that its cost-of-living measures consist largely of one-off handouts without structural solutions to low wages.
On Sunday Anthony Albanese told The Sun Herald that Labor will release more policies to “lift up the economic status of women” and improve their career options.
The comments come just days after the Labor leader confirmed it is no longer committed to introducing superannuation on paid parental leave (PPL).
Plibersek told ABC’s Insiders that super on PPL is still something that “we would look at in government” and “we would love to do when we can afford to”.
“We can’t afford to fix 10 years of Morrison/Turnbull/Abbott government [inaction] with one budget, with one election.”
Plibersek used similar reasoning while explaining that Labor has committed to 20,000 extra university places, but has not recommitted to a fully demand-driven system as it did before the 2019 election.
Plibersek accused the prime minister of having “completely given up on helping families with the extraordinary cost-of-living pressures they are under right now”.
Plibersek said she would leave “additional measures” on gender pay to Albanese to announce, but pointed to existing policies including banning pay secrecy clauses, requiring large companies to disclose their gender pay gap and adding an objective for pay equity in the Fair Work Act.
“There is something wrong with a system that has seen only one successful gender pay equity case in decades, literally since 1994, I think there have been 21 applications and only one of them has been successful.”
Plibersek also said that paying low-paid workers better would be “important for aggregate demand in our economy” and help “create jobs for other Australians”.
Earlier, Burke told Sky News that Labor is not concerned about adding to inflation, because the reserve bank had explained “if wage growth goes to no more than the inflation level plus productivity, at the moment productivity is running at 1%, you don’t actually have inflationary pressure”.
“Far less than going up – people are actually going backwards.”
Burke said Labor’s policies would address “all the ways wages are being undercut”, including ensuring “same job, same pay” in the labour hire sector and regulating the gig economy to ensure contract workers receive minimum wage.
“We want to be able to see the minimum wage go forward,” he said.
“I’ve been going through really carefully what the government has had to say in their submission – I’ll have more to say about that in the campaign.”
In its submission to the Fair Work Commission, the Morrison government made comments about the “importance of low-paid work”, arguing it functions as a “stepping stone” with two-thirds of workers leaving within a year and three-quarters of those to higher paid jobs.
The minimum wage should be set at a level that boosts “the performance and competitiveness of the national economy”, the government said.
“To support employment growth, it is important that job opportunities are available for at-risk groups, including low-skilled people, the long-term unemployed, people with disability, Indigenous Australians and youth.”
Unions have already taken aim at the submission, noting it “refused to endorse a pay rise”.
The social services minister, Anne Ruston, told Sky News the Coalition has a “strong plan, for a strong economy and a strong future”.
Ruston said the budget’s cost-of-living measures including the halving of petrol excise and cuts to the price of medicine “are a testament to why a strong economy is important”.
Since 2013 unemployment in Australia had fallen from 5.7% to less than 4%, she said.
