Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today in this parliament, in the legislation on the extension of the coronavirus supplement that we debated before question time, during question time and just before I rose to speak, we saw this government reveal its true, heartless colours. We saw this government once and for all put paid to its marketing slogan that it's leaving no Australians behind. If those opposite ever again try to stand up and say that they're the ones who are making sure that Australians can get through this time of COVID and the recession, they will have egg all over their faces.

Today we saw the government strip from its own minister the power to increase Newstart from March next year. We saw the government say: 'Sorry, everyone that we've been telling how great our initiatives are and how wonderful we are because we've helped people live above the poverty line during COVID, because we're going to just stop doing that in March. We don't care that the Reserve Bank governor has said that it's going to be a lumpy and bumpy recovery. We don't care that Victorians are still struggling.' They don't care that in communities like my community of Dunkley unemployment has doubled this year, that there are more than 10,000 people getting JobSeeker and that more than a thousand young people getting youth allowance. This government today said: 'We don't care about any of you. We don't care that the prospects of getting a job between now and the end of March are pretty slim. It's okay, though, because we've got a slogan called JobMaker.'

The worst thing about all of this today, and the votes that we've just had, is that we know there are members of the government who voted against what they believe in. We know that there are members of the government who have said publicly that they think that Newstart has to be above the base rate of $40 a day. We know that there are Nationals that go home to their electorates and say: 'We're the ones that represent the poorest people in Australia. We're the ones that stand up for the unemployed.' But today they voted for those people who don't have a job to go back to an unemployment benefit at a base rate of $40 a day. They stand up and say: 'Oh, it's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong to say $40 a day. You're all lying, all you Labor people, because there are all these extra supplements.' Go and talk to an unemployed person about what it's like to try to live on the base rate of $40 a day, on unemployment benefits which are below the poverty line.

So we saw that happen. We also had one of the most unedifying spectacles in question time that anyone could imagine. I was ashamed to be sitting in this chamber today watching the Minister for Government Services not answering questions about robodebt and showing utter contempt for this parliament, for the rulings of the Speaker and, most importantly, for the people of Australia. There was no sense of taking responsibility and no remorse for the people whose lives have been damaged and have ended because of an unlawful scheme of averaging income to issue debt notices to people, which they had to prove were wrong and which were sometimes seven or more years in the past.

We know that people have taken their lives. And we had to sit here in question time today and hear a minister refuse to answer questions and try to say, 'Oh, well, you know, there's this press release from 25 years ago that means: if someone said they were going to do something similar in the past, don't blame me for doing it now.' Surely everyone was told by their mum, 'When you're caught doing something wrong, don't say, "But they did it first!"' Seriously! We're not children; we're elected representatives to the federal parliament, entrusted with the privilege of looking after people who need our help. And that's what we got in question time today. The minister should be ashamed of himself, anyone who supports his behaviour should be ashamed of themselves and all of those ministers in the government that were part of implementing robodebt and telling Australians that if they didn't pay back an unlawful debt they would go to jail should be ashamed of themselves. In any other government, in any other Westminster system around the world, ministers would take responsibility and governments would fall over that. But not this government. They want to strip away supplements and put people back on $40 a day at a time when they need supplements the most. They won't take responsibility for robodebt. Apparently it's okay to spend $1.2 billion worth of taxpayers' money on something that you didn't do and you're not responsible for.

On this legislation that I'm speaking on today: the government want to introduce a mandated, racist scheme on Australia's First Nations people. Today in this parliament we have witnessed the true colours of this government, the ideological nastiness upon which they are based and the cowardliness of those who don't agree with it in not crossing the floor and voting against it. This legislation is racist legislation. It will impact 34,000 people in Australia, 23,000 of whom are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. More than 18,000 are in the Northern Territory. Sixty-eight per cent of people who will be forced—and that's an important word, 'forced'—onto the cashless debit card are First Nations Australians. Reasonable people would think: 'Well, it must be because this will work. It must be because the government has seen what's happened with the pilots, with the trial, and has said: "This scheme is something that is making people's lives better. This scheme is something that is helping people to get into employment, that is helping people to deal with mental health or alcohol or drug issues that they have. This scheme is helping people, and the people are grateful for the help."'

