Shorten pledges offensive on wages

LABOR Leader Bill Shorten has promised to launch a “fullthroated” offensive in pursuit of wage rises if he wins the upcoming election.

Mr Shorten took his federal election campaign to the north Queensland city of Cairns yesterday, where Liberal MP Warren Enstch holds the local seat of Leichhardt by 3.9 per cent.

Standing deep in a rainforest alongside the Great Barrier Reef, he promised $190 million worth of regional tourism funding.

Mr Shorten also vowed to tear up a “dodgy” $444 million grant to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

After focusing heavily on health in the first week of his campaign, Mr Shorten is switching gears to wages as he targets a swag of marginal seats in the sunshine state.

The Opposition Leader pledged to take immediate action on “modest and meaningful” pay raises if Labor claims victory on May 18.

“We’re going to use the full force of commonwealth advocacy to support a wage improvement, a wage increase, for 2.2 million Australians,” he told reporters.

“A government I lead will make a full-throated, full-bodied submission to the independent umpire.”

Labor has calculated that hundreds of thousands of hospitality, retail and pharmacy workers stand to lose up to $27,000 each through penalty rate cuts over the next three years.

Mr Shorten has promised to restore the penalty rate cuts within 100 days of taking office, saying low-paid workers are being sucked into a “laboratory of extreme right-wing thinking.”

Various Senate crossbenchers say they will only support him if Labor also legislates a ban on unions trading away penalty rates.

But Mr Shorten is not interested.

“The tail does not wag the dog here,” he said.