Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night I started speaking on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017, and I drew the observation that this piece of legislation from the government highlights the love-hate relationship that it has with the Australian people. When it sat down and said, 'We're going to try and improve child care', not only did it get that fundamentally wrong in certain respects but it also got it wrong in the way it decided that it would pay for those so-called improvements to child care. When it went through the budget—when it went through the finances of the Commonwealth and thought, 'Where can we make the savings to pay for this initiative?'—instead of targeting any other area, it targeted the Australians who can least afford to have their payments and benefits cut. It targeted those on welfare payments. It did not target the $50 billion tax cut that this government wants to give to Australian business.

The point I was about to go on to make at that point last night was this: our economy is in transition. We need to see growth in the economy. The Reserve Bank Governor has said that he and the Reserve Bank are concerned that we do not have enough consumption happening in the economy. We need to see that grow. We do not want to see, for example, savings increase. And yet this government wants to cut the available money for people to spend, the people who have the least to spend already, in the economy. That is going to make our economy worse. This is all at a time when the government is out supporting a cut to penalty rates on a Sunday, making the situation even worse. So we have a situation where for years now this government has failed to deliver on childcare relief because it insists on linking the changes to cuts to the family budget. They are robbing Peter to pay Paul, and this is an absolutely atrocious way to go about delivering on government policy.

With the introduction of this bill, the government is not just holding families to ransom to pay for child care but also it is holding pensioners to ransom, it is holding people who are looking for work to ransom, it is holding new mothers to ransom. This is a travesty of a piece of legislation because this bill introduces $2.7 billion worth of cuts to family payments alone to pay $1.6 billion for a childcare package. In total, this piece of legislation is going to be ripping $5.6 billion from the household budgets of the lowest paid Australians, the people who most need our support. The bill would take more than $3.30 a week off pensioners, families, new mums, young Australians for every $1 that is proposed to be spent on childcare assistance. This is a rip-off and a fraud of legislation, and that is why Labor will not support this bill.

Let us look at the childcare aspect. We do, of course, support child care—and I say this, from a personal point of view, as a brand-new father—and we support additional investment in child care. But we do not support others being held to ransom to pay for it, especially those who are least able to afford it in our community. This government is more committed to the cuts that will hurt pensioners, families, new mums, young Australians than it is to delivering on its promise of increased childcare assistance. Wouldn't it be better if we had a government that thought the lifelong benefits of early education were more important than cuts to pensioners to rob Peter to pay Paul? Despite being warned about these serious flaws in its childcare changes for years—we have been talking about these problems for years—they have done nothing to fix them.

The bill before the House will cut access to early education in half for many vulnerable and disadvantaged children, effectively cutting access for families earning under $65,000 a year from two days a week to one. Labor is very worried about the impact that the government's changes will have on Indigenous children in particular, who in every state and territory already have lower early childhood enrolment rates than the average. These are the people who need our help the most. What sort of government is this? Seriously, what sort of government do the members opposite want to be known as? This is the lowest of the low approach.

I move on, because not only do we have these problems with the childcare changes but we also have problems with the way they are going to 'pay for this', which is by changes to the family tax benefit. Labor, as it always has, will stand for low- to middle-income earners in this country. That is what we have been having to do against this government since its disastrous 2014 budget, and yet year after year it throws up at these crazy zombie measures that it is claiming as savings when it is trying to attack ordinary and low-paid Australians. The government admit finally—it took a while to get it out of them—that their family payment cuts will leave 1.5 million Australians worse off at a time when our economy is already faltering. Families will be losing FTB A supplements of $200 per child and they will also be losing FTB B supplements of $350 a year. To put that into perspective for the people of Burt: there are currently 12,775 recipients of family tax benefit A in my electorate and 12,946 recipients of family tax benefit B. This is not small fry stuff in an area that is already suffering huge unemployment levels and having to deal with the decline in the mining construction boom, having to deal with a state government that has caused debt and deficit beyond belief, and having to deal with a state economy that is in recession.

But it is not only this, it is not only these changes. This government has really gone the whole hog when it comes to making life worse for those who rely on welfare payments in this country. At the moment we have a situation where welfare payments are indexed against CPI. I would point out Labor did a lot of work with a number of welfare benefits to make sure they were linked to the higher of CPI or average male weekly earnings, but CPI it is. What the government are going to do now is freeze a component of those payments for three years. They are going to freeze a component of those payments for three years instead of having them indexed against CPI. At a time when we have a problem with wage growth not increasing—in Western Australia we have a problem where not only do we not have wages increasing, we have wages not increasing in real terms either. Wages were increasing at a level lower than CPI; now they are going backwards. Now they are going to do the same thing to people who are on welfare benefits. This is actually going to have some very deleterious effects on the economy at large, let alone on the individuals who are having their payments cut.

