Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am speaking today on the Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2017. This bill will hurt Australian families. It will cut the household budget of 1.5 million Australian families. Every single member of the Liberal and National parties are about to vote for this cut to Australian families. It will do so by freezing the family tax benefit part A and part B for two years. So every single recipient of family tax benefit part A and part B—that is, 1.5 million Australian families—will be left worse off. $1.4 billion will be taken out of the pockets of Australian families by this government. That is what this bill does. Around 600,000 of these families receive the maximum rate of family tax benefit part A. That means that their household income is less than $52,000 a year. So these are low-income families.

I will give some particular examples of what this will mean for families. A family with a family income of $60,000 with two primary-school-age children will be around $440 worse off in 2018-19. A single-parent family on $50,000 with two high school children will be around $540 worse off. That is what this bill is doing to these families. A single-income couple or a single-parent family with three children under 12 will be around $605 worse off in 2018-19. So every single member of the Liberal and National parties needs to be honest with their constituents that this is the cut that they are imposing on all of the families in their electorates that are on family tax benefit part A and part B.

These cuts were actually first proposed in the 2014 budget. That is right—the horror 2014 budget, the budget when Joe Hockey decided that he would try to divide Australians between 'lifters' and 'leaners'. Labor opposed to these cuts when they were first proposed in the 2014 budget, and the Liberals withdrew them from the parliament and took them out of the budget at the end of 2015. This really goes to show that you cannot trust this government. They say they are not continuing with the cuts and then, out of the blue—literally, in this case—they put them into the Senate, push them through the Senate and now today they are going to try to push them through the House. Labor will oppose these cuts to the family tax benefit again today, just as we did in 2014 and just as we did in the Senate last week. These cuts are unfair. They are unfair because they will hurt vulnerable families right across Australia. They will make life harder for low-income families that are already struggling to keep their heads above water.

We believe that these cuts are particularly unfair because they come at a time of worsening inequality in this country. Inequality is at a 75-year high in Australia. I think Australian families are very well aware that wages growth is at record lows, underemployment is at record highs, penalty rates are under threat and Australians are increasingly being forced into insecure and casual work that does not provide an adequate income. That means that more Australians are reliant on family assistance.

As recent research from the Australia Institute shows, cuts to Sunday penalty rates for low-paid workers could blow a $650 million hole in the federal government's budget bottom line. This is because so many Australians are facing a pay cut from the penalty rates decision, resulting in less tax revenue for the government. Of course, there will also be greater demand for social security payments such as family support as people lose income. So there could not be a worse time to cut family tax benefits for low-income families.

We have a situation under this Turnbull government where the poorest families in this country are being told to accept a cut to their standard of living. At exactly the same time, we have this Liberal government wanting to give the biggest companies in the country a $50 billion tax cut. That is how much this government's company tax cut will cost the Commonwealth budget—$50 billion. In literally the same week that this government are trying to pass this legislation to cut family tax benefits from some of the poorest families in Australia, they are also trying to pass legislation to cut company tax for the biggest and wealthiest companies in the country. That is the context in which we are having this debate today.

On 1 July, the government also intend to abolish the deficit levy, which will mean a tax cut for millionaires of $16,400 a year or $315 a week. What the Turnbull government could have done if they had kept the deficit levy is raise three times as much money from a third as many families rather than have this cut to family tax benefits. If the government had kept the deficit levy, they would have raised $4.4 billion compared to the $1.4 billion worth of cuts that low-income families will suffer as a result of this bill.

If the deficit levy was necessary in 2014 when the deficit was $11 billion it is more than necessary now that this government has done the most extreme thing, which is see the deficit go up to $37 billion. It has gone up to $37 billion from $11 billion in just over three years of this Liberal government. As I said, all of this is happening at a time of worsening inequality. The latest economic data shows a massive 20 per cent surge in company profits while wages for workers have fallen by 0.5 per cent. What we see from this government and all of the Liberals and Nationals who are going to vote for this is that they are prioritising tax cuts for millionaires over support for low-income families. They are prioritising company profits over the household incomes of ordinary Australian families.

These cuts to families by the Liberals are not an isolated incident. The Liberals really do have form when it comes to cuts to families. If we look further into the 2014 budget, the Liberals actually tried to cut $8½ billion, and those opposite who were there in 2014 voted for all of those cuts. They wanted to take $8½ billion out of the pockets of families—cuts that would have left an average family on $60,000 around $6,000 a year worse off; cuts that would have seen families lose family tax benefit part B when their youngest child turned six. Given that this cut in the bill before us today was in the 2014 budget, who is to say that the other cuts from the 2014 budget will not also be brought back from the dead, just like this freeze to family tax benefit payment rates has come back today? You would have to say that the Liberals simply cannot be trusted when it comes to support for families. They cannot be trusted not to bring back these harsh cuts from the 2014 budget.

In the 2015 budget, the Liberals tried to cut $4½ billion from family tax benefits. In that same budget, they proposed to crack down on what they called double dipping of paid parental leave. That was another billion dollars they wanted to take out of the pockets of new mothers. The current Treasurer even called new mums 'rorters' for accessing both employer and government paid parental leave schemes. Just last week, this Treasurer recommitted the Liberals to zombie measures contained in the old omnibus bill, which included: cuts to paid parental leave that would have seen 70,000 new mothers lose money; scrapping the energy supplement to pensioners; the five-week wait for Newstart that would have hurt young jobseekers; cutting the pension to pensioners after they spend more than six weeks overseas; and scrapping the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment. We know the Treasurer wants to double down and keep all of those cuts. It really does demonstrate that you can be in no doubt that the government have not learnt one thing from the reaction of the Australian people to the very harsh and cruel cuts in the 2014 budget. They still do not get fairness. They still want to rewrite the social contract in Australia and, it seems, they want to refashion our country into the image of America, where the market is king and an underclass of working people work in jobs that do not pay a living wage.

This bill was rushed through the Senate last Wednesday. It was introduced into the Senate with just 10 minutes notice. The opposition had not seen the bill and we know, of course, that the government is going to try to ram this through the House today. It has been an extraordinarily chaotic process that has, of course, prevented any serious consideration or scrutiny of the cuts contained in this bill. I am particularly disappointed that the Senate crossbench decided to rubberstamp these cuts. It did so without any scrutiny. The house of review certainly did not do its job. If it did, it would have realised that these cuts will hurt low-income Australian families.

The government likes to say that the cuts contained in this bill are going to be used to pay for the childcare changes. I am very pleased that the member for Adelaide is in the chamber with me today, as she has done so much to draw attention to these issues and to the failings in the government's childcare changes. All along, Labor have said that the government's linking of cuts to family payments and the changes to child care was an artificial link. All along, we have said that it was robbing Peter to pay Paul—taking from one family to pay for another. All along, we have said—and particularly, the member for Adelaide has said—that the proposed childcare reforms were flawed. We were not the only ones to say that. Jo Briskey from The Parenthood said:

Thousands of families had to see their family tax benefit payments frozen and thousands of vulnerable kids had to have their access to early learning cut in half, just to see cheaper child care for other families.

The government decided to reject expert advice to preserve access to a minimum of two days' care and early education for vulnerable Australian families, and particularly the children in those families.

The Turnbull government has jeopardised vulnerable children's access to early education. That is what the vote on child care has done. It has done so to the point where experts in the sector actually called for the childcare bill to be blocked in its entirety if this problem was not fixed. Early Childhood Australia put out a statement last week calling on the Senate to reject the childcare changes because they were unfair to vulnerable children. That really is quite extraordinary. It does underline that the government's cuts to family payments and the childcare changes will not lead to good policy outcomes for many vulnerable Australian families and their children.

I also want to address the claim by the Minister for Social Services that the cuts in this bill are the same as the changes to family tax benefits made by the previous Labor government. You will not be surprised to know that the Minister for Social Services was not telling the truth and was not accurate in his claims. In question time last week, the minister actually read from a press release from myself and the member for Lilley from 2009. Not surprisingly for this minister, he cherrypicked a few quotes from the media release. Of course, that is something that he does regularly to mislead people. But the minister failed to mention that the media release did not say anything about freezing family tax benefit payment rates. On the contrary, it said: Labor was implementing a family tax benefit part B primary earner income threshold, remaining at $150,000; the income threshold for receiving dependency tax offsets would remain at $150,000; the baby bonus eligibility threshold would remain at $75,000 family income; and the high-income free area of family tax benefit part A would remain constant. It was nothing to do with what this bill is about, nothing to do with the freezing of family tax benefit rates, which is what this government is on about.

