Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

Perhaps Senator Brandis would care to listen, because he did not seem to understand in question time what this bill is proposing to do. It is important, I believe, to outline just what these cuts will mean for Australians.

They include cuts to family tax benefits—cuts that will leave a typical family on $60,000 over $750 a year worse off. They include cuts to paid parental leave that will leave 70,000 new mums worse off. They include scrapping the energy supplement—a $1 billion cut for pensioners, people with disabilities, carers and Newstart recipients. They include a five-week wait for Newstart, forcing young people to live on nothing for five weeks. We have had this before the Senate before and it has been rejected. To expect people living on Newstart to live on nothing for five weeks before they can access income support is completely and utterly disgraceful. They include cuts to young people between the ages of 22 and 24 by pushing them onto the lower rate of youth allowance—a cut of around $48 a week, which is a cut of around $2½ thousand a year. They include scrapping the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment. They include a cut to the pension of migrant pensioners who spend more than six weeks overseas. These are some of the $5.6 billion worth of cuts that are wrapped up in this bill.

I ask the question and the Australian people ask the question: does One Nation support the Turnbull government's cuts in this bill, or will they stand with Labor? Will One Nation stand up for pensioners? Will they stand with Labor to make sure that this bill is rejected? Will they fight these cuts? Will they oppose this bill? They are the questions One Nation needs to answer because this bill is an absolute attack on the most vulnerable people in Australia. Those people are the ones that are saying to One Nation: 'Do not support this bill. Do not support this government in their attack on us.' (Time expired)