We also have—and this is one of my favourites, especially on the back of the debate we just had—the automation of income stream review processes, neatly contained in schedule 11 of the legislation. Always get concerned when there are more than 10 schedules in a piece of legislation. These measures will automate the process by which the Department of Human Services collects income stream information that it then uses for data matching. The government has been at lengths to point out that it was a Labor government that introduced the data-matching processes when it came to welfare payments. What the government neatly forgets is that we had a human review process in there to make sure that we did not cut payments from people when they did not deserve to have them cut—that was neatly obliterated from the history of time, apparently, by the minister. So what it is going to do now is create more automation in the process before it has even got the current system working. This is a disaster just in itself, just in one little schedule, and it really highlights how this government has a love-hate relationship with Australia. It loves business. It is happy to give a $50 billion tax cut to business but it hates ordinary and low-paid Australians. It is making cuts to payments, it is making cuts to pensioners and it is making cuts to young people while it is giving big tax cuts to big business. It is a shame. (Time expired)

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you want to know what is wrong with this government, look at this particular piece of legislation. The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 sums up just how arrogant and out of touch they are with the Australian people and sums up their management of the Australian economy. This bill contains many of what has been described in the national media and on both sides of the chamber as zombie cuts.

Do you remember the comments made by the then opposition leader, the member for Warringah, Tony Abbott, right before the election? He stood up there in an interview in Penrith just before the election and said that there would be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions. He went on and on. He then proceeded to come into this place and, on the first budget, broke promise after promise. The government did not take the people into their confidence and made change after change to pensions. Look at this. This legislation is about taking money away from pensioners.

Just look at what the government did in the 2014 budget. They tried not only to slug pensioners and other people with increases to GP payments but made pharmaceuticals much harder to buy. In addition to that, they tried to change the indexation for the calculation of the pension, which comes in twice a year. So instead of 27.7 per cent of male total average weekly earnings or CPI, whichever is the highest, they decided to use the CPI, which meant that pensioners would be worse off by about $80 a week within 10 years. We are talking about $23 billion being ripped out of pensioners' pockets by the then Abbott government in 2014. We on this side opposed so many of the things that government tried to do and we were very successful in doing that, just as we are opposing this particular legislation before the chamber. What they tried to do was slug pensioners.

We heard the debate before around the member for Barton's motion. We have a situation where constituent after constituent is coming into our offices after getting wrong letters from Centrelink. There are about 20,000 a week. The government is admitting about 4,000 are wrong, and pensioners are worried. They are worried because of that, and because of the changes to superannuation the government made as well, which were different from what they went to the election with. From 1 January this year, after the change to the asset test for the calculation of pensions and the change to the taper rate, we saw hundreds of thousands of pensioners worse off as a result. Guess what? We have got a situation here where pensioners will be much worse off by losing energy supplements and the like. This government has got it wrong. Historically it is the case that more senior Australians tend to vote conservative than they vote progressive. It is a fact of electoral history. But this government seems intent on attacking the very people it will ask their votes for at the next election. It is simply extraordinary.

On top of this we see cuts in this legislation to family tax benefits, the supplements which people rely on in my electorate to meet the sports costs for their kids, the computer costs for their kids, uniform costs and the like. Many people in my electorate will lose family tax benefits. About 14,997 families in the electorate of Blair, based on Ipswich and the Somerset, receive FTB part A, many of whom will be $200 per child worse off. About 12,358 Blair families will lose $354 as a result of the abolition of family tax benefit part B end-of-year supplements. We have a situation where 1.5 million families will be worse off. It takes a very inept government to spend $1.6 billion of taxpayers' money and still make one in three families who are using child care worse off. How can you do that? How can you spend $1.6 billion of taxpayers' money and get it so wrong? There will be 230,000 Australian families worse off according to the ANU analysis. How can you do that? And why should you hold pensioners, families and young people to ransom to get this legislation through?

The government have been talking about childcare reform for a very long time but they could not even get that right. Do you remember the last election? I remember debating people who were running against me and the government were talking about spending $3 billion on child care. Now it is reduced to $1.6 billion. They are ripping away $2.7 billion away from families, pensioners and young people and only putting back $1.6 billion. It is a sleight of hand. See how few speakers have spoken on this particular legislation for the government? They know this is political poison just as they know their position with respect to penalty rates is political poison.