While I am talking about this minister and his record, the Minister for Social Services was the Treasurer in Western Australia. If ever there was a demonstration of economic mismanagement, his record is it. This is the minister who, as Treasurer of WA during the height of one the greatest resources booms this country has ever seen, actually managed to increase the state debt and the state deficit. The state of Western Australia is now expected to see net debt reach $41.5 billion by 2019-20. They have a deficit in WA of $3.3 billion. That is the Minister for Social Services' legacy to the people of Western Australia—record levels of debt and huge deficits. The voters of Western Australia did not just reject the Barnett Liberal government at the recent WA election; they also rejected the incompetence of the Minister for Social Services during his time as Treasurer of Western Australia.

As Fairfax journalist Peter Martin noted in a recent article, the Minister for Social Services:

…promised spending growth of 7.9 per cent in 2011-12, and achieved 10.2 per cent. And he borrowed more, boosting state government debt from $13.4 billion to $18.2 billion in two years.

So this minister has absolutely no credibility when it comes to fiscal management. He fundamentally mismanaged the West Australian economy during his time as Treasurer and we will certainly not be letting him forget it.

This legislation also contains some other measures that I want to touch on. The bill will freeze for three years the income free areas for all working age and student payments. What that means is that, for three years, the income test applying to payments for single parents, jobseekers and students will not keep pace with the cost of living. This measure would prevent those income free areas for allowances and student payments from keeping pace with the costs of living.

We all know that Newstart is already too low. This bill will make life harder for people on Newstart who have a small amount of work. It will affect 264,500 Australians on the lowest incomes. The thresholds being frozen are already incredibly low. Just to give the House an example: for people on parenting payment, the threshold after which their payment is reduced is $188 per fortnight. I think everyone would agree this is not a high threshold. And there appears to be no policy rationale for this change. For Newstart, the change will mean the threshold will be frozen at $104 before their payment begins to be cut. These thresholds, as a result of this bill, will be frozen for three years. It will impose a further disincentive for people to get more work if their income free areas are frozen at such low thresholds. We on this side do not support this measure.

If this bill passes the House today it will see an extension of the one-week waiting period that currently applies to recipients of Newstart and sickness allowance. That will see the one-week ordinary wait period apply to both Youth Allowance—jobseeker—and parenting payment. The government also wants to make it harder for people who are already in a difficult financial situation to access the financial hardship exemption, by requiring that they also be experiencing a personal financial crisis. This is just another demonstration of who of this Prime Minister really is. He is going to put more and more pressure on those who are doing it the hardest.

I also want to speak briefly about the proposal to automate the process by which the Department of Human Services collects income stream information. This will mean that from 1 January 2018, a six-monthly electronic data collection process will be introduced for income stream information from financial service providers. We do think that having a more regular and efficient means of collecting income stream information will improve the accuracy and timing of the data being collected. So Labor will support this measure as it underpins a more systematic, efficient and accurate reporting system. However, if the government does not pull that measure out, we will not be supporting this bill.

We on this side do not support the proposition that you need to cut family tax benefits to pay for child care changes. And we certainly do not support the proposition that anyone should agree to take food off the tables of Australian households to give big business a $50 billion tax cut. We do not think that vulnerable families should be made more than $400 a year worse off, especially at a time of increasing inequality in Australia. It is bad public policy. It will make struggling families carry the burden of budget cuts. We on this side of the House will stand up for families. We will oppose this bill.

To that end, I move:

That all the words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"The House:

(1)   declines to give the bill a second reading because it includes cuts to Family Tax Benefit that will leave 1.5 million families worse off, freezes income free areas for 264,500 recipients of income support and student payments, and forces young people and single parents to wait one week to access income support; and

(2)   calls on the government to drop their unfair cuts to families and vulnerable Australians on very low incomes.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

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

I second the amendment.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Jagajaga has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form that the amendment be agreed to. The question now is that the amendment be agreed to.

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

I rise to oppose the Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2017. It is really interesting. Last week in this chamber, we saw a plethora of government members speaking on their enterprise tax plan that will give $50 billion of tax cuts to the biggest corporate entities in the country, including $7.4 billion to the biggest banks. They were proud of their legislation, without any analysis, details or research to counter the fact that it would not make an appreciable difference to employment. Over a long period of time—10 years—it will make a 0.1 per cent improvement in employment. The Gonski funding and needs based funding alone would bring in three times that amount of improvement in terms of employment and growth in the country.

Today I look at this legislation which was rushed through the Senate without the opposition having the opportunity to look at it and without any parliamentary committee being able to examine it. Sadly, many of the crossbench are supporting it. How proud would the coalition members be to speak on this particular legislation today? They were very proud about the fact that they would give $50 billion worth of tax cuts to the big end of town. Look at the list of those persons who are going to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2017. They include the member for Jagajaga, the shadow minister; me as the shadow minister for immigration and border protection; the member for Lyons; the member for Lalor; the member for Oxley; the member for Lindsay; the member for Bendigo; and many more Labor MPs.

I was thinking about just how proud the coalition members would be to cut social service payments, including family tax benefit payments, for 1.5 million Australian families and to rip $1.4 billion out of their household incomes. But not one of them is speaking on it—not one. I got up and spoke after the member for Jagajaga. Another one of my Labor colleagues will speak after me. And on and on it will go. Not one member of the coalition backbench—certainly no holder of a marginal seat—is proud to come into this place and speak on this particular bill. They do not have anyone speaking on it. Look at their benches over there. No-one is going to get up and proudly support this particular legislation. They will not. Do you know why? It is because they know the adverse impact it will have on their constituents, with the most vulnerable Australian families being adversely impacted.

The government have their priorities all wrong. They give $50 billion of tax cuts to big corporate Australia, but they will not defend 700,000 Australians who will get $77 a week less as a result of the Fair Work Commission decision that was handed down recently, they will not support Labor's proposed legislation to protect the living standards of those workers, and they will rip away the deficit levy, giving millionaires more than $16,000 a year in tax cuts. Allegedly, that deficit levy was introduced to address the issue of debt and the deficit, but the government have tripled the deficit and added more than $100 billion of debt to the bottom line. They are the biggest-taxing government in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia. When they were opposition, they said they would bring in a surplus in their first year and every year thereafter. They have tripled the deficit and added more than $100 billion of debt.

This legislation shows just how out of touch their priorities are. The issue of weakening protection against racist hate speech seems to have really vexed them and caused them to be distracted for such a long time. Their priorities have drifted. They seem to be divided and dysfunctional. Certainly, that is why the Australian public is disillusioned with them; the polls clearly show that. This bill is an attack on the most vulnerable Australians. It had its origin in their much-vaunted 2014 budget. That is the budget that was handed down by the then member for North Sydney and lauded for a day or so until the Leader of the Opposition said that Labor would fight tooth and nail against the cuts to family payments, the cuts to family tax benefits. This is not responsible fiscal budget repair—not at all. This government's approach seems to be targeting vulnerable Australians. It is almost as if the Prime Minister is held hostage to the far right of the Liberal Party. Now he is trying to undo them.

The bill introduces four key measures: a freeze in indexation for working-age and student payments, the introduction of waiting periods for parenting payment and youth allowance applicants, the freezing of indexation for family tax benefits and the automation of income-stream review processes. While we support efforts to improve income-reporting systems, there are things in this particular legislation that are chilling attacks on the basic social contract upon which this country is built.

The first measure proposed in this legislation is in relation to indexation. It is an egregious attack on some of the lowest-earning Australians. The bill would freeze for three years the income-free threshold for payments including Newstart, youth allowance, parenting payments and carers payments, leaving the income test for single parents, jobseekers and students trailing behind the cost of living. They are going to be worse off; 204,000 of the lowest-income earning Australians will be worse off. These are payments that enable some of the neediest and the most hard done by people in our country to get through the week financially—to feed and clothe their family, to make sure that they do not become homeless and to live a decent life. For many of my constituents in the electorate of Blair in southeast Queensland, these payments make it possible for their families to keep a roof over their kids' heads and to put food on the table when they fall on hard times. For others, the payments provide support for those who provide constant, around-the-clock care and support for family members in need.

