Mal Hingston: Liberal candidate says older Australians ‘happy’ to work for $10 an hour

A Liberal candidate has come under fire for his comments about piece rates for fruit pickers.

A Liberal candidate has come under fire after making comments about piece rates for fruit pickers and hinting at the Coalition’s stance on minimum wage cuts during a local forum.

Mal Hingston, candidate for the seat of Braddon, spoke to Tasmanians at a breakfast networking session hosted by Burnie’s peak business body last Wednesday.

When asked about how to work around “tight” employee rules and regulations, and its impact on small businesses, Mr Hingston said recent reforms had brought “unintended consequences”.

“We inadvertently killed off the grey nomads … they used to come down here, they’d spend their winters up in Bowen picking mangoes and then they’d come down to Tassie and just plod along,” he said.

“They were happy with 10 bucks an hour or whatever it was.

Liberal Party candidate for Braddon Mal Hingston (middle) said older Australians were ‘happy’ to work for $10 an hour – less than half the national minimum wage. Picture: Supplied

“(It) was a social outing for them and they’d pick some fruit and veggies. They’re getting their pensions and they didn’t care about the low hourly rate.

“And now they don’t want to go fruit picking anymore or they don’t want to get employed for fruit picking because they don’t want to work that hard to justify minimum wage.”

The national minimum wage sits at $24.10 per hour, regardless of job or industry.

It was introduced by the Albanese government on July 1, 2024, and hiked minimum and award wages by 3.75 per cent, boosting the pay of almost a quarter of Australians in the workforce.

He said the Coalition was going to ‘put things back to the way they were’. Picture: Zoe Phillips

“We’re going to rewind some of the stuff that Albanese’s done to a lot of the industrial relations changes and just put things back to the way they were,” Mr Hingston added.

The Liberal candidate is understood to have a portfolio spanning eleven houses, an aircraft and a boat.

The comments have been slammed by Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus, who believes they reveal the Liberal Party’s stance on workplace relations policy.

“The Liberals’ Mal Hingston sees nothing wrong in expecting older workers to work for piece rates of $10 an hour. He’d like low wages to come back and confirmed that’s what a Dutton government would try to do if elected,” she said.

“What that would mean, is an expectation that older Australians should be prepared to work for as little as $10 an hour, and to be grateful for the social outing it gives them.

“It means a total lack of government support for minimum wage increases in the upcoming annual wage review, which sets the floor under the wages of all award-reliant workers.”

A spokesperson for the Coalition told NewsWire that it “strongly supports” employees being paid what they were entitled to by law.

“We support the process of the independent Fair Work Commission setting the rate of the minimum wage as part of their annual wage review,” the spokesperson said.

“We will not change these arrangements.”