In my electorate, 9,403 people—one in seven workers in Blair—who work in retail, food and accommodation industries will potentially be affected by the Fair Work decision the other day. These workers stand to lose up to $77 per week. What are the government doing? They talk about process all the time and attack us. We had 60 members of the government talk in favour of cuts to penalty rates for people in retail, hospitality and other areas. This is the thin end of the wedge.

Last Saturday, I was doing my usual mobile office—I have done 57 of them since the last election. I do them all the time. It is a great way to keep in touch with people. I was on my way to West Ipswich, to Casual Coffee, where I set up my mobile office. As I was packing up my car with the signs and putting in the materials, a woman came up to me and talked to me. She was a nurse, and she said, 'We're next. We're next on penalty rates.' If this government has its way with this legislation, she will be much worse off again.

It is not just her but young people as well, because this government is trying to take people off Newstart and put them onto youth allowance. They will be up to $48 a week worse off. This government says it stands up for small business and it wants to make sure there are a profitable small businesses in communities, in the regions and in the cities because that is the way people can improve their wages and conditions et cetera. If you rip money away from people, they will spend less. You send the economy into a nosedive.

We already know that wages growth is 1.9 per cent. It is the lowest it has been in decades. Inequality in this country is at a 75-year high. Yet this government thinks, 'We'll rip money out of the economy, rip it away from families and from pensioners as well, and that will be good for the economy.' That is not good for the economy. It is not good for business confidence either.

This government has its priorities wrong. They promised when in opposition that they would deliver a surplus in their first year of government and every year thereafter. They gave up government revenue sources in terms of the carbon price and so many other areas. They are giving up the capacity for revenue sources that would meet the kinds of payments that could be covered by this legislation by not doing reforms of capital gains tax and negative gearing. If they want money, they could do that. That is also a potential boost to the real estate industry and the construction industry; we know that from the independent modelling. But they will not do that either. So they give up revenue sources and then think it is okay to attack the most vulnerable people in the economy.

The big thing that shows that this government has its priorities all wrong, why people will not listen to this government, is its $50 billion in tax cuts to big business, $7.4 billion of which will go to the big banks. That goes to show that they are prepared to give tax cuts to the wealthy, to the most profitable businesses in the economy. They are prepared to give that away in terms of revenue. Yet they feel that they need to cut funding for the most vulnerable people in the economy—cuts to support for young people, forcing young jobseekers to wait five weeks for Newstart; cuts to family tax benefits; cuts to migrant pensioners; scrapping the pension education supplement and the education entry payment. They continue to do this.

But in opposition they always talked about the debt and deficit emergency. The talked about it all the time. In fact, they talked about it for a year or so after they got into office. They never talked about it again, because the deficit is eight times bigger than they projected—the actual deficit is three times larger—and debt has gone up about $200 billion. That is because they have their priorities wrong. They have given up revenue sources and not looked at appropriate revenue sources to get rid of the excesses and the rorts in terms of capital gains tax and negative gearing, which they previously talked about in the past. So they have their priorities out of whack.

The government are not standing up for families. We hear about hardworking Australian families in question time all the time, but they are not actually doing that which is necessary to help hardworking families. They could support our private members' bill to help hardworking families with respect to the Fair Work Commission decision the other day. They could be doing that, but they are not. They could withdraw this legislation and think about other changes.

Talking about hardworking families, child care is at the heart of this particular legislation. The ANU has found that 71,000 families with an income below $65,000 will be worse off. There are about 300 budget-based funded Indigenous and mobile childcare programs, including in my electorate of Blair, in Ipswich. Many of the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander services are well represented by their peak body, SNAICC. I have a lot of time for SNAICC. They are great organisation. They represent their members well. They have advocated hard on this issue. Many of these services are in regional and rural areas. Where are the Nationals on this, by the way? They are completely missing, as usual.

Deloitte Access Economics has found that changes to these budget-based funded programs will disadvantage Indigenous kids. Fifty-four per cent of families will face an average fee increase of $4.40 an hour. Forty per cent of families will have their access to early childhood education reduced. Over two-thirds of Indigenous early childhood education services will have their funding cut.

In my community, we have Amaroo and Kambu childcare services, and Indigenous child care run though the children and family centre in Ipswich. But these organisations are at risk of cuts. If the government wants to spend $1.6 billion in child care, how about looking after the most vulnerable families in Indigenous communities, in working-class and low-socioeconomic communities in my electorate—or in the member for Lingiari's, up in the Northern Territory? How about thinking about that? Even with their childcare package, the government have got it out of whack. They have not even got that straight.

This is a government that really is without proper priorities and values with respect to decisions. Remember that 'rolled gold' Paid Parental Leave scheme from the former Leader of the Opposition and then Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, Tony Abbott, years ago? Now the government talks about fraudsters, and women double dipping as if they do it deliberately. It is disgraceful the way this government has carried on. What it is going to do here is take away hard-won conditions that women in the workplace have negotiated themselves, or that their respective representative bodies, their unions, have negotiated in EBAs.

This bill will rip away the capacity of women to support their families financially. The measure removes the mandatory employer paymaster role—that is, employers administering the payment rather than Centrelink—and so it removes the contact women have at the coalface with their employer. We will see cuts to paid parental leave to remove what this mob opposite call 'double-dipping' and sometimes 'fraudulent activity' by placing a cap on the total number of weeks and a new mother can claim on the employer-funded leave. They expect us to pat them on the back because the leave is going up from 18 weeks to 20 weeks, but in fact, if you negotiated through your EBA with your employer a much better deal, you lose.

What they are doing is anti-mothers, anti-age pensioners, anti-young people and it is anti-business because they will sap confidence in the economy. This is certainly not childcare reform; we want genuine childcare reform in this country, and it is about time they delivered it. They have failed in this area and they should withdraw this legislation, which should not be supported.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me no pleasure to speak in this debate because it is a debate that we should not be having. We should not be passing this legislation; we should be supporting the amendment which has been moved by the shadow spokesperson Ms Macklin. The amendment she has moved summarises very aptly—to anyone who may be listening—why we should not support this bill. We should not give this bill a second reading because, as has been said by successive speakers, it will hurt pensioners, families, new mums, young Australians, while holding childcare assistance and the national disability insurance scheme to ransom. How could they do that? How could they possibly do that while at the same time they are contemplating passing legislation to give $50 billion worth of tax cuts to big business? Of that, $7.4 billion is to go to big banks. How could they do that?

We are calling on the government to drop their unfair cuts to pensioners, families, new mums and young Australians and fix their childcare changes so that vulnerable and disadvantaged children are not worse off and so that Indigenous and country services do not face closure. On that point, I note the member for Blair's contribution; he points out the impact of those changes on Indigenous childcare services around the country, two-thirds of which will suffer cuts.

When I observe debates in this place and when I watch ministers speak, I expect that they will speak on behalf of the nation and try to do things which are good. This is not good. I expected the Prime Minister, when he was elected Prime Minister by his party, to make a difference in this place, but he has not. What this legislation does is prove yet again how out of touch he is. He is arrogant, out of touch; he has no understanding of the differentials that exist across this great society of ours or of the suffering experienced by people who are disadvantaged or lonely or with an illness or people who live in remote communities and the costs they have to confront just to put bread on the table. The Prime Minister has no idea of this, no idea at all. He has no empathy, no understanding; he is simply out of touch. He is so out of touch that his party can contemplate putting these proposals before us.

That is remind ourselves just briefly what some of these proposals are. There are cuts to family tax benefits. My electorate of Lingiari, for those who are listening, covers all of the Northern Territory except Darwin and a large slice of Palmerston. It is 1.34 million square kilometres, and 42 per cent of my electors are Aboriginal people, most of whom live in remote communities, are impoverished and live in conditions worse than any other electorate almost in this country—apart perhaps from some remote electorates which share some of the common characteristics of people living in remote communities who are poor and unhealthy. They deserve a break, but with this legislation, yet again, the government is giving them a kick in the guts. We are expected to stand up here and say, 'Well, that's terrific, Prime Minister. You know what you're doing. This piece of legislation, which will cut family benefits to 11,257 families and up to $200 per child, is a good thing. We should cop that, while you sit in your place of residence surveying the coast and no doubt the harbour and think about giving tax cuts to big business. How could you be so out of touch?'

Around 9606 families in my electorate will lose $354 as a result of the abolition of the Family Tax Benefit Part B end-of-year supplement. A single parent with an income of $60,000 and a 17-year-old high school student will be over $3300 a year worse off. The government is going to cut the energy supplement, which will cut $14.10 a fortnight or $365 a year out of a single pension. Pensioner couples will be $21.20 a fortnight worse off or around $550 worse off a year. How can you do this? On what basis are you doing this? Is it because you have a problem with your budget, which is all of your own making? You now want to attack the poorest and most vulnerable in the community.

