Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment) Bill 2019, will enable a one-off energy assistance payment to all pension, allowance and veteran payment recipients residing in Australia on 2 April 2019 to assist them with their energy costs. The energy assistance payment will be $75 for singles and $62.50 for each eligible member of a couple. The government are able to deliver this assistance because our responsible budget management allows us to guarantee the essential services Australians rely on.

The measure to make the energy assistance payment builds on a 2017-18 budget measure to make a one-off assistance payment to certain income support recipients and extends the payment to all income support recipients. It also follows on from the government's announcement, confirmed in the 2018-19 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, that the energy supplement will continue for new income support recipients. Determining eligibility for this one-off payment is simple. You must be in receipt of one of the qualifying payments and be residing in Australia on 2 April 2019. Those qualified will automatically receive the payment through the Department of Human Services or the Department of Veterans' Affairs. They will not need to take any action. No claim is necessary. The payment will not be taxed and will not reduce their rate of income support. Those people who have made a claim for payment on or before 2 April 2019 and whose claims are subsequently granted will also be paid the one-off payment.

This legislation ensures that a person cannot receive more than one entitlement and no payment will be made to non-Australian residents as they are not subject to energy prices in Australia. People who are not in receipt of a payment because they are suspended on the test date will not be immediately eligible. Those whose payments are subsequently restored through a period covering 2 April 2019 will receive the payment. Anyone who is paid the 2019 one-off energy assistance payment and who subsequently becomes ineligible for their qualifying income support payment on the test date—for example, through a review of a decision—will not have to pay it back except in limited circumstances, such as fraud.

The payment will help approximately five million income support recipients and veterans. The total cost of this payment will be around $365 million. The energy assistance payment will be paid automatically to most eligible recipients by the end of June 2019.

Leave granted for second reading debate to continue immediately.

Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Preventing Family Violence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have just had a motion in the House pointing out clearly just how incompetent or cynical—I can't decide which one—this government has been in relation to this energy payment that was announced in the budget last night by the Treasurer to apply to certain people on welfare payments but with the bulk of people on payments, including people who are on Newstart, not being eligible. Within the course of just over 12 hours, the government has had another look at this—and I would love to be a fly on the wall at the department at the moment; that would be an interesting exercise—to see whether to include people on Abstudy, Austudy, double orphan pension, Newstart allowance, parenting payment, partner allowance, sickness allowance, special benefit, widow allowance, wife pension, youth allowance or veteran payment. But most significant, as I said, is the Newstart allowance. It is a very cruel thing that the budget that was announced last night did not include these categories of people on various welfare payments.

It behoves me to point out to the House just what the history of this government has been in terms of the energy supplement. The energy supplement is something that has been attacked by this government over a long period of time. For 834 days, the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government tried to cut the pension for over 1.5 million pensioners, as well as for recipients of Newstart, youth allowance and other payments, by scrapping the energy supplement. Now we see, six weeks out from an election, a one-off payment of $75, and slightly more for other recipients of the energy supplement—a one-off payment. That is not an excuse for the lack of an energy policy; it is a simple, cynical exercise, six weeks out from an election.

But the fundamental point to make to this House and to make clear today is that this government has a long history in opposing and trying to scrap the energy supplement. The energy supplement was designed to help vulnerable Australians with the cost of power bills. Scott Morrison's plan would have cost a single pensioner $14.10 per fortnight or around $365 a year and would have cut $21.20 a fortnight or around $550 a year from couple pensioners. This wasn't a plan for a one-off cut but for a cut every fortnight, every year. And Labor opposed these cuts and committed to reverse them. It is important that we remind the House of this government's record on the energy supplement.

What we saw in the budget the Treasurer announced last night was the complete abrogation of looking after the most vulnerable in our community, and the leaving out of enormous swathes of those who are doing it very, very hard. Then the Labor Party's amendment was circulated. And, magically, by 7.30 this morning, the government had adopted that amendment. They had seen that they had made an enormous mistake—through cynicism or incompetence—and, surprisingly, they added Newstart and other payments to the one-off energy supplement.

