Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with unusual pleasure that I rise to contribute to the debate today on the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2017. I do this in recognition of and noting that the Deputy Prime Minister has brought this bill forward. He knows like we do on this side that, if you have a problem at Centrelink, the Minister for Human Services is not the one to fix it, so he's clearly stepped in!

I also want to congratulate the member for Indi for her tireless advocacy on this issue. I have heard her, particularly over the Christmas period, speak several times on the ABC in relation to farmers getting quicker access to the farm household support that is available through Centrelink. She has done it in the context of the situation for dairy farmers in her electorate, and her advocacy has been very important, I know, to bringing this bill in front of the House this afternoon.

For the past two months, I as the shadow minister for human services have raised issues to do with Centrelink, and I will come to those in a moment. I do want to focus on this bill to begin with. These changes are a start and they do go some way towards fixing the problem of access to the allowance for farm businesses. Waiving the ordinary waiting period and the liquid assets waiting period will take 13 weeks off the standard waiting time for farmers in need of assistance. That is incredibly important because the situation as it stands right now and prior to this bill being enacted is that farmers were applying, particularly as a family, for farm household support, but they were having to wait for a period where it became just impossible for those farmers, and dealing with Centrelink in terms of trying to access this support was absolutely impossible. So it is welcome, and Labor does welcome it. As previous speakers have indicated, Labor will be supporting this bill. Waiving the ordinary waiting period, as I said, is important, and changing the asset test is also very important.

The asset test will be changed by the definition of 'assets', to ensure that owning water rights, for example, does not preclude those struggling from receiving assistance. I am sure that this House and those in the gallery understand that it is not very helpful having water rights included in the assets test if there are other issues to do with the carrying out of that farming operation that are making it impossible to make ends meet. Let's be clear what the farm household allowance is. It is not some sort of overlaying of money that farmers can access because they feel like it. Farmers access this when things are absolutely desperate. One of the great attributes of our farming community is that they are proud. They have, as the previous speaker just said, for many generations often held that farm holding and do not want to ask for help. So for farmers to put up their hands, to go to Centrelink, to say 'we need this support' is a very big thing indeed. Then having the indignity of having to wait for 13 weeks or more and having the indignity of being treated as a 'leaner' by the instrumentalities involved is not the way farmers should be treated, and that is how they have been treated up until the enactment of this bill. So I hope the enactment of this bill does take away those attitudes and does take away the stress and the stupidity of the waiting time. When people go to Centrelink for help they go when they are desperate. They go when there is no other option. They do not need the indignity of having to wait for hours and hours for assistance, and then days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months for that assistance to come through. That was the actual situation here.

Since the farm household support payment was established, more than 7,000 claims have been approved. Feedback from the community has been clear. Farmers and their families are struggling to access the system. When they do so through Centrelink, they can find themselves on the phone for hours, fighting against a sometimes confusing bureaucracy to try and access the help. When they do complete the application process, many have found that they are not eligible on the basis of assets they own, which they could not possibly sell without endangering the longer term viability of their farming operation. I think that point is extraordinarily important. You cannot sell off assets that have been hard fought for and hard won, that make up a farming operation. You cannot sell those assets just to meet some sort of criteria that makes no sense in the first place.

But let me say at the outset, as the shadow minister for agriculture has already told you, Labor will not oppose these changes. We will make the lives of those struggling on the land slightly easier if they require assistance, as will the passing of this piece of legislation. But I do not want the House to misunderstand Labor's position here. When it comes to Centrelink, the Turnbull government is failing our community, and it is failing hardworking farmers. Tinkering around the edges of this system will not fix the underlying issues with this program. Those issues are related to the chronic under-resourcing and undervaluing of Centrelink as an institution and in particular Centrelink staff, as the previous member from this side of the House just outlined.

I speak to Centrelink staff. They all tell you they want to help the people who contact them. They want to do their jobs. But in many instances it is made almost impossible. They are totally overstretched and unsupported by the government. The government makes poor policy decisions, and it is Centrelink employees who have to bear the brunt. I have already articulated the enormous waiting times and the confusing nonsensical bureaucracy that is in place. There have been 5,000 job cuts over the past five years from Centrelink; 35 million unanswered phone calls; robo-debt; a pay freeze; month-long waits for age pension applications—in fact, I had a person contact me just the other day who had applied months and months ago for an age pension application and has heard nothing; not to mention a minister who is intent on attacking staff and misrepresenting Centrelink clients at every turn.