That's what you would expect would happen before such a drastic and draconian policy telling people that they can't spend cash and they can't choose how to live their lives would be implemented. That's what you would think. That's what I would think. But that's not the case. It's the opposite. The Auditor-General's report from 2018 demonstrated that the government had failed to show that broad-based compulsory income management works. This government asked the University of Adelaide to engage in an evaluation of the trial sites following a botched trial in 2018. This evaluation cost $2½ million—$2½ million which would have made a big difference in a lot of electorates, including mine. You'd also expect the government to pay some attention to that evaluation that they paid $2½ million for. Again, no. It's the opposite.

This legislation was introduced into this parliament before that report was finished, before the minister read the evaluation. At estimates, the minister revealed she still hadn't read the report, and the Minister for Indigenous Australians said he did not need to see the report to support making the trials permanent. I guess he doesn't need to listen to the evidence that has been given by Indigenous people, by First Nations organisations for those who have lived with the cashless welfare card to make the decision. If he had and if they had read the report, we wouldn't be standing here today trying to stop this government from implementing a racist policy. They're implementing it on First Nations people, not with First Nations people, not at the request of First Nations people from Ceduna, Goldfields, East Kimberley, Bundaberg, Hervey Bay, the whole of the Northern Territory; they're implementing it on them and to them regardless of what they say.

We know that this sort of program can work; income management can work. It needs the community to be part of it. It doesn't work when you force it on people. In some situations where child protection is involved, it can work. In communities that have said, 'We want to do this and we want to work with it,' it can work. But that's not how this government is approaching this issue. They are saying, 'You will do this because we know better.' That's what this government is saying to First Nations people across Australia. To the 68 per cent of people who will be subjected to the cashless welfare card under this legislation and who are First Nations people, they are saying, 'We will tell you how to live your lives because we know better than you do.'

On 12 February this year, the Prime Minister introduced his new Closing the Gap targets. People will recall that. It was a big moment. He talked about it quite a lot in the media. There was a lot of attention on it. This is what the Prime Minister told this parliament, this chamber, when he introduced the targets:

What I know is that to rob a person of their right to take responsibility for themselves, to strip them of responsibility and capability to direct their own futures, to make them dependent, is to deny them their liberty, and slowly that person will wither before your eyes. That's what we did to our First Nations peoples, and, mostly, we didn't even know we were doing it. We thought we were helping when we replaced independence with welfare. This must change. We must restore the right to take responsibility, the right to make decisions …

That's what the Prime Minister told this chamber in February of this year, and now with this legislation the Prime Minister and his government are doing the exact opposite. What is the definition of 'hypocrisy'?

What is the definition of 'hubris'? What is the definition of 'knowing better than everyone else'? How can the Prime Minister and the Minister for Indigenous Australians come into this parliament and say that they will, for the first time ever in the history of Australia, take an attitude of working with Indigenous Australians, with First Nations Australians, and not do things to them, and then bring in this legislation in NAIDOC Week, no less—last week—which does things to First Nations people? It's breathtaking! But it's just the third thing this government has done today to say to vulnerable Australians, to Australians that look to the government for support and assistance, 'We know better than you.' And they don't.

We shouldn't, in this country, have people who are living in poverty. We shouldn't, in this country, have First Nations people whose living standards are a shame and a blight on our country. We are, as everyone says, a generous people. We are a prosperous country. We have people in this parliament who are good people, on both sides of the chamber, who want to be part of First Nations people designing and implementing programs that assist their future, yet we are being asked to talk to and vote on legislation that takes away autonomy and goes right back to saying, 'We know better than you do.' And worse than that, it says: 'Thanks so much for telling us about your experience. Thanks so much for telling us that this doesn't work. Thanks so much for coming, giving us your time and your experience and your wisdom about what it is you want for your communities, but shut up now, because we know better.' I won't be part of it, and I tell you what: I won't be part of this legislation being the stalking horse for a cashless welfare card going across the country applying to everyone, and neither will my colleagues on this side of the chamber.

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