Mr Wallace interjecting—

It is of your own making—just check the debt levels, comrade! What were they when you came to office? What are they now? Debt and deficit—all of your own making. You have been in government for almost four years now and what do we get? 'It's their fault. It is not our fault.' I am not arguing against savings; what I am arguing against is a $50 billion tax cut for big business. Leave the money for the poor people, the most vulnerable in the country. You have no idea.

Let me just give you an illustration of what poor people are. Let me give you an illustration of people who will be affected by this. Every year in June, the Northern Territory Department of Health, to its credit, publishes the Market Basket Survey of the cost basic food items in remote stores in the Northern Territory. Those of you over there with tin ears, just listen for a moment. These are remote stores in the Northern Territory. This is the 42 per cent of my electorate who are Aboriginal people and live in remote communities—a large proportion of them—where jobs are difficult and they rely on income support of the type we are talking about here today. The Market Basket Survey includes a food basket that consists of food that meets the energy and recommended nutrient needs of a family of six for a fortnight. The basket looks at bread, fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy. The latest survey, which is now nine months old, found that the cost of a sample basket of goods in a Darwin supermarket was $580. The survey found that the same basket of goods averaged across 81 remote communities cost $817. The further you travel from Darwin, to the remoter parts of the Territory, you pay more. The communities in the Central Australian region are paying $844—a massive $264 difference. They pay 46 per cent more for exactly the same basket of goods that you could buy in a supermarket in Darwin.

These people will be directly impacted by these cuts and we have the government talking about wanting to close the gap. They come in here and parade around saying, 'Close the gap.' They tell us how they are bound and striving to make sure that we change life expectancy data for Aboriginal infants and adults and that they will fix the health issues for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. You will not do if they cannot afford to buy food, yet the direct impact of these cuts will challenge the capacity of Aboriginal families who live in remote communities in the Northern Territory to do exactly that. We hear government members saying, 'This is all about savings, Warren.' The burden of those savings should not rest on the poorest, defenceless and most vulnerable people in the community. That is clear. The government say that, somehow or another, this is fair and reasonable. When you expose yourself to the facts, it is demonstrably untrue.

So I say to the Prime Minister and the Treasurer—we do not see a lot of him these days; I wonder why—just how out of touch do you want to be? How arrogant you are. Put yourself in the shoes of the people I have just been talking about and think about how you would manage life. Just to remind ourselves, a family in this context was seen as a grandmother aged 60 years, a man aged 35 years, a woman aged 33 years, a male aged 14 years, a girl aged eight years and boy aged four years—a family of six, which is considered large in some communities, but not in the remote parts of the Northern Territory, I can tell you, where extended families living together is the norm. These vulnerable people will be impacted by these changes. You cannot tell me that, somehow or another, what you are trying to do is fair or in any way reasonable.

The thing that really gets to my gut is the proposal to cut support for young people aged between 22 and 24 who will be pushed from Newstart onto Youth Allowance, losing around $48 a week, or almost $2,500 a year. How do you, in all conscience, do this? How do you do this? Do you think they all have rich mums and dads? As an infamous person on the other side once said, 'Get yourself rich parents.'

Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Out of touch!

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How out of touch are you? You come in here and you try to convince us that we should vote for this piece of stupid legislation. Of course, this is compounded by the current malaise in the government and their failure to understand the impact of the proposals on penalty rates. I often wonder, as I see the Prime Minister shuffling up to the dispatch box, poking out his chest, pointing across the dispatch box, pointing across to this side of the House and disparaging the Leader of the Opposition, how he sleeps at night. He is now proposing to support a proposition from the commission that will see up to 700,000 Australians $77 a week worse off. How does he sleep at night?

If you look at the broad canvas we have here you could say, 'On one side of the canvas we have these cuts to benefits and we have a proposal to give the big end of town a tax cut and, most deplorably, the banks—why we do not have a royal commission is beyond me, but we should have one—and on the other side of the canvas we have 70,000 people having their incomes cut.' Call me naive if you like, but I cannot see too many of those people standing around and applauding the government's decision. Remember, these are young people who might have moved from Alice Springs, where I live, to go to Sydney or Melbourne to go to university and rely on a part-time weekend job for their income to be able to live reasonably in a major metropolitan centre, and this is true for kids in the bush right around Australia. And now they have got to deal with the fact that, instead of working eight hours, they might have to work 10 to get the same income. And they are supposed to say, 'Well, that's terrific. We're happy to do that, Mr Prime Minister, because that's a saving we're going to give you—a saving you can use to help pay the banks'!

