"A high underutilisation rate of 38 percent in 2019 for 15 to 24-year olds reflect the negative effects caused by higher minimum wages."

Bullcrap from foreign tossers.

The reason why there's such a high underutilisation rate for 15 - 24 year olds, is because manufacturing jobs died, and the only jobs young people can get are in fast food outlets, cafe's and childcare.

When I was a kid, you'd just walk around the industrial area asking for a job, and soon enough someone would say yes.
This is now a thing of the past.

"The best way to help workers is to increase productivity. This means cutting the corporate tax rate to incentivise business investment, reforming other parts of our archaic industrial relations system, and slashing red tape to relieve the regulatory burden and encourage innovation, particularly for small businesses and startups."

The top-down approach is flawed.
If you combine this approach equally with a bottom-up approach,
then you'll find the right path somewhere in the middle ground.

I've shared my bottom up approach numerous times.
I'm not going over it again unless someone asks.

THE ENERGY BILL IS HIGHER THAN THE WAGES BILL?
Alan B,
That's because of the high wages in the Energy industry !

The very moment some wage goes up other costs go up also. We could still have all the manufacturing had it not been for the greed of the Unions who btw are always in bed with overpaid Bureaucrats who give the thumbs-up to wage claims.
Lower wages & there'll be lower costs & more jobs !
Stop paying insane salaries to people who couldn't possibly earn them by merit !

Another economic rationalist banging on with a thinly disguised worshipping of the market to fix all ills.

His first link to any evidence was this statement “One of the more recent studies undercutting support for increasing the minimum wage was a 2015 analysis from the Productivity Commission.” containing a url to this paper:

http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/workplace-relations/technical-supplements/minimum-wage-employment-supplement.pdf

But the authors of that paper where quite clear in saying:

“The bottom line of this study is that the effects of minimum wage changes are ambiguous over the relevant period”

How on earth is this undercutting anything?

I am disinclined to go through the rest of the evidence unless someone says there is more substantive stuff included.

The claim “Australia has one of the highest minimum wages in the world.” is trite. We have one of the highest cost of living in the world including the highest property prices.

There is chronic over egging of the argument through out but it is pretty superficial none-the-less. There is not a single mention of inflation which this increase not cover. Further there is no mention of the tax cuts (business welfare in some respects) which have allowed the FWC to refrain from granting the full amount inflation dictated.

This is puerile whinging about a modest increase in the wages of the lowest sector of our economy.

As an average, the cost of labor remains at 16% while company tax is still above 35%.

The highest tax as actual money any corporation pays to the ATO is still not much more than 13% and anyone who is earning a real quid can so arrange their financial affairs so as to not pay more than 15%.

Moreover, some corporations earning billions may not pay in actual dollars transferred to consolidated revenue, more than 4%? While a reported 40% pay none at all to anyone!?

ttbn, how did I insult you? That's just more of your hurling insults where you have no rational argument or factual debate? The info flys over your head without parting your hair?

Then it's always you that seek shelter in hurling abuse! Get over yourself!

There has been little enough upward movement in wages in recent years to keep growing the domestic economy! WHICH COULD STAGNATE AND GRIND TO A DISASTROUS HALT WHEN THE DEBT NEEDS TO BE REPAID!

ttbn was right when in another discussion he had identified low costing energy as promoting industrial and economic growth in this country! And could again! The lowest cost energy is free energy! And we could create almost free energy if we became a repository for the world's nuclear waste, and be paid annual millions for providing the service!

Then with a number of newly created, government-funded co-ops build myriad co-op-owned and operated MSR's and use that waste in those very safe and rad-free reactors, where it's hundreds of years worth of free fuel!

Then transmit the energy created directly into neighboring industrial estates across this wide brown land via superconductor graphene to manufacture all manner of very low-cost goods! Pump water vast distances! And become the energy component of most transport and distribution!

This very paradigm eliminates unions given it makes them entirely redundant and ensures that the parasitic, profit-demanding, paper-shuffling middlemen are also eliminated, thereby, more than halving the cost of living and doing business! And a win/win all around! And if any of those (parasite) caps fit you ttbn? Wear them!
Alan B.