Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to make very clear right from the start my absolute, total opposition to this piece of legislation and the opposition of the Australian Greens party as a whole. I think it is abhorrent, I think it is atrocious, I think it is demonising and I think it is very clear that it will not work. I accept that some, at least, who are promoting this are doing so with good intentions. I think it is very clear that some who are promoting it are doing so with the worst of intentions, to yet again put in place measures to try to blame people who are poor, to blame people who are carers, to blame people who are disabled, to blame people who are sole parents, to blame people who are unemployed, to try to make their lives even more difficult and to build political points around doing so. We can't pretend there is not a very long history of doing that in Australian politics and in this parliament. I am not saying that is the motivation of everybody that is putting this forward, but it is clearly part of what is happening here.

I know it's a very wise piece of advice, in regard to articles online in the Murdoch media outrage-generation machine, when people say, 'Don't read the comments,' but these things are specifically generated to create comment and to create outrage, and occasionally it is necessary to read the comments to see what is out there. And you don't need to spend very much time to see, whenever measures like this are put forward, the stream of abuse that comes forward from people vilifying people who are poor, who are receiving income support, who are on welfare—basically revelling in the idea of making life harder for them, of punishing them, of saying they deserve it.

If somehow or other we think it's a good measure, for anybody who might have issues to do with money management or issues to do with substance abuse or addiction, to compulsorily quarantine the vast majority of their income, continually, then let's do it to ourselves. Let's see how we like it, even with our oversized salaries, to have 80 per cent of them, 70 per cent of them or even 50 per cent of them quarantined and to be told, 'You can only spend this with a card that will identify you at these particular stores who've got the special contract that's making them lots of profit through the people who own the card, and you don't have discretion.' See how you like it. See how it would make you feel. For those of us who might have issues with money management, substance abuse or addiction: do you think that would actually help? Of course it wouldn't.

We've got the evidence. We've got the so-called experiment. We've seen, as my colleague Senator Siewert said. I don't need to have been here for the last 10 years to know she has been going on for the last 10 years about how this does not work and about how it causes more harm than good. Of course it assists some people to have their income managed. