Seventeenth Colin Clark Lecture: August 2007: Setting Australia's Minimum Wages in 2007 and Beyond: Building a New Australian Economic Institution

Australian Fair Pay Commission Chair, Professor Ian Harper, details the Commission's key achievements since its establishment in March 2006 and its program for 2007 and beyond. Professor Harper outlines the Commission's approach to minimum wage setting and the move from a judicial, adversarial approach to a consultative, research-based system. He explains that the Commission is essentially a new Australian economic institution focused on jobs and the economic prosperity of the people of Australia. He articulates his vision for the Commission and his desire that it be seen (like the Reserve Bank) as a respected, independent and expert economic organisation. Desimple-tails are also revealed about how the Commission will undertake the challenging tasks of creating and publishing new pay scales and conduct its review into rationalising more than 105,000 pay classifications within about 4,000 pay scales.