Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I'm delighted to be able to deliver this address-in-reply to the Governor-General's speech on the opening of the 48th Parliament. It's not my first rodeo; I've been to a few of these. But I have to say this election is a particularly special one because Labor now holds 94 seats out of the 150 in the House of Representatives and 29 out of the 76 Senate spots. So we have 123 representatives across both chambers. Our caucus is now 57 per cent female, cabinet is 52 per cent women and we are a modern, diverse government with more representation of our diverse Australian community than any previous government. That's important because, because of that, we make better decisions. We represent all Australians.

We had a terrific result in the electorate of Sydney thanks to the hard work and commitment of volunteers and supporters. Supporters in their hundreds stood at bus and ferry stops, train stations, light-rail stops and outside markets and shops to let people know about our first-term achievements and to tell them of our plans for our second term. I'm very pleased to say that the federal electorate of Sydney achieved 55.15 per cent of first-preference votes for Labor. That is the highest first-preference vote for Labor in the entire country. And, of course, our two-party preferred vote was also outstanding, at 70.95 per cent of two-party preferred votes.

It doesn't happen without an incredible amount of hard work from party members, and I'd particularly like to mention: Alberto Castillo, Connah, Ann Daly, Vicki Clay, John Dixon, Halcyon Done, Brian Frankham, Jonathan Gilliland, James Godschalk, Michael Hatrick, Shane Healy, David Hetherington, Marco Ho, Susan Kable, Clara Klemski, Nicholas Lin, Tom Loveluck, Zann Maxwell, Wayne Moody, Vanessa Bourke, Michelle Perry, Luke Pratt, Judy Quirk, Linda Scott, Tamira Stevenson and Kate Sullivan. Of course, they are not the only ones who worked very hard during this campaign, but I do need to mention them for their really outstanding effort. I also want to thank Campaign Director Christine Hawkins—an incredible effort from Christine—and Kerry, Will, Nell, Luke and Toni in the office. I want to take this opportunity as well to mention a few of the ministerial staff from my previous portfolio who have moved on: Dan Doran, David McElrea and Rachel Durrant. They're not the only staff who moved on, but each of those had been with me for over a decade. It's hard to say goodbye to people, but they've all gone on to bigger and better things.

During the campaign, I was very pleased to announce several important commitments in my electorate, including $10.2 million to deliver a new harbour pool at World Heritage listed Cockatoo Island/Wareamah, on beautiful Sydney Harbour, west of the harbour bridge. That'll be a great day out for people, who will be able to go there for the cost of a ferry ride and spend the day and swim in our beautiful harbour. There is also a commitment of $27,000 in funding to support eight events to be hosted by the Newtown Synagogue in 2025 to promote community cohesion. That is so important in light of yesterday's revelations about the Iranian government involvement in antisemitic attacks in Sydney. Of course, Newtown Synagogue was one of the places that were attacked during that spate of horrible antisemitic attacks. With Penny Wong, we also made a commitment of $2.6 million to the Museum of Chinese in Australia, located in Haymarket. And, with the Prime Minister, we made an $8.5 million commitment to funding for the Jewish Museum, which, of course, has now moved into the Wentworth electorate. We're also rebuilding the Griffin Theatre in Darlinghurst. This is a much-needed investment of $5 million, an announcement made with Catherine King. I can't wait to see further progress on these very important local commitments.

Voters in Sydney and across the country voted Labor because of the difference that we made in the lives of ordinary Australians: cost-of-living relief for millions and tax cuts for all Australians. In fact, there are 147,000 taxpayers in Sydney, and 123,462 of them received a tax cut. We provided two years of energy bill relief for every household and small business. In the Sydney electorate, 101,373 households received energy rebates, and 75,015 small businesses received rebates as well. My electorate has benefited from our historic increases in Commonwealth rent assistance. We've helped 6,330 households in the Sydney electorate in 2025 with increases to Commonwealth rent assistance, which is particularly important in an electorate like mine, where rents are so expensive.

We funded a 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood educators and aged-care workers, while making sure that childcare centres cap their fees to support affordability and fairness. We are making sure that early childhood education is more affordable for families. Out-of-pocket costs were cut by an average of $7,000 for a family earning $168,000. We introduced 60-day prescriptions and tripled bulk-billing incentives, saving electors in the electorate of Sydney around $9 million so far.

We've wiped $3 billion from student debt for more than three million Australians. In Sydney, more than one in five voters will benefit from that. We are cutting the average student debt by $6,820 and delivering $183.9 million in direct financial relief to 26,972 individuals in my electorate. Our fee-free TAFE funding has been wildly successful, and it's benefited over 3½ thousand students in the Sydney electorate. We now see across the country same job, same pay, which is now law. The gender pay gap is the lowest it's ever been, with women $1,900 a year better off because of that.

