Terry McCrann: The facts about wage growth under Labor
Labor leader Bill Shorten is promising to deliver a big lift in wages for Aussie workers. So can he deliver the goods? Take it with a very big grain of salt, writes Terry McCrann.
Business
Don't miss out on the headlines from Business. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Can Labor leader Bill Shorten really deliver a big lift in wages for Australian workers? There’s reason to be highly sceptical, writes Terry McCrann.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has in recent days laid out some basic but punishingly significant facts about wages under the current Coalition government and the previous Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor governments.
In particular, he has shown there is a big difference between what Labor promises and what it actually delivers.
MORE MCCRANN: MORTGAGE BROKERS ON HIDING TO NOTHING
READ MORE: LABOR EYES MINIMUM WAGE LAW CHANGES
Labor leader Bill Shorten is promising to deliver a big lift in the minimum wage.
Yet, the last time, according to Frydenberg, the minimum wage actually went backwards in real terms, was when Labor was in government between 2007 and 2013.
Indeed, it went backwards in three of the six Labor years!
In contrast, the real minimum wage has actually gone up in every one of the Coalition years since.
Further, it has gone up not just in comparison with inflation but with wages generally in the economy.
That is to say, those at the bottom of the pile have done better than the average worker under a Coalition government rather than under the Labor government that purports to be most concerned about them.
The broader point, which Frydenberg didn’t directly make, is that what really delivers for workers is not political promises or political grandstanding but an economy that is creating jobs.
Over the past half-dozen or so years, we have had very strong jobs growth — not exactly unconnected to the fact that wages haven’t been rising at a rate that prices workers out of jobs.
The number one thing we should all want is for that jobs growth to continue.
Indeed, we really couldn’t even trade fewer jobs for higher wages. The higher wages would be short-lived, as workers priced themselves out of work.
How the NBN has delivered just in time
The NBN has delivered, and it has done so in what can only be described as the ultimate — the hit-the-ground running immediate — stress test, rites Terry McCrann.
Sydney airport the wrong place at the wrong time
Sydney Airport has some of the sweetest acreage in Australia but when passengers numbers have dwindled from 9 million in the March quarter to 400,000 in the June quarter, that doesn’t count for much, writes Terry McCrann.