I will reiterate what I said earlier. On 9News last night, the Treasurer, when he was asked directly about extending the payment to people on Newstart, didn't say yes. I remind people that this is what he said: 'Well, Newstart does go up twice a year. It's indexed. But, importantly, the majority of people on Newstart move to another payment or move off Newstart within 12 months. They hopefully go into work, and many have been doing that.' It was a very different script this morning, wasn't it, everyone? The Treasurer told ABC Radio:

Well, a couple of things. Firstly, the energy supplement will be extended to people on Newstart.

And Sabra Lane said: 'It will be?' and Josh Frydenberg said: 'It will be.' So there is an enormous difference between what the Treasurer presented to this House and the nation last night and what has been brought in by this Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment) Bill 2019, the second reading of which we are debating.

I also think it's really important to point out to this House that not only has there been an enormous slip-up, an extraordinary mistake, made by the government in not including the groups of people that I've mentioned, including people on Newstart, in the one-off energy supplement—the budget last night did not include those people, and, by 7.30 this morning, of course, they'd been included—but also we cannot ignore the fact that there has been a huge NDIS underspend. In fact we are looking at something like $1.6 billion of underspend towards the budget bottom line in terms of people with disability. I think this is an absolute disgrace, and there is no other way to describe it; it is an absolute disgrace.

Over five years, the government has not had the capacity to roll out the NDIS. There have been five ministers in five years, and it seems to me that none of those ministers has actually committed themselves or got their head around some of the issues with the NDIS. And the fact that there would be the cynical move to use $1.6 billion in underspend, intended for people who are eligible and deserving of those finances, to prop up the projected budget 'surplus' is a disgrace. It is not an achievement. That is the only way I can describe it.

Let us not forget that this government has an enormous history in trying to cut the age pension. Pensioners will never forget that in every single budget the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government has tried, time and time again, to cut the age pension. In 2013 Prime Minister Abbott promised that there would be no cuts to the pension, and yet in 2014 the Liberals tried to cut pension indexation, a cut that would have meant pensioners would have been forced to live on $80 a week less within 10 years. In that very same 2014 horror budget—and we will never forget it—the Liberals slashed $1 billion from pensioner concessions, supports designed to help pensioners with the cost of living. In 2015 the Liberals did a deal with the Greens political party to cut the pension to 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the pension assets test. In 2016 the Liberals tried to cut the pension to around 190,000 pensioners as part of a plan to limit overseas travel for pensioners to six weeks. For over three years the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government has refused to review and adjust the deeming rates, while the Reserve Bank cash rate has fallen from 2.25 per cent in February 2015 to 1.50 per cent today. For two years the Liberals planned to scrap the energy supplement, cutting the age pension to 1.5 million pensioners, and for four years the Liberals tried to raise the pension age to 70. Labor has fought each and every one of these cuts to the age pension—tooth and nail.

I will finish up my comments by saying that, try as they may, the government can't gloss over their gaping lack of energy policy with the energy support payment—the one that they're trying to rectify. They will have to admit there has been a massive mistake made in the budget that was presented by the Treasurer last night. After six years they continue to be at each other's throats over energy policy. Thirteen energy policies over six years! The Liberal coalition government are more interested in tackling each other than tackling climate change or energy prices. Since the Liberals formed government in 2013, wholesale energy prices have doubled. In contrast, Labor has a comprehensive plan to boost renewable energy and put downward pressure on prices. We do have an energy policy.

In closing, I go back to where I started. There was a massive, cynical, incompetent, political—call it what you want—mistake made in the Treasurer's presentation of the budget last night in terms of the one-off energy payment. They forgot Newstart, youth allowance, Austudy, double-orphan pension, parenting partnered payments, partner allowance, special benefits—the list goes on. I have read them into Hansard. And then, magically, the Treasurer is admitting that people on Newstart will be included in the energy supplement. I say to this government: it is cynicism unbridled, and the Australian people will not be fooled by what has taken place in this budget over the last 12 hours.

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

Remember how the government promised that by scrapping the carbon tax we would reduce our energy bills? I remember. Remember how the Minister for the Environment and Energy promised to deliver a $550-a-year saving on all of our energy bills when they were going to pass the NEG, the National Energy Guarantee?

And then, of course, the government decided to pull their own legislation, and we got nowhere with that. So many broken promises! I have always been happy to work constructively with government on energy policy and any other policy that they bring to this chamber. But really, with respect to energy, they haven't given us much to work with.