We're building 1.2 million new homes in Australia, and we're also making the biggest investment in social and affordable housing in many years. I was just delighted recently to visit a new project in Waterloo which City West Housing is building with the assistance of the state government and the federal government and some assistance from local government as well. How great to see those new homes going into my electorate. We passed landmark legislation to lift federal government funding for public schools, which had been capped at 20 per cent by Malcolm Turnbull when he was prime minister. So much has been done across the board.

I'm always very proud of what we manage to achieve in the environment portfolio as we move towards net zero. In just three years, I approved 83 renewable energy projects, enough to power 10 million homes. That's every home in Australia. Renewables are powering well over 40 per cent of the national grid now, and we're on track to achieve that 82 per cent target by 2030. In recent weeks, about 40,000 households have taken up our support for much cheaper home batteries as well. We invested $550 million to protect threatened species, including Lord Howe Island's phasmid and little mountain palm. Lord Howe Island is a beautiful part of my electorate. We increased recycling by more than 1.3 million tonnes a year, stopping paper, soft plastics and difficult-to-recycle plastics going into landfill. I was the first environment minister to block a coalmine. We protected almost 100 million hectares of land and sea, an area bigger than Italy, Germany and Norway combined. We massively expanded the Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve and the Macquarie Island Marine Park, amongst others. We began the World Heritage listing process for Murujuga and Cape York. We set up new Indigenous protected areas, expanded the Indigenous Rangers Program and stopped Jabiluka from being mined for uranium. We undertook a range of fantastic projects around Australia, including supporting a bid to include the original 1978 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade route on the National Heritage List and include the Melbourne and Broken Hill trades halls on World Heritage listing for workers' architecture around the world.

Since that time, of course, Minister Watt has been doing a wonderful job in this important portfolio, and I wish him all the very best. I'm delighted to take on the portfolio of Social Services, and I'm very grateful to Minister Rishworth for her extraordinary work and skilled stewardship of the portfolio in our first term. The Social Services portfolio is where you see Labor's DNA. Neal Blewett, Brian Howe, Carmen Lawrence and my very dear friend Jenny Macklin have held this vast and vital portfolio since the 1980s and have led some of the most important reforms that Labor governments look back on with pride.

To give a sense of the scale, the payment system supports around 5½ million people, family payments support around a million families, and the Child Support Scheme supports around 1.1 million children. Overall, the system supports more than six million Australians, and in 2025-26 that'll be at a cost of $152 billion—almost 20 per cent of all government expenditure. It shows why it's so important to steward this scheme correctly and to make sure that we've got the settings right. Since the election of the Albanese government, we've made considerable strides in improving JobSeeker, Commonwealth rent assistance and paid parental leave payments and arrangements. That really makes a difference in people's lives. A single age pensioner in receipt of a full pension now receives $1,178.70 a fortnight—about $5,000 more each year than when we came to government—and an additional $1,800 per year if they're renting.

We value a system where resources are directed according to need and we're always looking for ways of making sure our system is fit for purpose. We've been very lucky over the years to receive expert advice: the Henderson poverty line, the McClure report on the adequacy of social security payments and Jeff Harmer's report on pensions and other payments. Those processes have changed the thinking of communities, and they've helped drive really durable change. The equivalent today is the advice of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee, known to most people as EIAC. The Albanese government has the great good fortune to draw on Jenny Macklin's skills and enthusiasm as the Chair of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee. Some of EIAC's 2025 report considerations reflect its interest in making sure that we integrate services and invest early in prevention rather than focusing once disadvantage has already taken hold. I'm very grateful to EIAC for their work and I'll continue to work with them to make sure that our system is fair.

Australia is an enormously prosperous country, and we've got one of the best-performing economies in the world, but the benefits of economic growth haven't reached everyone equally. There are 235 communities in Australia that, together, account for the top 10 per cent of disadvantage in the country. Of these communities, 65 are home to more than half of Australia's most disadvantaged people. These communities face complex and persistent social and economic challenges that can't be solved by one-size-fits-all universal programs. This is where place based work comes in. Local leaders who are embedded within their communities know the solutions that are needed in their communities. But aligning the services of government departments with the community sector and philanthropy is challenging. This term will see me focus more on place based approaches which require local and joint decision-making with investment guided by locally developed, data driven plans. We now have an opportunity to bring together the many place based approaches which are working in different parts of Australia to share effective practices and to extend these benefits to more communities.

