Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I may be new here but much of the content of the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 is not; it well predates me. Fundamentally, it recycles the same old tired cuts that the previous parliament rejected. And for those who were here in the previous parliament, you would feel like the proverbial goldfish going around in the bowl—'We've been here before, we've been here before, we've been here before; we say no, we say no'—but still they come back. So here we go again, debating the same old cuts that hit the poor.

These zombie budget measures—as they are called—these fantasy cuts that just will not die—actually, to keep calm in question time during one of the more ridiculous moments with the Deputy Prime Minister, I googled 'zombies'. In my view, these zombie budget measures are worse than zombies, because in fact there are ways to kill zombies. You have to lop off the cranium, destroy their brains. Google does warn you not to underestimate how difficult that is to do, to kill a zombie, but I have to say I think it is easier to do that than making these cruel, unfair cuts go away. Indeed, I am at a loss to understand where the government's brain would be to kill them, given how brain dead their actual policy agenda seems to be.

We have a few additional cuts to families, to pensioners, to young people looking for work, and of course the old paid parental leave 'double dipping' chestnut set up against child care. It is truly heartwarming stuff. So it should be no surprise that Labor does not and will not support this bill. It is further evidence of the government's complete inability to govern, which means presenting ideas in a coherent way, having a conversation and listening to criticism. We heard the member for Indi make reasonable points. You would think that those in government who claim to represent rural and regional Australia may even listen to them and do something about them, but no. The government could have put forward a childcare package that encourages workforce participation, maximises human capital through early childhood development—given the evidence is clear—and provides parents with the support and certainty they need. But they chose not to.

I will say at the outset that some parts of this package are worthy of support; they are not all bad. Things like combining the two parenting payments into one—that is good stuff. But the government just cannot help themselves, and there are two fundamental problems. Firstly, the current package spends $1.6 billion on changes that will leave one-in-three families worse off—and that is an independent analysis by the ANU—and it especially hurts some of the most disadvantaged children. It halves access to early education for many children in low-income families and it fails to guarantee the direct subsidies to services accessed by thousands of children in mostly rural and regional communities—for the most part, Indigenous children. I was moved by the description by the member for Indi of the impact on her electorate, a part of the state that I know well. Her point that farmers and rural communities are not some kind of add-on extra to Australian society is well made. It should not have to be made, but it was well made. And this model does not work for small centres outside towns. If these services cannot continue without ongoing support, and we know that, you would think the government might provide some support. No, but just last sitting week this place was filled with talk of closing the gap on development outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, yet the original target on access to early childhood education for Indigenous children, for four year olds, expired unmet years ago and this legislation will further hurt access for Aboriginal children. It is rank hypocrisy.

The second problem of course is playing parliamentary games by holding investment in child care to ransom by bundling it together in one big bill with other cuts. It is a tactic and it is a scam. We are being asked to pit family against family. When you do the math on this bill, in total the government wants to take $3.30 off pensioners, new mums, families, young Australians, for every dollar they then put back into child care. And among the many cuts we are being asked to okay today are: reducing the pension after six weeks overseas if you are a migrant who has only contributed to the Australian economy for, say, 34 years rather than 35; abolishing the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment; abolishing the energy supplement for new welfare recipients; and increasing the age of eligibility for Newstart from 22 to 25 years, further demeaning young people trying to find work. You can vote in three federal elections but apparently the government still considers you some kind of weird 'youth' unworthy of support that is barely adequate to sustain independent life. These measures have appeared again and again in different bits of legislation. They are still in other bills on the Notice Paper resurrected again and again, but you cannot polish a turd and the government continues to try—it is a bit like the Prime Minister's leadership. There is no shame in the government's efforts to hit pensioners, families and young people where it hurts.

I will point out a couple of things about budget repair and the economic impact. In the scheme of the stuff-up that the government is making and how badly they are stuffing the deficit, these are relatively modest contributions to fiscal and budget repair. But in terms of economic impact, these areas have to be the worst places you would look for cuts. Because if you are taking money from those at the very bottom, who spend every dollar that you give them as the evidence shows, you are going to have most impact on the real economy. These are the people who have least to begin with so, once again, this proposal will target the poor, the vulnerable and the striving to make inroads to budget repair.

Labor continues to fight measures that shield the wealthy from the burden of budget reform, fuel inequality and further wealth disparity in this country. We showed the ability in my first week or two in this chamber last year to compromise and to push through a lot of savings in the omnibus savings bill. There was difficult compromise, and we need to do more of it—there is no shame in it—but not here. There are lines that should not be crossed. Time and time again though, the government keeps trying to pick on the poor and the vulnerable, and we will have no part of it. We did of course at the election outline a range of other budget measures to deal with the fiscal situation, many for which we were clobbered on the head relentlessly about—superannuation, VET funding rorts—and then the government kind of snuck up to the line and put them through, albeit in some kind of bastardised fashion.

We also proposed revenue measures. That is right, the 'r' word—revenue. The member for Forde and I have got a bit of a buzzword bingo game going—having a little giggle—over keyword phrases. 'Jobs and growth' has not had much of an outing this year. We all hear 'CFMEU' and 'stop the boats'. But another one that is really doing the rounds at the moment is 'live within our means'—we have to 'live within our means'. The member for Forde told us about 'living within our means'. It is a cute phrase and it is hard to argue with. But for those opposite, it is actually just code for cuts that hurt everyday Australians. How is it going? Net debt is $100 billion up; the deficit has tripled. They never seem, when they say it, to mean making sure that we have the means to live.

