Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

There's much in this bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Income Support) Bill 2021, and there's much that's been left out. I think it's important to acknowledge that this is the first permanent rise in years to JobSeeker, formerly Newstart. However, I think it's pretty clear—and I think most Australians agree—that $25 a week is woefully inadequate. It's an additional $3.57 per day! It really will fall short. There are 1.9 million Australians who will effectively lose $100 a fortnight. That's because, at the same time as the government provides the $50-a-week permanent increase, it will be taking away the $150 coronavirus supplement. So, really, $100 per fortnight is what will be removed from people's family income.

There are just over 11,000 people in Mayo receiving the COVID supplement. There is going to be a double whammy here, which is going to affect the economy seriously. When JobKeeper ends, there will be a large cohort of people moving to JobSeeker. The estimates are saying it will be around 250,000 Australians. I actually think that's incredibly conservative. I think that there will be far more. I hope there aren't, but I think there will be. I think we in this place need to acknowledge that for a very long time not only welfare groups but also business groups have been saying that we need a substantial lift in the base rate of JobSeeker. Somewhere between $75 and $90 a week has been the broad consensus on where it needs to be—enough for people to live on and actively look for employment. It costs money to look for work. I think we all recognise that.

What we need—and I've been calling for this for some time—is an independent body that determines the rate. It shouldn't be determined in a joint-party sitting meeting, where there's a whip around the table: Who wants $50 a week? Who wants $25 a week? I think that's where we got to. There's no policy structure in that. What we really need is an independent social security commission that would set payments that keep up with the cost of living and recognise Australia's economic circumstances.

I'd like to backtrack to the previous parliament and its Select Committee on Intergenerational Welfare Dependence. That committee handed down a final report called Living on the edge: inquiry into intergenerational welfare dependence. I had the great privilege of being on that committee. It pains me that, while there were 16 key recommendations, I don't think the government has addressed any of them as yet. I'd like to highlight two of those recommendations today. Recommendation 14 requested that the Australian government review the effects of government policy, including the adequacy of payments for young people and single-parent families. Recommendation 15, one that we don't talk about in here, was that the government consider changing the point at which a single parent moves from the single-parent payment onto JobSeeker. At the moment, that happens when the youngest child turns eight, and the recommendation was it that it be changed to when the child turns 12. I think it would have a profound impact if the government actually considered this and made some changes.

I think we need to remember that the face of the Centrelink recipient has changed. A decade ago, a person receiving JobSeeker, formerly Newstart, was more than likely a young man aged under 35. Now, half the recipients are over 45, and the fastest-growing group—and there have been more women in this category than ever before—is women over 60. While the government's proposed increase to the JobSeeker base rate is $307, which I believe is completely inadequate, the great challenge is this: do we accept this, or do we play chicken with the government and hope that they will reconsider and lift this rate?

My office is regularly contacted by constituents who are seeking assistance to obtain affordable housing, and more than ever it's older Australians who are contacting us. I know that in my electorate I have older people who are living in cars because they are unable to secure private rental, and the proposed reduction in the payments is only going to make it harder.

Let's go beyond the individual recipient of JobSeeker. This change—this shrinking of money circulating in the economy through getting rid of JobKeeper and also shrinking the amount that a jobseeker has—is going to have a significant impact on small businesses in each of our electorates, because around 58 per cent of a person's Centrelink payment is spent on retail goods and services within the local community. So I think that we could have quite a compounding effect from the fact that we are shrinking JobSeeker and doing away entirely with JobKeeper.

In my electorate, we have a very high number of people who are on JobKeeper. We are a tourism destination, and we don't have the international tourists, particularly on Kangaroo Island but also right across the electorate, that we relied on so heavily. While I appreciate that the government has given vouchers or funding to the airlines, the tour operators, those small businesses and micro businesses, are not going to receive the benefit of those airline tickets. It's just not going to happen. It's not going to trickle down. As I said earlier, over 11,000 people across Mayo have been receiving the COVID supplement, and this, on my calculations, is going to mean a shrinking in my electorate's economy of around $1 million a fortnight. That's $1 million every fortnight that's not going to butcher stores, greengrocers and every business in between. Who are going to be the big winners? The payday lenders, the pawn shops and the buy-now pay-later schemes.

So I call on the government to reconsider a couple of things—firstly, the rate and, secondly, the income-free area for the JobSeeker payment, for youth allowance (other) and for the parenting payment. The income-free area should remain, I believe, at $300 a fortnight, and it also needs to be indexed. We know that millions of Australians are currently underemployed, because there just aren't the permanent jobs that there used to be, and so many people are accepting insecure or casual work and coupling together two or three jobs. So I think having that income-free area where they're not penalised with their JobSeeker rate is a prudent thing to do..

There are a number of other measures that are not highlighted in this bill but are part of this package. A couple of those are changes to mutual obligations, and these changes are not required to be made by legislative instrument. But I would just say to the government, which has always said it's a government for small business: you are putting such an onerous burden on small businesses through people on JobSeeker having to go back to putting in for 20 jobs a fortnight. The reason I say that is that a business will advertise a job on SEEK or some other platform and they will be bombarded with applications, which they will have to filter through, from people who do not have the qualifications for the job but need to put in their applications so that they don't lose the payment they receive. So I don't think that we've thought this through too well.

Similarly, on 'dob in a jobseeker'—that scheme that Minister Cash announced at the same time as these rates were announced—during last week's Senate committee hearing the Australian Retailers Association CEO, Paul Zahra, stated that the association was not supportive of the 'dob in a jobseeker' hotline. He believed it would drive up anxiety among retailers and not really add to solving the real problem. Why do we want to do that to retailers? This is an industry telling government, telling this place, that it's not going to work and it's not something that they support. Yet it looks like we're still going to have it go through, simply because it's something that can be done without passing this place.

Finally, I'd like to share with you an email I received late last week from an Adelaide Hills woman in her 60s who lives in my electorate. She said: 'Rebekha, I'm distraught at the seeming disregard of the federal government regarding the review of the JobSeeker rate. I found myself on JobSeeker, and I have just reviewed my budget and find that I'm having to choose between paying utility bills and buying food.' Come on. We can do better than that in this nation. We were never a nation that would say to people, 'We think that you should choose between keeping your heater on'—and it gets really cold in my electorate—'and food.' This isn't a 25-year-old bum who'd rather go surfing; this is a woman in her 60s who is struggling to look for work and who is going to face enormous, extreme hardship. The government has been quite clear. There's no negotiation; it's $50 or nothing. I urge the government: please, you still have time. We have a current coronavirus supplement that is $75 a week. Why not just leave it at that rate? That would benefit Australians, whether they are on JobSeeker or not. It would benefit our small businesses. I urge the government: please, give this another thought.

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