As Frydenberg and Cormann front the cameras to talk about Labor (will they ever realise they are in their third term in office?), everybody keeps talking about the need for wage growth and scratching their heads as to why it isn’t happening.
It isn’t happening because we have a pro-employer government who has made wage restraint a goal.
It was only 9 months ago that David Speers asked Senator Linda Reynolds “Do you agree flexibility in wages and keeping wages at a modest level is a deliberate feature of our economic architecture?”
An outraged Reynolds quickly replied “No I don’t. No, absolutely not. And for Bill Shorten to even suggest that, I think, shows a fundamental lack of understanding about economics.”
“Well I’m actually quoting Mathias Cormann, the finance minister, here. Your colleague. He says that wage flexibility is ‘a deliberate feature of our economic architecture,” Speers said.
“He’s absolutely right,” Ms Reynolds replied.
Two contradictory answers, 16 seconds apart. At least she blushed while she blustered.
“The whole point – it is important to ensure that wages can adjust in the context of economic conditions – is to avoid massive spikes in unemployment, which are incredibly disruptive,” Cormann told Sky News in March. “This is a deliberate feature of our economic architecture.”
Undermining the power of unions has been key to this strategy.
Malcolm Fraser changed the Trade Practices Act to ban workers from taking action in solidarity with other workers. He also created the Industrial Relations Bureau to act as an industrial “tough cop on the beat”.
Howard introduced the Workplace Relations Act 1996 to extend the scope for non-union agreements, followed later by WorkChoices which limited the scope of collective bargaining, and wound back protections against dismissal.
The organisations created by the Abbott and Turnbull governments (the Registered Organisations Commission and Australian Building and Construction Commission) have been so nakedly anti-union that they have repeatedly broken the law they are supposed to uphold.
Michaelia Cash’s hand-picked Commissioner, Nigel Hadgkiss, had to resign, but not before he ran up a $436,000 legal bill at public expense trying to defend the indefensible. Cash knew this court case was coming up when she appointed Hadgkiss.
Being a government for employers and the wealthy, the Coalition has never understood the importance of wage earners sharing in the wealth their labour generates.
Showing just how completely out-of-touch they are, Eric Abetz, as Employment Minister, warned of a coming “wages explosion” in 2014 where “unsustainable wage growth” would push “thousands of Australians out of work”.
Instead, we have seen the Fair Work Commission, in a highly politicised process led by Deloitte Canberra managing partner Lynne Pezzullo (Dutton side kick Mike Pezullo’s wife), cut penalty rates to the lowest paid workers, affecting mainly women and young people.
We have seen parental leave entitlements cut, with mothers who combined their workplace entitlement with the government entitlement condemned as “double-dippers”.
Increasingly insecure employment, underemployment, sham contracting, labour hire firms, the casualisation of the workforce, the gig economy, and foreign worker visas are all stripping workers of entitlements and any hope of collective bargaining.
Frydenberg and Cormann, in the brief moments when they are not talking about what would have happened if Labor had won the election, will tell you that household disposable income is growing the fastest it has in a decade.
What they will never admit is that, whilst the average has gone up, the median has gone down.
Since 2009 and the global financial crisis, the average and the median have moved in different directions.
The average household’s annual real disposable income has climbed a further $3,156. The median (or typical) household’s income has fallen $542.
The reason they won’t mention that is because the lower fifty per cent of the population never enter their consciousness. We are the leaners, the bludgers, the burdens, those who won’t have a go. It’s our own fault that our parents didn’t start a trust fund for us and provide us with the deposit for our first penthouse and a position on the board of the family company.
All we have to bargain with is our labour and they have made it basically illegal for us to even do that.
And yet, it is us in the lower fifty per cent who keep these charlatans in power – a classic case of Stockholm syndrome.
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