Minimum wage earners: ‘It’s absolutely outrageous that politicians are squabbling over a $1 pay rise’
Once a week, Melanie Kent places leftover money from her grocery shopping into an envelope to go towards a family trip at the end of the year. It used to be topped up by a healthy $30 a week, giving the kids something to look forward to.
Nowadays, she says she is lucky if she can spare $5.
“It’s not going to make a huge difference to my life, but I think it’s absolutely outrageous that politicians are squabbling over a $1 pay rise,” Kent says.
The increasing cost of living combined with stagnating wages has become a central talking point of the federal election campaign, with Scott Morrison dubbing Anthony Albanese a “loose unit” for backing a 5.1% minimum wage rise to keep pace with rising inflation. The increase works out to about $1 an hour.
“If an employer can’t afford a dollar an hour, maybe they were about to go broke anyway,” Kent says.
The minimum wage is set by the Fair Work Commission after receiving submissions from unions, employers, governments and other stakeholders through a review process. Changes are not strictly tied with inflation, unlike the student loan repayments and pensions.
Kent, a Victorian mother of two disabled children who works at a local pharmacist in Frankstown, gets paid the minimum wage of $20.33 an hour. Her husband, who works in wholesaling, does 14 hours of overtime a week to keep up with the cost of living.
The consumer prices index rose by a staggering 5.1% in the year leading up to the March quarter, with the Reserve Bank expecting it to hit 6-9% by the end of the year. In the last quarter, the greatest increases were in fuel, which rose by 11%, new dwellings, up by 5.7%, and tertiary education, up by 6.3%. Food and other grocery items also saw a significant rise, with vegetables up by
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