Last month’s Guardian’s Essential Poll said the Albanese government was doing a poor job “increasing wages and workers’ rights”.

This decline in purchasing power, the flipside of the cost-of-living crisis, is a key reason why Labor is trailing the Coalition in the polls ahead of the upcoming federal election.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was busy applying lipstick to a pig on Wednesday, claiming that Labor was getting wages moving, delivering four quarters of real wage growth.

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