The government feel that they can target these Australians. It is appalling; it is simply appalling. The thresholds that will be frozen by this bill are already dangerously low. For people receiving Newstart, the threshold is currently about $104 per fortnight. For single parents wanting to access the parenting payment, the threshold is a little better—$188.60. What possible sense is there in making this less? Do the government understand at all what these people are going through? According to the government, the answer to that question is definitely no. They have no idea what is happening in the lives of these people.

The introduction of further waiting times for income support is yet another assault on vulnerable Australians. This bill would see the recipients of parenting payment and youth allowance forced to wait seven days before they can receive their payment. To be eligible for youth allowance, you must not be undertaking full-time study and not be an apprentice. The unemployment rate in this country is higher than it was during the global financial crisis. It is 5.9 per cent. Nearly 1.1 million Australians say that they would like more work. They are underemployed. We have well over 700,000 Australians who are unemployed and not able to find work. We know from reported figures that there are 6,400 fewer jobs while as many as 33,000 part-time employees lost their jobs in the same period, in the last month. But, instead of taking concrete action to protect these jobs and build apprenticeships, the government have ripped nearly $2 billion out of jobs and training. We have 135,000 fewer apprenticeships in this country than when the government came to power four years ago. If the government were bothering to listen to those in need, they would not bring in this legislation today.

Most people I know do not look for a handout; they look for a way to get through the week, trying to do everything they can to pull themselves up and get a better life for themselves and their family. The government are making it harder for them to get a job and harder for them to make ends meet. We know this is only the start of what they want. We know that if they had their druthers, if they really did what they wanted to do, the $8.5 billion in cuts in the 2014 budget would have passed. But for the opposition of Labor they would have passed. We have consistently protected those people and stood up for them.

The Prime Minister is not listening and nor did his predecessor, and that is why they turfed him out. This Prime Minister had a near-death political experience at the last federal election, getting by with virtually a goal, in AFL terms, or a field goal in rugby league terms, in the last minute to win the election. This bill should not be here. This bill will have an adverse impact on his political fortunes. Those opposite will wear this because, at every debate that Labor members have at the next election, I guarantee we will raise this particular legislation. We will raise the fact that this is what they are doing to families. Tens of thousands of them in my electorate, in Ipswich and Somerset in south-east Queensland, will be adversely impacted by what this government is doing. What possible reason has the Prime Minister for this particular legislation? What possible priority does he have? He is not content with attacking jobseekers and single parents. This bill hurts families. This is a family tax benefit cut. It is a piece of fiscal repair so unpopular that those opposite cannot even bring themselves to speak on it in this chamber. It is beyond belief that this is the sort of legislation that the government think is a priority.

From 1 July 2017, indexation for the rates of family tax benefit parts A and B will be frozen for two years. That means that for two years the payments that those families receive and rely on will be out of step with the cost of living, cutting $1.4 billion straight out of the budgets of Australian families. We have a situation where 1.5 million Australians will be adversely impacted by this legislation. The changes in this particular aspect will hit every family receiving family tax benefit, leaving over half a million low-income families worse off. Six hundred thousand families are already receiving the maximum rate of family tax benefit part A, meaning that their household income is less than $52,000 a year. It is difficult to understand why the government would do this—the impact on low-wage households; the cut to family incomes making it harder to make ends meet. A family earning $60,000 with two children in primary school will be $440 worse off by 2018. A single parent on $50,000 with two high school students will be $540 worse off by 2018. A single-income family on $60,000 with three children under the age of 12 will be $600 worse off by 2018. It is just inexcusable that the government would do this. The government do not have their priorities straight. They claim from time to time that the cuts are necessary to pay for their childcare reforms. How can you get a situation where you spend $1.6 billion and leave one in three families worse off with your childcare reforms? At times they claim that these cuts are necessary to fund the NDIS. It is simply astonishing that they would do that. It is shameful and disgraceful that they would hold that position. The cuts are not necessary to fund the NDIS. They were not necessary in relation to the childcare reforms.

Every year I relaunch the Blair Disability Links directory, which provides families living with disability and their carers information about the different local organisations and services. Every year I do that. At my most recent launch, we saw 50 organisations from Ipswich and Somerset take the opportunity to gather together to highlight the work that is being done. The priority for the government should be looking after the vulnerable Australians. The priority for the government should be looking after children who need a lift up and a chance to get a good education. The priority for the government should be to focus on the people they talked about and those who attend the Blair Disability Links expo every year. That should be their priority. If they want to talk about priorities, the government should look at privatisation in terms of restoring the funding that they are cutting for community legal centres. I just met with representatives from the Australian Services Union in a parliamentary briefing in relation to the cuts that the government are undertaking in terms of community legal centre funding and cuts they are undertaking in mental health funding and gaps.

We know that the Personal Helpers and Mentors and Partners in Recovery funding is being rolled into the NDIS, and some of those services are delivered by Aftercare, through headspace, in my electorate, in Ipswich. If the government want to talk about priorities, do not prioritise this sort of legislation; prioritise funding for the NDIS, prioritise funding for PhaMs, prioritise funding for Partners in Recovery and prioritise funding for community legal centres. Make sure these things need to be funded and make sure those are your priorities. Do not prioritise funding for the big end of town and do not prioritise tax cuts for millionaires; prioritise funding for families, children and those living with disability and their carers. That is where the government's priorities should be, not this sort of legislation. I urge them to withdraw it. Go back to the drawing board. Stop being divided and start being committed to the unity of the Australian public and the Australian social compact.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A freeze on family payments is a cut to family payments; those opposite can play as many word games as they like. Are rents and mortgages going to freeze for two years? Are supermarkets going to freeze the price of groceries? Are power companies, water utilities, councils and private health insurers going to freeze their bills for two years? This two-year freeze on family payments is a cut and it is one that Australian families cannot afford—and that is assuming this remains a two-year freeze. We have all seen how this government likes to extend what are supposed to be short-term freezes. A Medicare rebate freeze introduced by Labor shortly before the 2013 election and meant to last less than a year remains in place after five years of coalition government. It is little wonder that I have zero confidence that this supposed two-year freeze will fare any better.

Once the indexation of family payments is frozen, what guarantee does this government offer that the freeze will be lifted? What assurances on anything could this government give that could ever be believed? This is a government that is sneaky, untruthful and uncaring. This is a government that takes money from families, pensioners, students and workers, lecturing them about the need to rein in the budget deficit and the duty not to saddle future generations with debt, but, in the next breath, gives massive tax cuts to millionaires and a $50 billion handout to corporations and banks.

As well as freezing family payments for two years, the Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2017 extends waiting periods. The impacts of this bill affect 1½ million Australian families. Many of them live in Tasmania. I can tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, the constituents of my electorate cannot afford yet another cost-of-living wallop from this government. In my electorate of Lyons, 9,200 families receive family tax benefit A. Such households earn less than $52,000 a year. These are people already doing it tough. In Lyons, 6,967 families receive family tax benefit B to help make ends meet. Families with two primary-school-aged children in Tasmania are looking down the barrel of being $440 a year worse off. Those opposite may scoff and say, 'That's just a coffee or two a week,' but these are people who already struggle to meet their bills. Taking $8.50 a week from families who already scrape 20 cent pieces together for bread and milk is a real impact.

We must never forget that these measures are not new. They have been dragged off the shelf, and the cobwebs and dust have been blown off the cover. The cover would have had on it the words: '2014 budget submission: Treasurer Joe Hockey.' That is right—this is a submission from one of the worst budgets ever to be presented to this House, a budget so awful that it ended the parliamentary career of the former member for North Sydney and led to the downfall of the member for Warringah. It comes from a budget that brought us the infamy of 'lifters and leaners' and the image of the former Treasurer and the Minister for Finance puffing away on cigars in the parliamentary courtyard, content at a job well done.

These measures were born of a budget extraordinary for its meanness and its calumny of the Australian people. One would have thought this government would have preferred to never again be reminded of that budget of horrors, but the Liberals never let a bad idea die. They just put it on the shelf, where it waits to be reanimated. And it is the member for Pearce, the Minister for Social Services, who gets to play Dr Frankenstein. He has brought out the jumper cables and he has zapped Joe's zombie back to life. Like any good zombie, this one is going to be let loose to shuffle about in the community, wreaking havoc and leaving tears and tragedy in its wake.

There has been no consultation on this measure—neither of key stakeholders nor of the families who will be personally affected. These measures are striking in their meanness. At their heart, they make ordinary families pay the price of meeting the government's objectives to balance the budget and rein in debt, but the same government is removing its deficit levy on millionaires and still intends to hand $50 billion to corporations and banks. Families get a cut in income; corporations get a cut in tax. It does not make sense. Family tax benefits are in place for a reason: they stop families falling below the poverty line.

This bill also attacks students, amongst others. Students are generally thought of as a political free kick, but students in high school and at university are our sons and daughters. They are our grandsons and granddaughters and they deserve support. Many of them already do it tough. Many of them live at home. My own daughter is a university student, and she lives at home. She has the privilege of living at home and of having most of her expenses met by her mother and me. But there are a number of university students who do it very tough in the community. They need to pay rent and petrol, afford a car and buy their own textbooks. These are the people who will be hurt by these measures. They are already doing it very tough, and this just makes life tougher for them.

Students and others will see their income-free areas frozen for three years. This means that single parents, jobseekers and students will not be able to keep pace with the cost of living. This is particularly problematic when you consider that most income-support payments are already below the poverty line, so these cuts will push people who are already doing it tough to live in even harsher conditions. Practically speaking, these cuts will mean people on Newstart allowance will only be able to work three hours on the minimum wage before they are over their threshold and their payments are impacted. These moves do not encourage people to get work and stay in work; they punish them. This is a disincentive to getting out there and making a go of it. These measures kick the people earning the least in our nation.

We are a wealthy nation, one that can and should look after everyone. Freezing indexation is a cut—a plain, ugly cut. It is a cut when the people relying on these payments cannot afford it. It is an unfair cut at a time when inequality in this country is at its worst for decades. There has never been a time in living memory when income inequality in this country has been worse. There is an old saying: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and unfortunately that is true in Australia at the moment. It is this parliament's job to rein in that inequality, not make it worse.

This is a cut when wages growth is at record lows. Wages are stagnating. It is a cut when weekend penalty rates are under threat. This parliament has been debating for more than two weeks the penalty rate cuts that are coming into place for low-income workers, people who depend on penalty rates, on Sunday rates, for their income, people who face a $77 a week loss from their pay. It is a cut when workers are being pushed back into part time and casual work, when they are losing the security of full-time permanence. They lack security. They lack the ability to plan financially for the long term. This is a cut when company profits are surging 20 per cent, while wages for workers fell by half a per cent. I am pleased that company profits are doing well. When companies do well, workers do well. I am happy to admit that. I myself am formerly a small businessman. But there comes a time when we have to look at where the profit share is going. When companies are making these huge profits, where is the community dividend? If wages are flat and if the poorest people in this nation cannot afford to make ends meet then you have to ask: where are those corporate profits going? How are they helping the community?

These are cuts that the other side seem not to realise will hurt small business. They will bring in less tax revenue. When we cut the pay of so many people and so many families the downsides are immeasurable. The Liberals prioritise company profits over everyday Australians. In my first speech in this place I said that we live in a society, not an economy. The economy exists to serve us. We do not exist to serve the economy. That is so true in these words today.

Labor is not okay with these cuts. We oppose them. Attacks on families are not on. Families are the backbone of the Australian community. Those on the other side just do not seem to understand fairness or the concept of a hand-up rather than a handout. Just this week in Tasmania we heard about pensioners doing it really tough, running out of money and eating poorly to get by. I am holding up the feature page from the Sunday Tasmanian. It reads: 'Thousands endure a life of struggle.' A thousand Tasmanian pensioners told their story to the newspaper about how hard life is on the age pension: a pensioner couple buying an '$8 pack of supermarket sausages' and dividing them up into three portions to last three nights. We are a wealthy nation. We can do better by people who live so hard. These are the people who built this great nation with their hard work, their sweat and their tears, but now they cannot even afford fresh food and vegetables. It is shameful.

This bill also seeks to automate processes. If the coalition had agreed to excise that element from this bill we would support it. But seeing that they have insisted it be part of the entire bill we have no choice but to oppose the bill as a whole. The bill also extends waiting periods for Newstart and sickness allowance by another week before payments begin. Sickness allowance! The government is making people wait longer to get sickness allowance! This government is all about kicking people when they are down. It is a low act. Anyone who gets sick or loses their job is waiting longer to access even the small payments that help them get by. It is shameful.

Labor will not support this bill. It is not fair that those who are doing it the toughest are forced to do it even tougher. Struggling families should not have to carry the budget burden those opposite are creating. Australian families should not bear the burden of repairing a budget when this government is prepared to give $50 billion over the next 10 years to corporations and banks. We can do better as a nation.

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

I rise to join my colleagues today to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2017 and the amendments put forward by the member for Jagajaga. The government believes the only way to improve the budget is to go after the vulnerable, and we are here again talking about another piece of legislation that is highlighting their attack on students, their attack on pensioners and, in general, their attack on people receiving any payment from Centrelink. They refuse to lower the deeming rates for our pensioners, they refuse to adequately fund our schools and they will not do a thing about the glacial rollout of the NBN. Yet, here we are again talking about changes to social services and, again, an attack on the most vulnerable in our communities.

We saw their desire to drain middle and working class Australians manifested in their manufactured debt recovery debacle. We have seen that and we have talked about it in here time and time again, and we still have a government refusing to stop and change that system to make it less onerous on people in our community, and more fair.

I understand and appreciate that this government is constantly having to split up their regressive policy ideas so that it might be difficult for people to keep up if they do not particularly pay close attention to politics. So let me tell you this: this speech is going to be the same speech I have been giving in this place since 2014, since the diabolical budget we woke up to in 2014, where this government's priorities were laid clearly on the table. They want to shower largess on the big end of town while chasing people down rabbit holes and putting their hands in their pockets to scrounge and take from the most vulnerable in our community.

Since 2014 Labor has stood up for the people of Australia whom this government thinks it can bully and devalue. Since that 2014 budget, even with a new Prime Minister, this government still has not managed to get itself a set of priorities that are acceptable to the broader Australian public, that are acceptable to all of us here who come to represent our electorates. The same priorities are here, the same division is here and this legislation demonstrates that just one more time.

This legislation has in it a freeze on key payments. This is the new strategy of the government—what I call the 'kick them while they're down' strategy. This means that there will be welfare payments that will see freezes. That means that the amount of money given to recipients of Newstart, youth allowance, the parenting payment and the carer payment will remain at their current rates for three years, irrespective of how much the cost of living increases in that time. We have a government that want to come in here in question time, where they know that perhaps they will get on the TV at night, and talk about electricity price hikes, but while the televisions are not focused on us they want to cut the lowest incomes in our community. The rhetoric is about, 'We want to save you from price hikes,' but through the back door they want to put a freeze on the most vulnerable, who will therefore not be able to afford to pay their electricity bills. If you already struggling to make it on one of these payments, things will get a lot worse if this government gets its way. In fact it is expected that this particular change will make 204,000 Australians worse off.

I know that the majority of those opposite like to get on their feet and demonise those in our communities that need support, those who have fallen on hard times or who lack the networks or the training and require a hand up, those—like people in my electorate—who are lurching from one casual or part-time job to another, those people who need support in between positions, those families who are reliant on a pay packet from week to week and have no certainty about what next week's pay packet might look like, those families who are not sure that the casual hours that they got this week will be available next week and those who find themselves perhaps running a small business with an ABN and are reliant on the weekly receipts of the work that is going on in our community. Any slowdown in housing in my community has ramifications throughout the community in terms of people's weekly incomes, and a lot of those families and a lot of those working young people who are reliant on work in those industries might wake up one day and realise that they need to visit Centrelink.

