- The Guardian
- Issue #2199
Angus Taylor. Photo: Bidgee – wikimedia.org (CC BY-SA 3.0 AU)
The Australian Services Union has condemned Liberal Leader, Angus Taylor in the strongest terms for his retrograde remarks to the Sydney Institute which he repeated again on ABC’s 7.30 program, attacking Australia’s care economy.
On the ABC, Taylor singled out the country’s lowest-paid essential workers as a drain on the nation, remarks which he made earlier in the week when, at the Sydney Institute, he complained that the “care economy” workforce had “exploded.”
Responding to these remarks, ASU National Secretary Emeline Gaske argued that only an incredibly privileged, out of touch misogynist, who had not interacted with the care system could make such ignorant remarks.
“The workers Mr Taylor is describing are early childhood educators, disability support workers, family violence specialists, child protection workers and community carers. They are overwhelmingly women.
“What Taylor sees as ‘hefty’ pay, pales in comparison to his outsized pay packet.
“The only reason he, and his far-right backers, could consider the wages of these average income earners in Australia to be ‘hefty,’ is because they have no idea what these workers make or what their hard work is actually worth.
“Instead of chasing One-Nation’s far-right voter base, Mr Taylor should actually have a chat to some of the workers we deal with every day.
“When I speak with those so-called well-paid workers, what I hear is from a workforce where nearly one in three has borrowed money from family or friends just to cover the basics, and more than one in ten has skipped meals to make ends meet
“Mr Taylor has clearly fallen upwards into this role.
“This week, he stood up in front of the Sydney Institute, looked at the women who hold this country together, and decided they were the problem. Not the cost of housing. Not the price of groceries. Women earning low wages to care for people with disability and to shelter families fleeing violence,” said Gaske.
She said the timing was telling. Taylor’s speech lands just as the One Nation vote is beginning to recede in the polls despite members of the Liberals actively seeking to build a coalition with the far-right party.
“Let’s be clear about what he is proposing. When Angus Taylor says government has grown too big and it all has to be cut, this is what he means by ‘cut.’ He means the wages of a domestic violence worker. He means the pay packet of someone supporting a person with disability to live a decent life. That is the frontline of his war on “big government.”
“Angus Taylor is a man who has fallen upwards into this role. He fancies himself an economic manager. Any economic manager who looks at a sector with turnover running at five times the national average and concludes the answer is to pay people less should hand the calculator back.”
The ASU last month filed a historic work value claim in the Fair Work Commission seeking pay increases of up to 35 per cent for 300,000 community and disability workers, following a decade in which the complexity and demand of the work has grown while pay has stalled.
Taylor’s remarks spoke about the fact that, according to him, these workers are “disproportionately unionised” and have been awarded “hefty pay increases.”
“Notice what he flagged as the real offence. Not that these workers are paid too little, but that they are, in his words, ‘disproportionately unionised.’ There it is. The problem, according to the Opposition Leader, is that low-paid women had the audacity to organise and win.
“We will not let this go through to the keeper. If Angus Taylor wants to campaign on cutting the wages of the women who care for the most vulnerable in this country, he can explain that to every one of them, and to every family who relies on them. If he wants to attack union members, let him, it’s those same union members who will be waiting to show him just how wrong he is.”
