This year’s budget was missing one key change that could have set everyday Aussies on a betxjmtzywter track for the year ahead, critics say.
Wages growth is tipped to increase from 2.75 per cent in 2021-22 to 3.25 per cent in 2022-23.
It is an increase of just half a per cent despite major increases in the cost of living in recent months.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions described one-off payments and tax breaks announced in the budget as “election bribes”.
“The cost of living crisis has been biting for longer than just this year,” ACTU president Michele O’Neil said.
“This Government has presided over almost a decade of stagnant wages growth.”
Ms O’Neil said there was nothing in the budget that would deliver wage increases for Australian workers.
“The test for this government was whether they would end nearly a decade of low wage growth. And the answer tonight is ‘no’,” she said.
With a forecast 0.5 per cent increase, the budget described wage growth as “strengthening”.
However, it added: “There was significant uncertainty around the pace at which wages growth will accelerate, given the unemployment rate is at a historically low level.”
“What the government should have done and failed to do is support an increase on the minimum wage. They also could‘ve supported that important move to lift the wages of aged care workers that we know are so underpaid and undervalued for the work they do,” Ms O’Neil said.
“Tonight, the budget‘s own figures confirm that workers will lose another $500 in the first six months of this year [in real wage cuts].
“They should have led the way by giving an increase to workers in the public sector – they could lift wages and remove the pay gap but instead, we‘ve seen one-off payments.”