Let me get rid of this notion that people wake up around Australia going: 'You beauty, I'm going to go to Centrelink today. I'm gonna give up work and I'm just gonna retire permanently because there's a safety net in this country that means I can do that.' Those opposite seem to be stuck in a picture of 1970, where dole bludgers were on the front page of every newspaper. Life is not like that for an ordinary Australian. Life is not like that in my community. People who get up in the morning and realise they have to go Centrelink, because there is not going to be a pay packet next week, go there with dread in their hearts. As someone who worked in schools, I have to tell you how difficult it is to get the young people in my electorate to even say they will go to Centrelink. They are proud people. They want work. They want full-time work. There are 1.8 million people in this country who are underemployed or unemployed. Those are the ones who are walking through the doors of Centrelink. Those are the ones who are requesting assistance to get them through the hard times—not necessarily permanently; perhaps just for a month—and this bill that this government wants to get through this parliament is going to make those things more difficult.

I want to burst that bubble. They believe that there are somehow lazy people that they have demonised into people who want to sit back at the beach and have Centrelink look after them. In my electorate it is a very different story to that, and I would suggest that across Australia it is too. We have had mutual obligation in this country for a long time. Those who are fortunate enough never to have to interact with Centrelink may not understand what mutual obligation is, but everybody who has ever been through those doors understands what it means. No-one thinks they are going onto a Centrelink payment permanently in this country, and people who are there are not there because they are lazy.

I will take, for instance, Peter Grant, a man in my electorate who was once fit and gainfully employed. He worked full time in a job that paid up to $2,000 a week. He had a good job. He would regularly ride and he would regularly run. He was a leader in the community, involved in sporting groups and someone who really was enjoying life living in the electorate. His life fell apart when he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis three years ago. The life of this man, who takes more medication each day than I can fit in my medicine cabinet and is in permanent pain, fell apart with that diagnosis. His life fell apart with that pain. He is being denied the disability support pension and is being forced to live on Newstart, because somebody in this world thinks he, a man whose pain is preventing full-time work, is being lazy.

This bill will also go to ordinary waiting periods at Centrelink. Currently, recipients of Newstart or sickness allowance must wait seven days before they can receive a payment. One could argue that is fair or unfair; I would suggest it is unfair. This measure will extend this waiting period to recipients of parenting payment and youth allowance for a person who is not undertaking full-time study and is not a new apprentice. This is a Grinch measure. This is kicking them while they are down. On their worst day, when they have to go to Centrelink, they are going to walk through the doors and be told, 'That's all well and good, but you'll have to wait another week.'

This schedule also provides that the current exemption available on the basis of severe financial hardship will apply only if a person has experienced a personal financial crisis. Why are they at Centrelink if they are not in a personal financial crisis? For goodness sake, wake up. This is not something people do for fun. They do it so they can pay the rent. They do it to avoid eviction. They do it so they can meet a mortgage payment. They do it so that they can pay the school fees. They do it so they can go to the doctor. They are not walking into Centrelink until they have a personal financial crisis. Who goes there unless that is the circumstance? And what will happen now?

They will walk into Centrelink and be told, 'It's really sad that you lost your job last week' or 'that the factory closed down'. Perhaps they had worked in the car industry. It is really sad that 4,000 car industry workers in my electorate are facing a jobless future. They will walk into Centrelink and be told, 'Perhaps you'll have to wait a week.' So they will go down the road to one of our community organisations, possibly to seek support, perhaps for a relief package.

The community organisations in my electorate are down to one relief package per family per year under this government. The cuts across the sector have been absolutely drastic. They have got their hands tied behind their backs and are trying to deal with preventative measures to keep people in their homes or in their rental properties. That situation is being exacerbated now. They will have people who are already in personal financial crisis walking through the door and seeking advice on how they might prove that to Centrelink, and seeking assistance for the week in which they have to wait until there will be support from Centrelink. These are families. These are people with children.

I heard a story in the electorate quite recently—it is actually a good-news story—about a family that had gone through some really hard times in previous years. A mother and her children found themselves sleeping in a car. They have turned the corner, and mum has found employment and they are now in a rental situation. It highlights for me how quickly people can slip—it is not a slippery slope; it is a cliff. If you are reliant on casual employment, this is a cliff when the bad news comes. If you are working for a company that employs a small number of people, you have no recourse in terms of unfair dismissal; there are redundancies happening. Young people show up for work one day and then are told, 'Work has slowed down, guys—sorry, we are going to have to put you off.' Do they ring Fair Work to find out what they are entitled to? These young people have to negotiate with their employers to see if they can get their two weeks that might be owed for leave plus the two weeks for redundancy. Do they have to do all of this by themselves? They are not doing that. They are saying, 'Thanks, boss, for the time you employed me' and walking out the door and then facing the hard decision to go to Centrelink, to be told, 'You'll have to wait a week.' The rent is not going to be paid and the bills are not going to be paid. They are going to be back on mum and dad's doorstep. That is the reality here. To put this waiting period in place seems absolutely insane to me. What is the cost of this in our communities? What is going to be the cost to mental health? What is going to be the cost on the ground in communities like mine compared to the savings that this government thinks it might make?

The other big thing in this bill is the indexation freeze on parts A and B of the family tax benefit for two years from 1 July 2017. Currently the payments are indexed annually, on 1 July, by the consumer price index. This means that the payments families receive will not keep pace with the cost of living for two years. Let us not misunderstand this. This is a government that thinks that people should lose possibly $77 a week in their penalty rates and that people who are reliant on the family tax benefit can no longer have that indexed to CPI. In Lalor, this is a big issue because it affects many families of the 1.5 million families across the country who are reliant on family tax benefit parts A and B, or part thereof. Almost 600,000 of these families are on the maximum rate of family tax benefit A, which means their household income is less than $52,000 per year. In certain sections of the electorate of Lalor the average income is $52,000 per year, so you can imagine the number of people in Lalor who are reliant on the family tax benefit—and now they are going to face a freeze. The impact on families and significant. A family on $60,000 with two primary school age children will be around $440 worse off in 2018-19.

I will finish on this point, because I know it is ringing in the ears of the people in my electorate—that is, while a family on $60,000 with two children is going to lose $440 from this government, millionaires are going to get $16,400 on the same day in tax relief, and big business is still lining up for its $50 billion tax cuts. The priorities of the government are absolutely absurd. They cannot manage getting legislation through the parliament, because they are deaf to the notion that they need to address the issue of fairness. The Prime Minister promised when he took the leadership that he would see things through a lens fairness. He has failed to do so. Being on our feet again today discussing this proves that just one more time.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It should not be any surprise that we are standing here yet again defending the most vulnerable citizens of Australia from yet another attack by this government. It is a relentless attack, and we will continue to stand up for families and individuals who are the victims of it. The Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2017 is cutting $1.4 billion from Australian families. Those opposite are not willing to back down on their tax cut for big business, but they are willing to pull the rug from under a whole bunch of people who are just trying to get on with living with some dignity.

So let us look at the individual parts of this bill that we are opposed to. Firstly, there is the freezing of indexation on payments. This bill freezes for three years the income-free areas for all working-age and student payments. So, for the next three years, the income test for single parents, jobseekers and students will not keep pace with the cost of living. Admittedly, wages growth is the slowest on record. That will help keep CPI down on one level. But the problem is that the ABS says that hourly rates of pay excluding bonuses grew by 0.48 per cent for the quarter in seasonally adjusted terms, leaving the annual rate at 1.87 per cent. The year-on-year increase was still the lowest level on record. So people are getting the lowest wages on record. And, at times, you would think that freezing something, putting it on hold, slowing down an increase might be a sensible approach. But why would you do it to the people who are already under pressure, with the lowest possible incomes?

Let us talk about Newstart recipients. There are 1.8 million people looking for work. When you have businesses like KPMG and the Business Council of Australia calling for an increase in the amount of money jobseekers have to survive on while they are looking for work, you know you have a real issue. Right now I am not sure if most people even know how much people looking for work are allowed to earn before their payment begins to be cut: it is $102 per fortnight—$51 a week—that they are able to earn to supplement Newstart.

I have people young, old and in-between coming into talk to me about their desire to work and about the efforts they go to to try and get work. They are demoralised. For young people, their families are feeling desperate. These are often families where they have not known unemployment, so these are issues where you just wonder: why do we have to make things harder; how much harder do we seriously want to make it for students; and how much harder do we want to make it for parents?