Again, just how out of touch are you? Don't you understand the impact of this unequal treatment of Australians? Don't you understand that those you are targeting are the most vulnerable—the weakest, in many senses; the sickest, in a lot of cases; the most exposed to the vicissitudes of the economy changing at any point in time? In addition, now you are supporting a proposition that they should have their incomes cut. Well, Prime Minister, you are on the wrong horse; you are on entirely the wrong horse. And the people of Australia will call you to account. I know that the people I represent in this place think you are horrible—horrible for what you are doing to this country, horrible for the divisive nature of the debates which you are prosecuting in this place, and horrible because of your failure to understand the nature of the plight of Australians who are the weakest and most vulnerable in this community and the way you are attacking their way of life.

Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to make it absolutely crystal clear up-front that I do support reform of early childhood education and I do support reforms that would genuinely make it more accessible and make the payment arrangements more streamlined. I also want to make it abundantly clear that you will not find a stronger advocate for and supporter of the National Disability Insurance Scheme than me in this place. It is absolutely vital that the scheme remains true to its original intention of being a demand-driven program where anyone who genuinely needs support can go to the NDIS and get that support and that it not be capped by a budget or a shortage of money. So what I am about to say in the next little while should in no way be taken as any absence of or lesser support for early childhood education—and indeed early childhood educators, who do a wonderful job—and the NDIS.

But the bill before the House at the moment, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017, frankly, is a shocker—an absolute shocker—and I will not support it and I do not know how anyone in this place could bring themselves to support it. I am sorry; I must have said this a hundred times in this place, but it seems I have got to say it again: we are one of the luckiest, wealthiest, most fortunate countries in the world; a country with an annual federal budget of—it varies from year to year but it is in the order of—$400,000 million. Surely we are rich enough and lucky enough to look after, properly, the people who need to be looked after. Surely we are rich enough and lucky enough to be able to afford to support the most disadvantaged members of the community. Yet here we are—and I associate myself with the comments we just heard: we should not be here debating this; we should not have to come in here to debate whether or not to reduce the social security payment budget by $7,000 million a year. We can afford to pay that money. We can afford to not make these cutbacks to some of the most disadvantaged people in the country.

These are harsh cuts. These are very harsh cuts. And they are very harsh cuts directed squarely at the most disadvantaged members of our community. I regret to remind members in this House that Australia's poverty rate, to this day, remains above the OECD average. I will say that again: Australia's poverty rate remains above the OECD average, despite us being one of the richest and most fortunate countries in the world and despite us having a federal budget in the order of $400,000 million a year.

In population terms, there are almost three million people living below the poverty line, after taking account of housing costs, in recent figures. The poverty rate for children in this country is in the order of 17.4 per cent, or about three-quarters of a million children—three-quarters of a million children living below the poverty line in one of the richest countries in the world. That is a scandal! And it is a black mark on this place and what is has failed to achieve in recent years.

By family type, lone parents experience the highest poverty rates, at 33.2 per cent. I will say that again—it seems to be necessary to say these figures again: something like a third of single parents are below the poverty line, in one of the richest and most fortunate countries in the world. But we are in this place today talking about whether or not we should cut another $7,000 million from the welfare budget! I cannot believe we are having this conversation.

And it is not like we spend an outrageous amount of money and that we need to pare it back, because when I look at some very helpful figures provided by ACOSS—and I will read them in so that I get the figures just right—I see that they say:

Expenditures on social security payments are lower than comparable countries …

In fact, using recent figures, we spend about 8.6 per cent of GDP on social security payments, compared with an OECD average of 12.4 per cent. In other words, we are only spending about two-thirds of the OECD average on social security, but yet we are in here talking about cutting another $7,000 million from welfare payments. This is not defendable, and this bill is not supportable.

It is not good enough for the government to come in here and say, 'Well, it's swings and roundabouts, so people ultimately will be better off.' Again I will quote from ACOSS; they have been very helpful here. They give an example: the increase to the family tax benefit part A for families with children will increase by $10 a week, but it does not make up for the cuts to the supplements. A sole parent with two children aged 13 and 15 will still lose between $14 and $20 per week, or around $1,000 a year.

So it is not the case that these people will ultimately somehow be better off. In this example of the sole parent with two young children, they are going to be $1,000 a year worse off. These are not people on obscene incomes like we enjoy in this place; these are people who have no money left over already. Where will they get that $1,000? What will they cut back? What will they go without?

