The Commonwealth was asked yesterday to explain how its pay rise offer of $11 a week contributed to the needs of the Australia's 1.5 million low-paid workers when it represented an effective pay cut. Michael Lawler, deputy president of the Industrial Relations Commission, told the national minimum wage case he had checked the Reserve Bank's website and confirmed Australia's inflation rate was 2.6 per cent in the 12 months to December 2004.
A worker on the minimum wage of $542.20 a week would need a pay rise of $14.10 to protect real wage purchasing power and not suffer an effective pay cut, he said.
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