For parenting payments, the threshold after which the payment is reduced is $188 per fortnight. This is already a really low threshold: it is $94 a week. The same freeze applies to carer payments—and this is one that is particularly concerning for many carers in my electorate of Macquarie. People on carer allowance have often given up full-time work in order to care for a parent, partner or child. They can find themselves in a precarious financial situation not completely of their making. It is something they have chosen to do but sometimes with a sense of financial misgiving, because something unexpected has happened—illness or disability of a loved one. If they can manage to do a few hours of work a week and earn a bit of extra income, they tell me it is not just about the financial benefit; it is about the opportunity to have a change of environment and interact with other people outside their immediate family. You cannot underestimate the mental health benefits and social connectivity that those few hours offer; however, this freeze is yet another blow for people trying to maintain their work connections, which can be so important for them, if their circumstances change and they are in a position to re-enter the workforce in a full-time capacity.

The freeze also applies to single parents—yep, there is a group you really want to make life harder for. Not only are many single parents already juggling study with young families so that when they can return to the workforce they have the necessary qualifications but now we want to make it harder for them to earn a bit of extra money to be able to pay for soccer boots, enrolling in netball or that school excursion. Quite frankly, that aspect of the bill is just plain dumb.

But then we have got the stretched-out waiting periods. The decision to extend waiting periods before being eligible for youth allowance and parenting payments is another part of the bill that we oppose. It is just another example of this Prime Minister's inability to comprehend what it is like to struggle to make ends meet. Currently, if you receive Newstart or sickness allowance, you have to wait seven days before receiving payment. Goodness knows how you are supposed to buy food or pay your rent in that time. By the time people have accepted that perhaps they are not going to get a job any time soon—or actually they are really sick and will not be able to get back to work—they have generally exhausted all the savings and goodwill of friends and family that have kept them going.

We were able to beat the plan to extend the Newstart wait to five weeks, but the leopards opposite do not change their spots. Extending the one-week measure to parenting payments and youth allowance recipients is equally hard to understand. Anyone who has been through the application process for youth allowance already knows that it takes forever to finally be granted eligibility. To be considered independent for youth allowance, you have already funded yourself through work for 18 months so, if you have had a gap year, you are starting uni without any government support—you are often relocating cities, you are paying for transport to and from uni and you are buying text books—and now they want people to just hold on another week.

The only possible explanation I can find for this is that it is desperation by the government to find some savings. They are penny-pinching and aiming it at the socially disadvantaged and politically defenceless. I think Ross Gittins said it well when he wrote that it showed 'the government is near the bottom of the barrel in the quality of budget savings it's prepared to make'—not the savings it could make but the savings it is prepared to make. I can see why he concludes that 'this government is near to being morally, politically and economically bankrupt'.

I now turn to the family tax benefit, which will freeze indexation of the rates of family tax benefit parts A and B for two years from 1 July. Right now, the payments are indexed—that is pretty logical; these are benefits that families rely on to cover the costs of raising a family, and the cost of living goes up every year. This means now that the payments families receive just will not keep pace with the cost of living for the next two years.

The first cut happens in just three months time for that financial year. It will not be the last though: the second cut will kick in in July next year, and the effects will be felt at the end of that financial year. Let's think about the impact of these cuts on families: a family on $60,000 a year with two primary school-aged children will be around $440 worse off in the second year of this cut; a single parent on $50,000 with three children under 12 will be $600 worse off in 2018-19; and a single parent with two high school children will be around $540 worse off in the same year. As always with this government, it is not necessarily a huge amount of money for those opposite, but for the families whose children just do not seem to stop growing—and they do not seem to stop eating for that matter—it is a real hit to a tight, if not already stretched, budget.

The families who will have to cope with these cuts are not an abstract concept in my electorate. There are 8,500 families who receive family tax benefit part A. There are 6,500 Macquarie families on family tax benefit part B, all of whom will lose assistance. They are in Bligh Park, Wilberforce and Bowen Mountain; they are in Mount Riverview, Hazelbrook and Katoomba, and everywhere in-between.

Peggy from Lawson wrote to me recently to explain just how important the family tax benefit payment is to her family. Peggy uses the money to pay for her car registration, because it is very hard to save up week to week for such a large expense. She says that to have the payment reduced or taken away would be disastrous for her family.

A freeze has the same impact as a cut. It will reduce her ability to be able to cover a significant annual bill. As Peggy says, the end-of-year return is more use to her than an extra $20 per fortnight, as in the scheme of things that would mean very little to her lifestyle. But the consequences of taking away that end-of-financial-year payment will pervade her entire year, and she worries that it may leave her without a car in the very near future. So that is the human impact—and I have to tell you: you do not want to be a mum in the mountains unable to access a car. If we had a city public transport system, you might think it was a reasonable decision to make, but once you take away a vehicle from a family in the Blue Mountains you are isolating somebody.

That is why we oppose this undermining of the family tax benefit. These families are part of the 1.5 million families who will be worse off under these changes. More than one-third of them are on the maximum rate of family tax benefit A, which means their household income is less than $52,000 a year. I recall the government tried to do this in the 2014 budget, but after fierce opposition from us it was dropped from the budget in the mid-year forecast in 2015. Who knows what else from that horrific budget they are planning to bring back in a month's time? You have to wonder how many of these families will also be hit by the cut to Sunday and public holiday penalty rates, which would be another blow to their budgets. We think that all of the measures I have spoken about should be removed from this bill.

It has fascinated me to see the way this government has sought to fund its child-care package, especially one that leaves one-third of children and their families worse off and that has been at the expense of other families, playing one family off against another—in some cases, playing one child off against another. This is the priority of this government: hit families and the lowest income people.

But it is not just this bill. It is also the cuts to community legal centres. It is the $30 billion cut to education and the failure to fund the full Gonski so that we have needs-based funding that is fair for every single child. It is the ongoing decision to freeze the Medicare rebate to GPs. When will that be lifted? Until it is, there is no security for people that a visit to the GP is within their budget. It is also the failure to fund housing and homelessness services. It is the failure to adequately support the community sector, which is under more and more pressure. These are the sort of decisions, when you use a freeze as a way to patch up a budget—a budget I should point out, where the deficit is three times greater than what they started with, blowing out of the water the self-proclaimed myth that those opposite are good economic managers—where the impacts are long-lasting.

I want to finish with one measure in the bill that we have agreed to support—that is, the automation of income stream information. The aim of this measure is to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the social security system. I see this as a way of avoiding the awful robo-debt letters that people have received, demanding money that may or may not have been overpaid several years ago. The more quickly a discrepancy can be picked up, the smaller the error will be and the easier it will be for welfare recipients to correct the situation. They are more likely to still have payslips and receipts, so it will be a far less painful process. Clearly the current system of income data collecting has failed many honest Australians who reported their income correctly—only to have a computer say 'no'. It must be backed by human beings, who have a key role in the process of ensuring that what we have seen in the robo-debt debacle is not repeated.

I would like to speak about one of my constituents, a retired academic Annabelle Solomon from Winmalee, who was diagnosed with melanoma last year. In the midst of intense therapy for her cancer, she received a letter from Centrelink asking her to confirm her income from 2014-15. She was a casual lecturer at the Western Sydney University at the time, some weeks working many hours and other weeks very few. She was also at retirement age and entitled to a part pension. Every fortnight she reported her income and received some payment, depending upon her earnings, but she was told that she had a debt worth thousands of dollars. Annabelle fought this. She came to me; she went to the media. As a result of all of those efforts, Centrelink realised that they had made a mistake. In fact, recently, again while midway through treatment, she was given the news that there is no debt at all. Annabelle says that the whole process was dehumanising. I hope those opposite are proud of what they have done to someone undergoing cancer treatment—a completely unnecessary thing to have occurred. Let's hope that this legislation prevents that. There are people in my electorate like Annabelle who will never forget the treatment that they have received.

Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise with my colleagues on this side of the House to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2017. It is not my intention to go into detail about our concerns about aspects of this bill; I think they have been very well articulated already by members on this side of the House. I will, however, touch on a number of the measures within the bill, in particular the measure that the member for Macquarie just spoke about—that is, the automation of the income stream. I also do want to make some broader comments and some observations in relation to what this bill represents and the overall narrative that is developing about the government.

