Sally McManus on how AI could force future cuts to HECS debts and work hours

From your point of view, do you think the balance between workers and employers is still too stacked against workers? Obviously, some of these concessions you've got from the government have redressed that balance or changed that balance somewhat, but are you still not happy with that balance?

Well, laws are important because you've got to recognise the innate power imbalance.

Employers innately have more power over workers because, of course, they hire and they fire them.

They have more power and that's just life.

That's accepted.

And so laws have got to play an important role in balancing that.

If you don't balance that, you basically have a terribly unfair system that leads to shocking inequality and no one shares in anything.

But at the same time, it's also about workers organising in their unions.

That gives them power as well.

If you ask me, which you did, where I think it's at at the moment, I think the jury is out about this.

And the reason is the key indicators, which we keep a very close eye on.

So workers' share of the GDP, real wage growth, the gender pay gap, and how many permanent jobs there are as opposed to insecure jobs.

All of those indicators had turned around quite dramatically after we got those laws passed.

And so you could actually see in the statistics the turnaround in bargaining power, which was great.

However, of course, real wage growth has now stalled and going backwards because of inflation.

That's a big question.

And we still haven't recovered what we've lost in terms of our share of the overall nation's wealth over a period of several decades where it went backwards for quite a long time.

We haven't shared in the productivity growth either over the last 26 years.

So I would say that there's catch up to be done before you can start talking about balance.

But there's got to be overall catch-up, surely, not just...

That's my

point.

Like, your average worker is still a long way behind where they were if you considered the productivity gains since the year 2000.

It's a lot of money that's gone to capital or to employers as opposed to workers.

It's not been fairly shared and, you know, it's frustrating to me that there's discussions about this and people say, oh, well, you can't have pay increases because of productivity or this or that.

From your point of view, do you think the balance between workers and employers is still too stacked against workers? Obviously, some of these concessions you've got from the government have redressed that balance or changed that balance somewhat, but are you still not happy with that balance?

Well, laws are important because you've got to recognise the innate power imbalance.

Employers innately have more power over workers because, of course, they hire and they fire them.

They have more power and that's just life.

That's accepted.

And so laws have got to play an important role in balancing that.

If you don't balance that, you basically have a terribly unfair system that leads to shocking inequality and no one shares in anything.

But at the same time, it's also about workers organising in their unions.

That gives them power as well.

If you ask me, which you did, where I think it's at at the moment, I think the jury is out about this.

And the reason is the key indicators, which we keep a very close eye on.

So workers' share of the GDP, real wage growth, the gender pay gap, and how many permanent jobs there are as opposed to insecure jobs.

All of those indicators had turned around quite dramatically after we got those laws passed.

And so you could actually see in the statistics the turnaround in bargaining power, which was great.

However, of course, real wage growth has now stalled and going backwards because of inflation.

That's a big question.

And we still haven't recovered what we've lost in terms of our share of the overall nation's wealth over a period of several decades where it went backwards for quite a long time.

We haven't shared in the productivity growth either over the last 26 years.

So I would say that there's catch up to be done before you can start talking about balance.

But there's got to be overall catch-up, surely, not just...

That's my

point.

Like, your average worker is still a long way behind where they were if you considered the productivity gains since the year 2000.

It's a lot of money that's gone to capital or to employers as opposed to workers.

It's not been fairly shared and, you know, it's frustrating to me that there's discussions about this and people say, oh, well, you can't have pay increases because of productivity or this or that.