Back in 2017, my Centre Alliance colleagues and I negotiated a one-off energy assistance payment as a stopgap measure to help some of the most vulnerable in our community manage to get through that winter, on the promise that there was going to be that $550 saving. Of course, we never saw the saving. We did get that energy supplement through—and, remember, at the time, the government were also looking to scrap the fortnightly energy supplement that goes to many welfare recipients. They wanted to scrap that for new ones because we didn't have a carbon tax. That didn't bring into mind the fact that energy bills were rising despite that.

As part of our negotiations then, an estimated 3.8 million Australians obtained relief for their energy bills with a one-off payment of $75 for singles and $125 for pensioners. At that time I was, as I am now, particularly concerned about households that are on low, fixed incomes and for whom full-time work or part-time work is not a realistic option. These are people who receive the age pension, the disability support pension, parenting payment single and various veterans payments.

Now the government admits that the temporary stopgap measure originally negotiated by Centre Alliance must become a temporarily permanent-style payment. Without a doubt, I fully support the additional assistance for our most vulnerable Australians to keep the lights on and the heaters running. But it's a great shame that we missed the opportunity in this place to get through the NEG or to get through some sort of energy policy so that we can have a more permanent, meaningfully addressed way of reducing energy bills. Last time I spoke in this place on the energy assistance payment, I explained how I'd spoken to an elderly lady who could barely move from her bedroom because she could not afford the heating bills for more than one room in her home.

I question why the government, with respect to the payment that they announced just a few days ago and that was referred to in the budget last night, did not include Newstart and youth allowance. Why were they ignored? I understand that the government have changed position, and I welcome that they have included Newstart recipients and youth allowance recipients and a very long list of other recipients of specific payments, but the issue is: why did you exclude them in the first place? Why is it that the government have an ideology where they see jobseekers, I believe, as dole bludgers, 'leaners'—that is the term that we heard only a few years ago and one that has been a mantra in this place: 'lifters' and 'leaners'.

I think that that language needs to stop in this place. It is clearly not the case that many people who are looking for work are dole bludgers. They are there trying their absolute hardest to find employment. There are plenty of unemployed workers who, through no fault of their own, lose their jobs because their employer goes bankrupt or their factory shuts down. When you live in a regional area, there are not as many options as in metropolitan areas to find employment.

For example, in South Australia, the Big W distribution centre in Monarto is closing. This made the newspapers this week in South Australia. This is just outside my electorate. However, many of the people who are employed there are from inside my electorate and have been employed there for a number of years. I understand that there is hope that many workers will be redeployed, but the closure of the distribution centre is patently not their fault. Neither will it be their fault if they need to apply for Newstart, which I may say is an incredibly difficult process and one that unnecessarily takes many, many weeks to do.

The level of Newstart is also not keeping families above the poverty line, because it is not keeping pace with the cost of living. The Business Council of Australia, the Australian Council of Social Service and former Prime Minister John Howard have said that we need to look at raising the Newstart rate. When you have that collective, you know that there is a problem. This should be above politics. It needs to be urgently addressed. I know that recently, when there was a motion in here from Labor with respect to the payments, the minister was saying to Labor, 'Yes, but you're not saying you're going to lift Newstart.' Well, neither are the government, and they should. The government should be leading from the front on this. It beggars belief that both parties have not moved with respect to Newstart. It will lead to more jobs because people will be able to be job ready, and you can't be job ready on the current Newstart amount.

I support mutual obligations for jobseekers. No-one should ever expect to receive a free ride, but jobseekers do need an adequate level of financial support to effectively search for work and pay for their basic necessities while they are looking for work.

It is for these reasons that I am pleased that the energy assistance payment is being extended to more recipients of Centrelink. While I support this bill, I strongly urge the government to consider all the needs of all vulnerable Australians and to look to raise the rate.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to sum up this second-reading debate. The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment) Bill will enable a one-off energy assistance payment to be made to all pension allowance and veteran payment recipients who reside in Australia on 2 April 2019 to assist them with their energy costs. The payment will be $75 for singles and $62.50 for each eligible member of a couple. The payment will not be taxed and will not reduce their rate of income support. This payment will help around five million Australians at a total cost of around $365 million. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.