Susan Lamb (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reforms) Bill 2017, as I was not elected to sit idly by while this government attacks people in my community. Inequality in this country is at an all-time high, and we are feeling it in Longman. Families are struggling to get by, while millionaires are coasting by on a $16,000 tax cut. Pensioners are facing rising prices for their utilities. Workers have received a cut to their take-home pay, their pay and conditions have been undermined and their work is being outsourced, while big businesses are receiving exorbitant tax concessions. Surely the government can see the rise of inequality in Australia. Surely this should result in the government taking leadership and taking steps to reduce this inequality or, at the very least, to reduce its impact. But, in my time here, what I have seen is a government that's done nothing but mismanage our nation's economy.

Cutting funding to essential services is not good economic management, and wasting millions of dollars of taxpayers' money on fruitless endeavours that do nothing but stigmatise and marginalise vulnerable communities is about as far from good economic management as you can get. This government is wasting $122 million on a harmful postal survey, a survey which was brought out of bigotry in society and marginalises same-sex people and their families. This survey does nothing to better my community or our country. The survey has no economic benefit for my community or my country. All it has achieved is the further demonisation of a subset across our community. The drug testing of welfare recipients that is outlined in schedule 12 of this bill achieves just as much. In fact, it will more than likely cause far more harm than it will good.

Here's what we know about the drug testing. We know medical professionals and the drug and alcohol treatment sector have expressed significant concerns about these measures. We know experts have warned that the trials will not assist people to overcome addiction but will instead push them into crisis, poverty, homelessness and potentially crime. And we know drug testing of welfare recipients is a shallow and conceited effort designed to demonise people who need our support the most. But here's what we don't know. We don't know what type of testing will be used. We don't know what it will cost—inevitably it's going to be expensive; reliable urine tests cost somewhere between $550 and $950 to administer. And we don't know what evidence the government has that this is even a good idea.

Right now no health or community organisation—let me be clear: not one—has yet come out publicly in support of this trial. In fact, the only evidence we have seen to date is from some overseas examples. Let's take New Zealand, for example. Their government introduced a similar program just a few years ago. In 2015 only 22 of over 8,000 people who were tested returned a positive test for drug use. That's lower than the rate of drug use across the broader New Zealand population. It cost New Zealand around $1 million to find this. That's over $45,000 per result that they achieved. If anything, this example shows that welfare recipients are less likely to use illicit substances, which begs the question: why are we starting with this vulnerable segment of our community?

Let me be clear, though: I'm not standing here saying that no welfare recipients use illicit drugs. I'm not saying that at all. I'm not standing here advocating for drugs or denying the harmful effects of drug addiction, as we see it in a lot of the communities and the families we represent. In fact, I'm doing the opposite. I'm saying we need to take measured steps forward, consult with experts, consult with medical professionals and understand the effects and the consequences of this schedule of the bill, not just in the short term but further down the line. We need to recognise that drug addiction is a serious issue that plagues our community. But, more importantly, we need to recognise that this is not just an issue for the poor or people on welfare; it's an issue that affects people from all walks of life.

If this is a policy based on love, as we've heard from the Prime Minister, then why are we ignoring so much of our society who really do need love? Prime Minister Turnbull, I have to give you a message: the people see right through this doublespeak. They know that a policy based on love would help all people overcome addiction and offer them support, care, compassion and some guidance—and not by cutting their payments or singling them out as a group in our society. A real policy based on love would be formulated through considered consultation with healthcare professionals like the Australian Medical Association, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians or even the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre. If the policy were based on love, the government would consult with the Australasian Chapter of Addiction Medicine or St Vincent's Health Australia. But they won't, because each of these organisations and many more like them have expressed really strong concerns about this proposal. The government don't want to listen to anyone who won't show unwavering support for this narrative.

Really, this government won't listen to anybody but their own members—like the member for Bowman, who represents the south side of Brisbane, in Queensland, and who so lovingly said that he isn't worried about welfare recipients turning to crime, because 'they can detox behind bars.' Can you believe that? How much love and compassion is in that statement? 'They can detox behind bars'! This just raises more questions. It makes me wonder: why are the government so intent on moving forward with this trial? It's obviously not for health reasons, otherwise they'd listen to the experts and professionals who say that the trial will do more harm than good. It's not for the crime and safety outcomes, otherwise they wouldn't be proudly saying that there will be more people committing crimes and ending up in jail. It's not about delivering savings to taxpayers. Welfare payments are $267 a week. Seriously, that's considered below the poverty line.

