ACTU Budget 2021 Briefing
Key lines
• Wage growth is forecast at negative or flat, locking in declining living standards for years.
• Workers have had no real pay rise for the whole time this Government has been in power.
• The Morrison Government’s 2021 budget decisions will not improve the central issues
facing working Australians – insecure work and low wage growth.
• The billions provided to business in this budget are given without strings attached and risk
again ending up in the pockets of shareholders and CEOs. Any Government financial
support to private businesses should be conditional on reliable, well paid jobs.
• The women’s budget measures are small, delayed and piecemeal, and will do very little to
improve the working lives of Australian women.
• Low wage growth, gender inequity and insecure, unreliable work do not happen by
accident, they are the result of deliberate policy decisions taken by this Government, which
have been reinforced in this budget.
• This budget contains $17.9 billion in tax write-offs for big business, and only $1.1 billion for
women’s safety over the next four years.
• There is nothing in the budget to improve the wages and conditions of the hundreds of
thousands of underpaid and overworked early childhood educators and aged care workers
– nearly all of who are women.
• The budget highlights the growing cost of natural disasters that climate change is making
worse. While this budget funds disaster relief and a few of the Morrison Government’s
preferred energy technologies we still have no credible national plan to reduce emissions
and support workers.
* Please download Article Attachment to access the complete briefing.