It seems to me that what we are discussing today—and the speech by the member for Jagajaga from this side of the House articulated this—is the desperate attempt by this government to try and reclaim some of what was in the 2014 budget measures. I think the member for Macquarie's quoting of Ross Gittins shows very clearly that the overall narrative that is emerging—and I have been around parliaments for a very long time—is of a government that does not care about people who are vulnerable; it does not care about people who are poor or people who are sick.

This bill demonstrates very strongly what the government is saying to many thousands of parents and to over 1½ million families in Australia. All of those families live in the electorates of everyone that is represented in this chamber, and that point should be noted very much. You only have to look at the tax cuts that will be provided to the people of wealth in this nation on 1 July and the refusal of the government yesterday in question time to directly answer whether or not those tax cuts would be held back. The other thing of course—this has been well articulated by previous speakers—is that not just this bill but a number of bills being brought forward by the government over the course of this week have had no speakers or very few speakers from the government. This includes the bill in relation to rural students accessing earlier payments from Centrelink, which was a positive story for the government. It just astounds me that there is not even an effort from the government—I hope the media is taking note of this—to provide speakers on its own legislation. I have never seen, in 14 years of experience in parliaments both in New South Wales and in this one, a government too lazy and not organised enough to provide speakers for its own legislation even when the legislation is noncontroversial and has bipartisan support from this side of the house. It is astounding—and, as I said, I hope the media is taking notice of this—that a government does not even provide speakers on its own piece of legislation when that legislation has bipartisan support. It suggests to me a laziness, it suggests to me an attitude of not caring and it also suggests to me that ministers who are responsible for those pieces of legislation have not had their staff organise a speakers list for the legislation. It is something that I have never seen before.

If you look at what was going on in the Senate yesterday and today, at the attacks this government is making on people who believe in decency and who believe in a community that does not lend itself to racial discrimination and at the idiotic attacks on 18 C and the lack of a logical approach to that piece of legislation, you start to get a sense of what this government does or does not stand for. The absurdity of attacking poor and working families is something that this side of the house will never, ever agree to. That is why Labor will oppose this bill in its current form.

We have said very clearly to the government that, if they separate the measures around automation of income stream from the bill, we will support that aspect of the bill. But I suspect that the government, with its lack of finesse, its laziness and its lack of capacity to organise its legislative program, will not agree to that particular measure, even though it makes absolute sense and, as the member for Macquarie said, would avoid to a very large measure the debacle we have seen with the robo-debt recovery. It just says to me, once again, a lack of finesse and laziness that this government displays in terms of its legislative framework.

I have no doubt that this is yet another measure, like the robo-debt recovery measure, about a money grab. These measures—this bill and others—will do nothing to invest in more jobs in Australia; create more training programs; lift people up who deserve that lift up into employment and into being able to maintain some sort of decency in their homes, be that registering a car, making sure their kids are well dressed to go to school or putting food on the table. It is as we have seen with this government's rush to attack penalty rates on Sundays.

All of those things add up to a narrative. That narrative is not being misunderstood by the Australian community and that narrative is clearly increasingly not being misunderstood by the Australian media. It is about being mean, penny-pinching and prepared to kick those who can least afford it to grab money to fill a budget black hole. That is not the way to run a government and that is not the way to have good and fair governance for all communities and for all citizens in Australia. It is attacking the most poor and ripping away from the most vulnerable to try and fix up a budget problem when it is obvious how that budget problem, in part, could be fixed. Labor has said time and time again in this chamber, 'Do not give a $50 billion tax cut to the rich, do not attack things like family tax benefit and do not attack and take money—in fact, it is almost like stealing—through something like the robo-debt recovery scheme, where many people have paid back debt that is non-existent out of fear and out of giving up trying to deal with Centrelink.'

These cuts, as I said, will leave at least 1½ million families worse off in electorates like Barton that I represent and those you represent. It astounds me that there is not one person from the government who will stick their head up about the things that are affecting people in their electorates. We know they are affecting people in their electorates. Elements of many of the electorates that are represented by those opposite, from both the Liberal Party and the National Party but particularly the National Party, are very poor and have experienced entrenched disadvantage over a very long period of time. If the measures that I have outlined were about creating employment, improving the system, refining the processes of Centrelink and putting more resources into Centrelink, you could understand the silence from the other side. But, when none of those things are evident in the legislation we are dealing with today or in other pieces of legislation, you have to wonder why there is such a silence. It is obvious that this government and this Prime Minister stand for nothing anymore, because, if this government and this Prime Minister stood for something, we would not be debating the harsh measures in these pieces of legislation, which are simply a money grab. They are not about good policy or good governance and they are certainly not about the people they will directly hurt. This bill will hurt families and those studying for three years. These measures will affect 204,000 Australians on the lowest income. For three years, the income of single parents, jobseekers and students will not keep pace with the cost of living. This is just another form of attack from this government on hardworking families and those trying to improve their lives.

As with other speakers, I am so disgusted with the cynical idea that, if you attack people who need Centrelink assistance, who rely on welfare and who are doing it hard, people will not care. The cynical politics says that you can go ahead with your attacks. That is wrong—people do care. As I have said in this chamber before, the one thing that Australia stands for is fairness, and people can see just how unfair the decisions of this government have been over a very long time.

This bill also introduces a one-week waiting period before people can access parenting payments or youth allowance. Once again, this is not common sense; it is simply about saving money. There is no rationale for this other than just as another attack on people who may be facing some difficult financial situations. The only explanation can be that, as I said, it is an attack on everyday Australians. I have articulated, as did the member for Macquarie, the measures around the automation of the income stream and how we will support that if it is separated from the rest of the bill. Clearly, because there are no speakers from the government in this debate, that is not going to happen—and I recognise the story about Annabel that the member for Macquarie spoke of.

I also have been privy to many of the submissions that are coming into the Senate inquiry on the robo-debt issue, and I can say that even the department's own submission demonstrates, writ large, just how many mistakes have been made in that process. In fact, the department is saying, 'Well, it's not so bad because not as many mistakes have been made in assessing the family tax benefit.' Isn't that an indication of just how bad the situation must be? Labor stands for fairness, Labor stands for equity and Labor stands for supporting those who can least afford the sorts of attacks and cuts in this legislation and other pieces of legislation that this government has introduced. We will not support the ongoing attacks on Australian families.

I finish by saying this. It seems to me that, when you reduce yourself as a government with these sorts of attacks without any positivity or any indication that these measures will be beneficial to anyone, while stubbornly refusing to rule out tax breaks for the most wealthy and those who can most afford it when you are attacking the people who can least afford it, that indicates a government in decline. That indicates a government that smells. It smells of unfairness, it smells of defeat, it smells of disorganisation and it smells of chaos, and the time will come when people will reach that conclusion. (Time expired)

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I follow on from my colleague the member for Barton and acknowledge her contribution to this chamber and her advocacy for the disadvantaged in her community and across the country for the last couple of decades. I am really proud that Labor speakers are defending the most vulnerable in our community—because this piece of paper in front of me, the speakers list, says it all. It says there is a complete blank page from the government. This is a government that apparently says these reforms are necessary; this is a government that says the Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2017 is critical; but not one speaker—and I will go further than the member for Barton—has the guts to get up and defend the government's decision. Not one. Last week, we heard them all, one after the other, squawking away about critical issues, apparently, such as enabling more racial hate speech, but not one speaker has the guts to come into this place and defend or justify the impact of their decisions on the thousands of people in my electorate and over one million families across Australia. I say that not only is it shameful; it is gutless. It is a government that will not look people in the eye and explain exactly what it is going to do, so the member for Barton is exactly right to highlight the arrogance of those opposite.

This government is known for its incompetence on a whole lot of things, whether it be the Centrelink robo-debt disaster or whether it be the ABS failure—on it goes. But it is now getting a name for itself in the community as an arrogant government that is completely out of touch. I am sick and tired of the language that this government uses about 'lifters' and 'leaners' and 'double dippers' and 'rorters'—fingering everyone else, blaming everyone else, but not taking responsibility for its actions. It seems that those opposite think this is a good idea, that they think ripping up the safety net and support for working families in my electorate and in other electorates across Queensland is a good idea. I note that none of the marginal seat members from Queensland are walking in here to defend these measures. Where are the member for Petrie, the member for Flynn, the member for Leichhardt, the member for Dawson? None of them have the guts to walk into this chamber and explain to their communities or to the broader national community why they think it is acceptable to rip up the social safety net. But we are not surprised, because this is a pattern writ large by this government. The priority of this government—as we see week, in week out—is looking after the top end while the bottom end has to pay for it. Time and time again we see that—lining the pockets of the large corporations, the big banks et cetera with a large tax cut of $47 billion but at the same time hitting Australian families, pensioners, jobseekers and people living with a disability to pay for this voodoo economics, this trickle-down economics.