I have met people in my community who already, in the middle of winter in Hobart, are not turning the heating on, because they cannot afford the electricity. I have already met people in my electorate, in Hobart—in a capital city in one of the richest countries in the world—who go without meals to pay for their medicines. I have met older Australians on the age pension who will even eat dog food—in a capital city in one of the richest countries in the world, with an annual federal budget of close to $400 billion a year. Yet we come in here and we are talking about cutting another $7,000 million from the welfare budget.

I am the first to agree with the government that we need to reengineer the budget. We do need to find savings. We do need to find other sources of revenue. We do need to get the budget back into balance over the economic cycle. On the government's own figures, by fiscal 2018-19, our total federal government debt will be in the order of $356 billion—a quarter of a trillion dollars. We do have to fix that. But why on earth are we going after some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in the country? Is it because they are not the people putting big donations into the political parties—the people who are currying favour?

Why don't we come in here and collegiately talk about big reform? I can tell you that we will not repair the budget even if we go ahead with measures like those contained in this omnibus bill. Seven billion dollars is an enormous amount of money to take away from disadvantaged people, but it is a drop in the ocean when it comes to repairing the budget. The budget needs deep structural reform. The country needs big, inspiring political leaders telling us what needs to be done and guiding us through it. In my experience, the Australian community will support big bold governments when the need for reform is explained to them and the package reforms is sold effectively. But we are not seeing that at the moment. In fact, in this country we have such a shortage of big, inspiring leaders—people you would follow to war. As I look around this place, I can tell you that there are precious few people I would follow to war. I see a generation of professional politicians who are tinkering around the edges and thinking that the solution is taking $7 billion from Australia's most disadvantaged and vulnerable people.

I will tell you about the sorts of things we should be talking about. What about a genuine clampdown on multinational tax avoidance? That would be a strong start. I do note that in recent times the government has taken some small steps, which, if they are successful—

Mr Christensen interjecting—

Member for Dawson, I have said good on the government for taking some steps. However, by your own figures, those steps might only bring in about a billion a year. That still leaves, by some estimates, $4 billion to $5 billion of tax avoidance going on, even after those measures are implemented and if they are implemented effectively. So there is $4 billion to $5 billion to be had out there from multinationals who, through all sorts of devious means, are avoiding their reasonable tax obligations. We are talking about $4 billion or $5 billion. That is $16 billion to $20 billion over the budget and forward estimates—three times the amount of money that is going to be saved by this bill—just by making the big, rich multinationals pay their fair share.

What about domestic firms? I have been unable to come up with an exact figure—and I do not think anyone knows—or even a rough figure of the scope of tax avoidance by domestic companies. But I did find this figure showing the difference between what corporations pay in tax in Australia currently—what they actually pay—and what would be paid if they all paid their 30 per cent. That shortfall is $8 billion a year. Of course we cannot hope to recoup all of that, because businesses have all sorts of reasonable deductions, but we could recoup some of that. Let's say we recouped a quarter of that—$2 billion a year; $8 billion over the budget and forward estimates. That would more than pay for this ruthless cut to welfare for some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in the country.

What about a proper super-profits tax? Last year, the banks made $30,000 million—and not just in gross terms but also a significant profit as measured as a return on their investment. How about the banks, with $30,000 million, pay a bit more tax? And how about any company in this country that gets a super return on their investment, no matter how big or small, pay a bit more tax? They could afford to pay a bit more tax. They could afford to pay a bit more tax a darn side easier than the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in this country could. A single mum with two young kids will have to afford to go without $1,000 and will go without meals, will go without medicines and will go without electricity, while the banks get off scot-free. In the last six months, BHP made $8,000 million profit. Well, good on them, but it would be better if they paid a bit more tax and helped out the community that has supported them over many, many years.

What about capital gains discounts? We talk a lot about negative gearing—and that is fine—but let's talk about capital gains discounts, which most experts would agree are skewing the housing market. Let's get rid of those discounts. That will save us a billion dollars a year, $4 billion over the budget and forward and estimates and more than half the amount of money that we are trying to save today. Why don't we get rid of the $50 billion in tax cuts for big business? These are the sorts of measures we need, but they will only happen when we have politicians who are visionary and strong and prepared to make the big decisions. I tell you what: the public will accept big, bold decisions when they are necessary, when they are explained and when they are sold by inspiring leaders. To help sell them, why don't we all take a 25 per cent pay cut? That would make some of the tough decisions in the broader community more palatable. I look around and everyone is staring at me—I will not say as though I have grown two heads.

Honourable members interjecting—

Seriously—please, colleagues and Mr Deputy Speaker—the community will accept big, bold reform when it comes from big, bold, inspiring leaders, when it is sold well and when everybody, including us, shares in the cutbacks. But at the moment we have a government trying to take $7,000 million from the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in the community, while at the same time wanting to give a big tax cut to big business and taking no action against the banks while they pull in $30,000 million profit and no action against companies like BHP that make $8,000 million profit in six months.

