<\/p>\n
The government also argued that economic conditions had "turned a corner," making it safe to increase wages, with inflation moving into the target range set by the Reserve Bank of Australia.<\/p>\n
They said that along with low unemployment figures released yesterday, interest rates were falling.<\/p>\n
"Low-paid workers and their families are particularly affected by cost-of-living pressures, because they typically have limited liquid asset buffers to draw on to cover rising costs and they are less able to deal with unexpected expenses," the government said.<\/p>\n
The government also said this increase would help narrow the gender pay gap, which currently sits at 11.9 per cent on weekly wages.<\/p>\n
But business groups say it's not just workers who are doing it tough.\u00a0<\/p>\n
"It's very easy for a politician in Canberra to decree that there should be higher salaries and higher wages," Council of Small Business Organisations spokesperson Luke Acherstraat said.<\/p>\n
"But who foots the bill? It's small businesses, the mums and dads, many of whom are struggling.<\/p>\n
"Small businesses will need to pass these costs on."<\/p>\n
READ MORE:<\/strong> Police officer allegedly stabbed with screwdriver<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n \ufeffEconomists say any wage increases need to come with better productivity, or it could push prices up.<\/p>\n "Any wage growth that is significantly in excess of growth of labour productivity will lead to higher inflation and probably higher unemployment as a result, neither of which are things that we want to see," Economist Saul Eslake said.<\/p>\n Australia's productivity has been sluggish in recent years, worry economists about the nation's future prospects.<\/p>\n DOWNLOAD THE 9NEWS APP<\/strong><\/a>: Stay across all the latest in breaking news, sport, politics and the weather via our news app and get notifications sent straight to your smartphone. Available on the<\/strong> Apple App Store<\/strong><\/a> and<\/strong> Google Play<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The federal government is pushing the Fair Work Commission to deliver pay rises for almost three million workers to catch up with inflation price rises. The Australian Government made a submission today to the annual wage review, recommending that "the Commission award an economically sustainable real wage increase to Australia's award workers". "This is all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fresnoforeclosure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fresnoforeclosure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fresnoforeclosure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fresnoforeclosure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fresnoforeclosure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2211"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.fresnoforeclosure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2216,"href":"http:\/\/www.fresnoforeclosure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211\/revisions\/2216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fresnoforeclosure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fresnoforeclosure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fresnoforeclosure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fresnoforeclosure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n