On welfare it can be a struggle just to get by, let alone afford drugs. On the other hand, drug testing thousands of welfare recipients would come at an enormous cost. It's a tremendous burden on the taxpayers, and if some of these recipients were pushed to crime and subsequently jailed, as the member for Bowman would more than happily see them be, they would cost the taxpayer around $300 a day. Prison is clearly not cheap at $300 a day. So it really baffles me that the government is looking to reduce welfare payments wherever they can, when they clearly aren't weighing up all of the economic outcomes.

Drug testing isn't the only way that this bill is seeking to cut welfare payments either. The government is just more vocal about the part that I have just been through, because it's easy to malign the drug users of Australia. What they aren't as vocal about, and what they're quietly slipping in through this bill, is how they want to make it more difficult for carers and parents to receive payments as well. I'll give an example: the schedule which precedes the drug-testing trials, schedule 11 of this bill, seeks to remove the intent-to-claim provisions for those seeking a welfare payment. Intent-to-claim provisions allow people to effectively have their claims backdated to the time of first contacting the Department of Human Services. It makes the system more reasonable for people with trouble collating the necessary information they need to put in a claim.

People may have trouble collating the information that they need if they're homeless, or if they've just been separated from a partner, or if they have a health issue or if they have an issue accessing technology. Don't get me started on accessing technology—let's talk about NBN at another time! What if they have trouble accessing the information they need to put together their claim? These are people who need our support—not millionaires and big business. These are the people who need our support. The increasing waiting times would add to the one-week waiting period that many claimants already have to face.

It's pretty common knowledge that Centrelink is a pretty big mess—and I don't mean the staff. Let me be very clear here: I do not mean the staff when I talk about Centrelink. Many of the people who work there are hardworking locals. They live in our community; they live in my community. They live down the street and they go to the sporting clubs that we go to. They're hardworking people. They have to make do with the limited resources they're given in an understaffed environment. I'm talking about the system and the way it's mismanaged under this government—how wait times have ballooned and people have been demonised by shameful robo-debt debacles. And now this government is seeking to exploit these wait times to avoid paying the welfare payments that people actually need.

This government may try to spin this as savings, but in reality this is just a cruel government taking money from vulnerable people. These are vulnerable people who need financial support just to get by. Members of this government have claimed they strive for equality of opportunity for all Australians. So it baffles me that they would be seeking to cut vital payments from needy people. How can we expect them to go to a job interview if they can't afford to do so? How do they pay for a bus ticket or a train ticket? How do they put fuel in the car? This isn't about equality of opportunity. This is inequality at its finest—tax concessions for the rich and cuts to resources for the poor. It's become standard Liberal government practice. They are acting out of habit, rather than taking a considered and measured step forward.

We in the Labor Party are willing to support any well-thought-out reform that will lead to positive change. We're absolutely willing to support that, and we won't fight it. In fact, we won't even seek to oppose every schedule in this bill. If every schedule were raised separately, we wouldn't seek to oppose this at all, because, for the most part, we don't oppose the changes made in schedules 1 to 8 of the bill as part of the working-age payment reform. While we're opposed to schedules seeking to cease bereavement allowance or wife pension, we're not opposed to schedules 1, 2, 5 or 8, nor to 16 or 18. But let's be clear about this: these aren't sweeping reforms. Streamlining tax file number collection, which is in schedule 16, isn't some grand change. Streamlining their tax file number collection isn't a meaningful reform that will bring equality to people in Longman.

Australia wants meaningful reform. Australia wants a way forward. It wants a government that will take positive steps to reduce inequality, and only Labor will do that. Labor has a plan to tackle inequality in Australia, and we will achieve this. The Labor Party will make Australia a fairer place for all and we will achieve this. And until we win the leadership in the next election, we will fight this government. We will fight them whenever they try to take steps in the other direction, whenever they try to cut payments for those who need them and whenever they try to marginalise vulnerable people. We will fight the government on this bill. We will not stand idly by. I will not stand idly by while they make things worse for people in my community, and we will not stand by when they make things more difficult for people right across Australia.

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