Senator WALSH (Victoria) (19:24): I rise tonight to speak about the wages crisis in Australia today—a crisis of low and persistently stagnant wages. This crisis is having a devastating impact on people across the country. The Prime Minister loves to use the phrase, 'If you have a go, you get a go,' but millions of Australians around the country are struggling, and they're struggling despite working hard and despite having a go. Wage growth has absolutely tanked since this government came into power in 2013. For five years in a row, wage growth has been at record lows. These abysmal numbers have real-life consequences for real-life people. Take Kylie, a qualified early-childhood educator. She works full time, she's studying for her diploma and she's looking after her three beautiful children as a single mother. But Kylie is worried about her family's future. Her pay increases have been so small over the past few years that she can't see how she'll ever be able to save any of her income, let alone put enough down for a deposit on a house. And take Olissa, a cleaner. Her wages have also been static for years. She struggles to look after her husband, who's on a disability pension and unable to work. She struggles to support her kids and pay the bills. Olissa's daughter was accepted into Victoria University to study, but after just one year she had to quit her studies in order to help support the family. These are not isolated stories. There are millions of Australians and their families in similar situations, struggling to pay the bills and struggling to support their families. The fact is Kylie, Olissa and many other Australians need to see their wages moving again. Australia's flat wages are now part of a larger crisis around the cost of living. The bare bones essentials that families need—electricity, child care, housing, health care, education and transport—keep going up and up and up. Australian families have been put in a pressure cooker by this government. Everything is going up, except their wages. Household debt is at record highs, and the pressure on families just keeps growing. It's time for the government to take action and get wages moving. The wages crisis is impacting hardworking Australians and also impacting our whole economy, because without wage increases Australians have less money to spend in their local communities, and their daily consumption is a huge factor in determining economic growth, investment and job creation. The government know this, but they are doing nothing to relieve the pressure on household budgets or boost wages. Let me tell you how, instead, they've spent the first few months of this new parliament: attacking workers' rights to organise, telling pensioners that their pension is 'generous', cooking up a plan to roll out the awful robodebt scheme to even more vulnerable Australians, scapegoating people on social security payments, plotting whose penalty rates they're going to allow to be cut next, making up excuses about why the economy is faring so badly and gloating about the election. Well, the election is over. It's time to stop talking and start working for the people that we represent. It's time to stop trying to make Australia look over there at anything but the government's inaction on wages and the economy. So here's the message for this government: millions of Australians need you to come up with a plan now, because they're struggling. Kylie and Olissa want to know how you're going to work for them and address the challenges they're facing, because they've heard nothing. They need to see a plan to get the economy moving again, they need to see a plan to address the spiralling cost of living, they need to see a plan to get wages going up and, most of all, they need this government to start doing its job.