Our $230 million Targeting Entrenched Disadvantage package has laid the groundwork for place based work in Australia, and we'll continue to do that work with the community and the not-for-profit sector. Community sector organisations help to advance many of our social goals. These organisations run parenting programs, playgroups, counselling services, crisis response teams and so much more. They foster community resilience, cohesion and wellbeing. Currently, many organisations have to apply for numerous small grants over long periods of time and piece together the funding they need to work holistically with individuals and families. With every grant program comes a range of duplicative and unnecessary administrative burdens.

The key takeaway from our partners in the community and the not-for-profit sector is that we need to move towards funding models that are simpler, longer term, more relational and which reward success. Reporting should be focused on outcomes and provide meaningful insights back to the sector about what is and isn't working so that we can continue to improve outcomes for people who need a hand. We've seen amazing employment growth numbers since coming to government—1.1 million new jobs created—and the minimum wage is up by $9,000 a year since we came to office, but too many people are still locked out of the labour market. We need to make sure that our social security settings support and incentivise people wishing to take up work or increase their hours and that we stimulate demand to employ people from groups who have a greater distance from the workforce, especially Australians living with disability. Work is about a lot more than just a pay cheque. It shapes our identity, builds confidence and self-esteem and connects us with our communities. My focus is on supporting more Australians into the benefits of work.

It is disconcerting that in 2022 just 60½ per cent of people with disability aged 15 to 64 years were in the labour force, compared to 85 per cent of people without a disability. We have to do much more than just provide payments to these people. We need to make sure that we are unlocking opportunities for people to join the labour market. As a government, we need to work to reduce complexity within the social security system and improve communication to encourage people to take up work and to ensure the system supports people to move easily from income support into work.

As a government, we are also committed to closing the gap. In my own portfolio, Closing the Gap target 12, reducing the number of children in out-of-home care, and target 13, reducing family, domestic and sexual violence, are top of my list of responsibilities. First Nations children have survived and prospered in this country for millennia, but today we find we are going backwards, with too many children entering out-of-home care. We know that the earliest years of a child's life lay the foundations for who they become and what they might achieve. It is not okay that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 12 times more likely to be in out-of-home care or connected to the child protection system. We have to do much better than that. I recently appointed Sue-Anne Hunter as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commissioner to elevate the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people. I'll work with the commissioner and all my colleagues to try to reduce the placement of First Nations kids into care.

On family, domestic and sexual violence, Closing the Gap target 13, the figures here too are stark. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 33 times more likely than other Australian women to be hospitalised due to family violence and up to seven times more likely to be homicide victims. No-one thinks this is acceptable. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have been calling for targeted programs to prevent violence, and they've been calling for a standalone Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family safety national plan. We've heard those calls, and we're in the final stages of developing that plan and establishing a peak body to oversee the delivery and implementation of that plan.

More broadly on family, domestic and sexual violence, across our nation, rates of family, domestic and sexual violence continue to be tragically and unacceptably high. On average, each week a woman is killed by a man's use of violence, and in almost every instance it's a man that she knows. Whether it be young women whose lives were only beginning or older women who had so much more to look forward to, each life taken has a profound impact on the loved ones left behind. Kids face a future without their mum; a daughter, a sister or a best friend is no longer there. And so many more women's lives are forever changed through physical injury and psychological harm by men who choose to use violence.

It's why we have invested more than any government before—and I have to pay tribute to the member for Richmond for the work that she did in the last term; it really was transformative—$4 billion across government, focusing on specialist services for women and tailored support for children and young people to heal and recover and on men's behaviour change. We've invested $700 million in new matched funding with state and territory governments for frontline services so women and children can live more safely. We're investing almost a billion dollars in making the leaving violence payment permanent to make sure that women have the support they need to leave a violent relationship. We're investing around a billion dollars in emergency and transitional housing.

We've committed $27 million over five years to work in partnership with all states and territories to explore innovative approaches to address perpetrator behaviour. If we want to see change, we need to make sure there's accountability. During the election campaign, we announced another $8.6 million to add to that work, including approaches like electronic monitoring or ankle bracelets, intensive behaviour change and specialist early intervention for young people who are at risk of using violence. We've reformed the family law system. We've invested in the eSafety Commissioner. We've had targeted education campaigns for young people to understand consent and sexual violence. We're working in the higher education sector and doing so much more. It is, indeed, a big term coming, and I'm hopeful that my time in this portfolio will be marked by a sense of urgency, purpose and engagement, making sure we do what works to make people's lives better.

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