Let us look at this bill. This bill will cut $1.4 billion from Australian families. It is crystal clear that this Prime Minister, shackled to the extreme right of his own party, thinks it is okay to cut family support and to cut the payments that people rely on. Labor speakers have talked about case studies demonstrating what these sorts of payments mean to people, but the government thinks it is okay to cut these payments and look after the large multinational companies and banks. Those are the government's priorities; we know that and the Australian community are seeing that day in, day out. We know the genesis of this policy framework: it came out of the horrific 2014 Abbott-Hockey budget. I note that the former Treasurer was back in Australia yesterday, in this building. Who can forget those images of the then Treasurer and the finance minister on budget night chomping down on their cigars, having a big laugh, cranking the music up, 'The best night of my life,' dancing in the office and then the Treasurer, minutes later, walking into this place and telling the rest of Australia, 'Look, sorry about that; I know we didn't mention it during the federal election campaign, I know we didn't mention it before the election, but, by the way, you are all going to pay for it, and you are going to pay for it through the nose.' We saw how that all unfolded and, as a result, we saw the disastrous reforms that they attempted to introduce. We then saw a leadership regime change within the Liberal Party because of that disaster, and now we see the government again go back to form—nothing has changed; there is no new sense of leadership and no new sense of responsible government. The government is trying to ram through these measures. It is still the bedrock of this government's policy framework to rip out support and the safety net for those who need it the most.

If I am wrong, if I am not speaking the truth, then one member of the government should get up and say so. One member should have the guts—the minister, or the assistant minister at the table, if he feels inclined. The member for Hughes is in the chamber; he always has something to squawk about. He is always on his feet ripping out the salary of low-income workers or defending the extreme right-wing racial hate speeches from his own party. He is always up for that challenge, yet he is eerily silent today on this important matter. It is not a minor matter; it is not a tinkering of legislation—it is a major sledgehammer for the thousands of families who call my electorate home. Let us be clear about what this bill intends to do: it will freeze for three years the income-free areas for all working-age and student payments on support programs such as Newstart, youth allowance, parenting payment and carers payments. And all of this when inequality is at a 70-year high—2½ million Australians live below the poverty line and hundreds of thousands of Australians are unemployed. These new measures would affect 204,000 Australians living on the lowest incomes. I want to underscore that: the lowest incomes.

I did a mobile office in my electorate on Saturday, and a young mum came to see me and said she wanted to ask me some questions about what was going on in politics in Australia. I said, 'Absolutely, let's have a chat.' She wanted some straightforward answers from her representative about why the parliament and why this government focuses on one thing—how to make more wealthy people more wealthy and how to look after big corporations and the top end of town. She just wanted a simple answer, and she wanted a government that would focus on her needs—on what her family needs. I have to be honest, she admitted to me that she did not vote for me. She told me, 'I believed the lie'—her words—'about what the Prime Minister said about jobs and growth.' There are no jobs for her and her family, and she does not see any economic growth happening for her community. I can be pretty sure she is not going to waste her vote on this government again. I know that is just one person, but one person makes a difference. All the stories I have heard from families, young people, pensioners and the people who rely on government support show that this government is only interested in one thing: ripping apart the social safety net.

We know that, at the same time, they want to make it harder for people who are in difficult financial situations. We heard this week that members of parliament have been lobbied by the community sector. The people who provide financial support, community support and outreach programs, community legal centres, support for domestic violence services—all of those homeless and at-risk services that operate in my community and some of the disadvantaged areas across Australia are facing a cut from this government. A billion dollars ripped out of the community sector; 30 per cent cut to legal aid; all of this happening while at the same time this government thinks it is okay to impact Australia's social safety net by $1.4 billion. When will this government start listening?

The real kicker in this bill is the 1½ million Australians who will suffer at the hands of this government under their proposed plan to freeze the indexation of family tax benefits. That is 1½ million Australian families who are part of this government's relentless plan. They want them to do the heavy lifting for them, for their trickle-down economics, at the same time handing over that big tax cut to big business. These are the payments to low- and middle-income families to help them cover the costs of getting their kids to school, of paying family bills and helping them to get ahead. We have seen this attempt by the government to cut family tax benefits, which affects 14,330 families in my local area who receive Family Tax Benefit Part A, many of whom will be worse off as a result of this latest cut, in addition to 11,477 families who will lose $354 as a result of the abolition of the Family Tax Benefit Part B end-of-year supplement. This means that, as a result of this bill, payments to families will not keep up with the cost of living.

When you go out and about in the community and talk to families, people are doing it tough. Despite all the nonsense and slogans we hear from this government, the feeling on the ground, the actual feeling of what is happening in the community, is that people are struggling. This government does not say, 'How can we help you?'—it says, 'How can we hurt you?' Of the 1½ million families that I just mentioned, 600,000 will be directly affected by the cuts to Family Tax Benefit Part A, and these are families whose income is less than $52,000 per year. I will say that again: families who are on less than $52,000 a year are going to take a hit. The impact on families, as we have heard from Labor speaker after Labor speaker, is that a family on $60,000 with two primary-school-age children will be around $440 worse off, a single parent on $50,000 with two high-school children will be around $540 worse off in 2018-19, and a single-income couple on $60,000 with three children under 12 will be $600 worse off in 2018-19. That is money taken out of the pockets of hard-working Australian families. This government's priority is not to look after them, but to look after big banks and multinational companies. That is their priority. Everyone knows that. The Australian community is seeing that time and time again.

The truth is that the focus and vision of this government for Australia's future is about destroying the social contract for this country. We have seen that over and over again. This is even before we get to the appalling situation where this government thinks it is acceptable that penalty rates should be cut—that the 10,000-odd people in my electorate who rely on penalty rates, who get up early and go to work, sacrificing time away from their families on Sundays, should get a pay cut. I do not support that, and mainstream Australia does not support that. Time and time again we are seeing the extreme right wing hijacking this government. Once upon a time we kind of understood what the Prime Minister stood for. Now he only stands for what will keep him in office. Listening to the right-wing zealots in his own party, whether it be about supporting more racial hate speech or now, in today's debate, which those opposite are refusing to engage in, either arrogantly or ashamedly not wanting to engage in this debate today, or too afraid to acknowledge that they are impacting the family budgets of 1½ million Australians.

I will say it again: Labor will fight these changes every step of the way. Labor will always stand up for fairness and Labor will always stand up for the family who needs it most. Bill Shorten, the Leader of the Opposition, will continue to lead this fight. Every single Labor member of this House and the other place will fight right to the end, because Australian families deserve a fair go. They simply are not getting it under the Turnbull government.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in opposition to this bill and in support of the amendment moved by the member for Jagajaga. What we can say with certainty about the effect of this bill is that it will increase poverty in Australia. It will make income inequality greater. It will leave poorer people worse off. That is guaranteed by the parliament passing this bill. It simply represents the twisted priorities and how out of touch this Abbott-Turnbull government is when it comes to protecting the interests of vulnerable Australians and at the same time giving massive tax cuts to the wealthiest and largest corporations in this country.

Despite unprecedented levels of income inequality in our nation, the rising cost of living and more Australians unemployed and underemployed, this government continues to pursue tax cuts for massive global corporations, while at the same time putting their hands into the pockets of some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of our community. These past few weeks have solidified this government as the true enemy of the Australian worker. Their support for a reduction in penalty rates for some of the lowest-paid casual workers in this country truly represents what they are all about. This particular bill is a further attack on the interests and incomes of low-income Australians. This bill is another slap in the face to hundreds of thousands of Australians who are just trying to make ends meet and trying to survive from week to week. But this government does not get it. They do not understand how much some Australians, particularly those on less than $50,000 year, struggle from week to week. That is why Labor cannot support this bill.

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, and the member for Kingsford Smith will be given an opportunity at that time to complete his contribution.