The high cost of living in Australia makes high wages necessary to make it worth working at all. Most people work to earn the money to live and IMO about $25 an hour is the minimum required to have any sort of decent lifestyle in this country. I know many people work for less than that but don't expect them to be happy about it or feeling oh so grateful or any incentive to be productive.
I don't think it's possible to reduce wages but we could stop them increasing by lowering the cost of living. Governments have a role to play there because it is their requirements and charges that add so much to our cost of living pressures. We have too many public servants enforcing too many regulations all of which involve permits, fees and charges to do things that once were easy and free.
