The Fair Work Commission (FWC) is responsible for reviewing and setting minimum wages for employees in the national workplace relations system.Each financial year the FWC's Expert Panel conducts an annual wage review and issues a decision and national minimum wage order for employees not covered by an award or agreement.

This is the Council of Single Mothers and their Children's submission to the 2018–19 minimum wage review. The Council of Single Mothers and their Children is a non-profit organisation founded by single mothers to improve both their lives and those of their children.

Recommendations:

1. In order to address the entirely unacceptable levels of poverty facing low income workers, we ask that the Fair Work Commission accept that the government tax, transfers and assistance packages are manifestly not working and, on that basis and on the evidence of rising child poverty in Australia, substantially increase the national minimum wage rates for low paid workers.
2. We recommend that the rate of minimum wage be untied from the wage relativity structure so that how much is available to the lowest paid is no longer dependant on what can be afforded for the middle and upper levels of payments.
3. We note that in the past the Fair Work Commission has acknowledged the social problem of rising poverty and request that on the basis of international evidence that increasing inequality hurts us all, the FWC now take the next steps and join the battle to make Australia a more equal society.