Motion Accorded Priority

Mr ANOULACK CHANTHIVONG (Macquarie Fields) (15:57): This motion accorded priority is not about wages; it is about hypocrisy and double standards. Those opposite want to talk about wages in this Chamber. They should be talking outside the Chamber about the TAFE workers, the teachers and support staff, who were sacked under this Government. Let us talk about the wages of these 5,600 TAFE teachers and support staff who were employed to train our young people in the skills they need to get jobs. If those young people cannot get the skills training they cannot earn a proper wage. Those opposite talk about wages in this place, while they should be talking outside the Chamber about the wages of the TAFE teachers and support staff and the public servants who have been sacked. Those opposite have taken away the wages of these sacked TAFE teachers and support staff and the public servants.

At a time when the cost of living is spiralling out of control, this Government's wages policy is making life harder for the people of New South Wales. This Government has increased the tolls on every road we travel on and has sacked public servants. This Government has privatised services and sold off everything that this State owns, which has led to a drop in State government income from these public assets which was used to pay the wages of frontline staff. We know that assets can only be sold once, but this Liberal-Nationals Government thinks it can sell assets 1,000 times while at the same time funding frontline staff. In fact, our frontline staff will get nothing from this Government.

The biggest winners from this Government's wages policy are the lobbyists, the lurk merchants, the spin doctors and the thousands of consultants that this Government has paid to promote the spin that somehow this Government is doing well for the workers of New South Wales. We know that our well-to-do public servants do not get the low wage rises given to our frontline workers. Those public servants do not get wage increases of 2 to 3 per cent; instead, they get wage increases of 10, 15 or 18 per cent—pretty big increases, I would have thought. But those opposite talk about wages while forgetting about the most important workers, who deserve to earn good wages, that is, the frontline staff who support essential services in our health system, our TAFEs and our education system. In talking about wages, those opposite are displaying nothing but blank hypocrisy, double standards and a lack of a sense of reality about what is happening in the real world. [Time expired.]