South Australian Liberal Senator Mary Jo Fisher writes:
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Mary Jo Fisher
Treasury confirmed in Senate Estimates on Wednesday that real wages will be 10 per cent lower under Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) modelling by 2050.
CPRS modelling means workers taking a pay cut to stay in a job, with Treasury confirming that CPRS modelling shows real wages must fall by 10.3 per cent under the Garnaut 25 per cent model, or else unemployment will rise.
When I suggested in Estimates that Treasury produce all the documents involved in the modelling process, department official Megan Quinn replied,
“If we were to produce every result from all of the 8 economic models and analysis used, it would run to boxes that would potentially fill this room.”
But the whole of Parliament won’t fit the job applications of workers forced to find lower paying jobs.
Evidence given at Wednesday night’s Senate Estimates confirmed earlier evidence from respected economist Dr Brian Fisher that
“real wages have to be lower than they otherwise would have been to maintain everybody in a job”.
Treasury modelling supposedly showing that the CPRS will not cost jobs overall, also assumes that real wages will fall to prop up the job market. It assumes that to support the CPRS, workers across the nation will be happy to take a pay cut, so that they and other workers can have jobs.
Australian workers don’t realise that one worker’s job will be another worker’s pay-cut. The Prime Minister must tell Australian workers that they will trade wages for jobs, if he trades in pollution.
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