This is a shocker of a bill. I will not support it, I am pleased that the opposition will not support it and I hope my crossbench colleagues will not support it—and I tell you what: if some of the members of the government had any guts, they would cross the floor and not support it.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017—there are so many words in the name of this bill that do not make sense to anybody in the public and there is a reason for that. The reason is the government are hiding behind this longwinded bill. They are hiding behind the fact that they are not listening, that they have not heard and that they are deaf to what Australians consider to be the most important thing in this country, and that is fairness. When Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister, took over as Prime Minister, he paid lip service to the notion of fairness. In fact, I think he suggested he would look at everything through a fairness lens. Fantasy horror is a really popular genre at the moment on our television screens, in novels and in short stories. It is happening today in the people's house—this is fantasy horror. The zombie cuts are back. They are the walking dead. I am not sure whether the bill should be called the walking dead bill or whether those opposite altogether should be named the walking dead. It is an outrage that this government brings into this chamber a bill that purports to be about early child care and education but is in fact about cuts to services and cuts to the most vulnerable in our community. These notions have been rejected. The government have tried before to distinguish between the leaners and the lifters, between the haves and the have-nots and between tax-paying and non-tax-paying Australians. They are back again today pitching parent against parent. They are pitching parents who receive family tax benefit against those parents who might be able to get a little more out of this package for early childhood care and education.

But you note that the bill's title refers to childcare reform. I am going to say it again—and I will say it every time I get to my feet on this: what has happened to the notion of education in this package? What has happened to the notion of the investment in the early years of our young people to ensure our economic future? It has gone drastically missing. So they have dug up the zombies and they have buried the education parts of this piece of legislation.

This bill is a disgrace. It demonstrates that this government is not listening. It is divided in itself, deaf to the public; it is dysfunctional and it is divisive—it is the four d's. This is a government that cannot listen and cannot learn. No matter how hard the Australian public yell, they refuse to hear, they refuse to heed and they refuse to learn the lessons. Let us go through the zombie cuts that they are bringing back—the zombie cuts that are walking around this chamber today. You may not be able to see these cuts, but, if they tap you on the shoulder, you will feel them. They are cuts to family tax benefits that will leave a typical family on $60,000 a year around $750 worse off. They are cuts to paid parental leave that will leave 70,000 new mums worse off. The bill scraps the energy supplement, which means a $1 billion cut to pensioners, people with disability, carers and Newstart recipients. It gets worse. The government want to introduce a five-week wait for Newstart. It is just a five-week wait, they say. Say that to a young person who has just lost their job and has to pay the rent next week. Do they think that young person can get their bond back, rush home, live with the folks for five weeks and wait, and then go through the whole process and gain their independence again? They live on a planet that has nothing to do with the people in my electorate, what they need or the way that they live. The bill goes further. It introduces cuts to young people between the ages of 22 and 24 by pushing them onto the lower youth allowance. This is a cut of around $48 a week, or $2½ thousand a year. It is an outrage.

This bill needs to be seen in the context of layer upon layer of everything else this government is doing or refusing to do. To that $48-a-week cut to the benefits of our young people who are unemployed, add the penalty rate cuts that they are going to suffer, which might mean $74 a week if they are working on Sundays—and where are the incentives for young people to find work?

The government have completely and utterly lost their way. They need to find their ear. Somebody give them a conch shell so they can hear the Australian public and what they have been screaming since the 2014 budget. The government need to take some listening lessons. They really need to go back to their electorates, have some conversations and find out what people really care about. Then they need to examine their consciences and examine the direction in which they would like to take this country. At the moment, we have wage growth at a record low—lower than it has ever been since we started measuring it—and we have company profits relatively historically high. The government, rather than working within that framework, are intent on driving home these zombie measures. It is a disgrace. They should really start to think about who they are representing and about how they would like to take this country forward, because at the moment they are absolutely lost. They want to talk about child care and education, but they cannot do it without holding the rest of the country to ransom. They are doing it again. They are dividing the country, parent against parent this time. We have seen that before with their gold-plated PPL, which they pulled. Now they are back and they are going to cut the PPL and hurt families and hurt the connection between mothers and their children—and they dare to call this childcare reform. It is a joke. The government need to start to listen and listen carefully to the people who are speaking to them in this country.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member for Lalor will be given an opportunity to complete her contribution at that time.