Ordinary people pay tax, and the Liberals seem to think that is okay. But, somehow, when we talk about tax avoidance for the very wealthy or multinationals who pay nothing or large companies, who find paying tax in this country optional, somehow that is class war. 'Living within our means', for me, means behaving like a grown up and putting the budget onto a sustainable path. It means as a community we need to and have the right to decide what kind of society we want to live in. We have to look at spending and we have to look at revenue. You can imagine a world where society decided what was important, what was needed, what kind of community we wanted to be and then constructed a budget around that—just imagine. But that kind of imagination is sadly lacking by the small minded bean counters opposite.

It is not just me who says this though. The Salvation Army, in its submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee into one of the previous guises of this bill—the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Budget Repair) Bill 2016—which still hangs around as one of those zombies on the NoticePaper with some of the same garbage in it, said:

The Salvation Army strongly recommends the government ensures any reforms to balance the budget focus on both revenue and expenditure and not unfairly focus funding cuts on vulnerable groups who can least afford to be further marginalised.

It is not rocket surgery—one of my favourite Warwick Capper quotes; although apparently the original has to be attributed to Chris Rock in a comedy show. So for both core reasons—the impact of the childcare package on vulnerable and disadvantaged children, and the tactic of bundling massive cuts in the same bill—Labor must oppose this legislation. I do wish the government would stop playing parliamentary games, decouple these harsh cuts, and sit down and discuss the package to improve it. I urge people in the Senate when they look at this to consider the member for Indi's very reasoned comments around the impact on rural and regional Australia.

In the time remaining, it is impossible to deal with all of the cuts. The bill itself is 387 pages long, the explanatory memorandum 271 pages. But I do want to turn my attention to two particular measures that the government has been trying on for years now. The changes to proportional payment to pensions outside Australia is a blatantly discriminatory measure. It unfairly targets a growing number of overseas born pensioners. My electorate in this place is one of only two in the parliament where a majority of people were born in another country. After six weeks outside the country, this bill would see the rate reduced, if you have lived here for less than 35 years, proportional to your Australian working-life residence.

About 190,000 pensioners are born overseas, and the government has to understand that ties to family and country of birth are not severed through grant of Australian citizenship. Those ties can strengthen us; they are not a fiscal burden to be punished. In terms of holidays, the habit of many pensioners is they save up for a big trip rather than taking lots of shorter ones, for reasons of family and care. And it makes sense, if you are counting your pennies, to use the flight and maximise your time away—you do not have to get back for work. Caring for family members overseas is also an important part of life. Funnily enough, people are often sick for longer than six weeks. It puts pensioners in a diabolical position when they have to make a choice between staying with a sick and dying relative and rushing back to Australia just so Centrelink will not cut off their pension when they may have worked here and paid tax for 32 years. COTA Australia, in their submission to the Senate inquiry into the 2015 version of the budget repair bill, said:

… this measure is excessively punitive and inequitable in its impact on Australians not born in this country and who maintain cultural and familial ties to their place of birth. As around 40 per cent of Age Pensioners were not born in Australia the impact of the measure is likely to be significant and unfairly borne by one segment of our community.

The other measure I want to draw attention to is the pensioner education supplement—or the removal thereof. Is it fourth or fifth time lucky for this one? The government has failed to listen so many times before. In the Minister for Social Services' second reading speech on last year's crack at this, he stated, of the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment:

… they were … introduced to assist long-term income support recipients who had been out of the workforce for a long period of time by helping them improve or rebuild skills to be more competitive in the labour market.

That is a clear opportunity for cuts, isn't it! The minister went on to justify their abolition, in part, by reference to the targeted support and assistance now available to these people—things like HECS loans, VET FEE-HELP and so on, which cover tuition, not additional expenses as you study, which means so much to low-income earners.

The Poverty in Australia 2016 report by ACOSS said that, for the 13.3 per cent of Australians who are living in poverty:

Being unemployed is the strongest overall predictor of poverty …

Indeed, more than 63 per cent of unemployed households were experiencing poverty. The second most vulnerable group after Newstart recipients are those in receipt of the parenting payment, over 50 per cent of whom exist below the poverty line. Again in the minister's second reading speech on the 2016 bill, he noted:

The most common recipient of the pensioner education supplement is likely to be on a parenting payment (single) …

And the people who receive the parenting payment single—let us call them, I don't know, women; 95 per cent of people who receive that payment are women—have the audacity to seek assistance to undertake study as a pathway to re-entering the workforce!

I was raised by a single mother. I have seen this up close. My mum was forced to leave school at year 11 because her family could not afford the uniform to go to a school where she could finish year 12. Then she was out of the workforce for many years, raising us. A few years after my dad died, she decided she had to fight her way back into the workforce. She thought, 'I know; I'll go and do a year 12 subject.' She actually topped the state adult VCE in psychology, and that gave her the encouragement to then go and do a nursing refresher course and eke out work. It is not easy. In effect, removing this payment means that single mums who go back to education will be forced to find those extra few dollars by taking things from their kids.

The Welfare Rights Centre, in its submission to the Senate inquiry into the budget repair bill 2015, stated:

The removal of this payment is both counter-productive and short-sighted, and calls into question the sincerity of the Government's stated aims of encouraging job seekers of working age to be 'job ready'.

It also said:

… even the ideologically-driven, fiscally hard-headed National Commission of Audit did not go as far as recommending that the PES be removed, proposing instead that the Supplement only be provided to recipients during study terms or semesters.

Those are just two of the cuts. I could go on, if time permitted—and I am sure my colleagues will. I urge the government to reconsider these cruel cuts, which are not necessary, in this legislation. (Time expired)

See this speech in context