The real problems at Centrelink will not be solved by these amendments. They will only be solved when the government finally starts valuing this department. The Turnbull government has bought into its own rhetoric. It does not believe in our welfare safety net. To those opposite it is nothing but an unnecessary nuisance. I do want to speak about that. The welfare safety net in Australia is something we should be proud of. Many countries, including many First World nations like America, do not have a welfare safety net. It is something that is a right. It is not something that is a gift to the Australian people or Australian individuals. The welfare safety net is a right and it is a well-earned right for the people of Australia. They have spent so long demonising those who cannot find a job, those who need support while caring for a loved one or those receiving a disability support allowance, they are starting to believe it is okay to treat people poorly.

In the eyes of those opposite we are all 'lifters' or 'leaners' and anyone who receives a Centrelink payment is a 'leaner'. Despite the best efforts of the Deputy Prime Minister, those receiving the farm household allowance are viewed through exactly the same prism by the Turnbull government.

I note at this point the comments of Senator McKenzie from the other place on this matter. She says farmers have told her:

… about unsatisfactory service from Department of Human Services and Centrelink with staff unable to provide accurate or consistent information about farm household assistance resulting in excessive waiting times for benefits …

This bill proposes nothing that would solve those issues. They are the result of a neglected agency. While I am happy that these amendments make some positive changes, they will not do anything to help the thousands of people who need the Department of Human Services every year. In fact, while this bill does fix some problems with the program, it does not do anything to provide extra support or adequate resourcing within the Department of Human Services. It does nothing to solve the problems identified by those opposite. For three years the government has denied any problems at all with this program. Now it proposes minor amendments which do not even tackle the bulk of the issues raised. The government knows the issue here: they need to provide more resources to Centrelink.

As I said earlier, farmers hate to ask for help. It is almost cultural. When they need it, when they are driven to a point where they have to ask for it, they are desperate. It is not fair to subject them to incredibly callous treatment. They have hours on the phone or at a service centre, not to mention endless paperwork and an online system which is extremely difficult to use. These are the experiences of many who interact with the Centrelink system, including farmers and those in our rural communities. It is damaging not just because it means people have to spend hours unproductively waiting on hold. It is also damaging because it subjects those already under incredible stress to even more anxiety.

The Deputy Prime Minister knows well that farmers experiencing hardship have terrible mental health outcomes, and we have heard of the level of suicide that exists in many cases with farmers who have reached the end of their tether. It is a tragedy. As the previous speaker from the government, the member from Calare, said, farmers often go back several generations. They provide part of the identity for Australia. We hear and we have learned in our schools that Australia was built on the back of the sheep.

My own personal story is that whilst I might now be the member for Barton I grew up in a very small country town called Whitton. It had about 200 people. It was a tiny little place in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area in the Riverina part of southern New South Wales. The farmers around there were sharefarmers or irrigators, and many of the people who lived in the town were the labour that worked on those farms. My great-uncle, who raised me, was a station hand for many years on Kooba station, which was one of the very big landholdings back in the day where I grew up. I picked fruit. I sorted tomatoes at night. I played in the rice stubble and the flood irrigation areas. I worked closely with the Isolated Children's Parents' Association as an educator. I understand rural life because the first 16 years of my life were spent in very rural communities in those places.

The problem with the system is not just the waiting times or eligibility criteria. More than that, it is about the difficulty of getting access to the system in the first place. Last year we heard reports of some farmers waiting six months to receive assistance. Nothing in the legislation before the House will remedy that. This is supposed to be a crisis payment. It is supposed to help farmers keep food on their tables, and it is failing to do so. If the Deputy Prime Minister really cares about this issue, once we have finished this debate he will walk over to the Minister for Human Services, who has just joined us in the chamber, and tell him to fix his broken system.

Whether we are talking about the farm household allowance or any of the other payments available through Centrelink, people deserve to be treated with empathy and respect. They deserve to maintain their dignity. I, along with my colleagues, support this legislation, but I call on this House and those opposite to take real action to ensure we support appropriately those who need it. In the case of this legislation, it is farmers who are doing it hard, and in some sectors of the rural community, particularly the dairy industry, they are doing it very, very hard.

Farmers and their livelihoods and their presence are important to the way in which we see ourselves as Australians. They deserve our help. They deserve our support. I am pleased about this legislation, but I want this system to be fixed. I want Centrelink and the way in which it is being managed, the way in which it is being resourced and the way in which it is carrying out its duties to respect the right of Australian people to have a social welfare safety net.

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