Stephen Mayne

Alison's clearly, and the gender argument is true, if all these nurses were members of the CFMEU wearing hard hats, they'd all be earning double, triple than what the nurses are getting.

I do remember John Howard standing up in Question Time saying that he believed that nurses in Australia were underpaid and that New South Wales Health was the largest sponsor of working visas in the country.

So it's the biggest health system and the health system needs international workers with skills and the New South Wales government has long been bringing in thousands of skilled health workers.

But yeah, I guess it all comes down to the proportionality of it.

16% over three years was the decision, Alison, and Alison's obviously thinking it should have been more.

But I guess there is the wage spiral argument, isn't it?

If you keep on giving...

big pay rises to tens of thousands of people that are above inflation, that's just going to feed inflation and lead to higher prices and on the spiral goes.

Isn't that the argument?

Now Mark says, I'm in my mid-40s and my parents are in their 70s.

As we all know, house prices used to be many less multiples of someone's yearly wage.

So you would expect that everyone from my generation and a bit older would have grown up with parents flush with disposable income.

With housing a mere afterthought, cash would have been flying around.

We would have all been living in luxury.

However, this is not the case with anyone I know.

Just normal lives and nothing flash.

I think people are disregarding the fact that the cost to furnish a house, buy a car, get a lawnmower, buy a TV has all come down dramatically from our parents' generation.

They probably had to pay double the house price to fill it.

And then using the RBA inflation calculator...

Mark has calculated that a TV in 1975 cost $700 and that in today's terms would be $6,250.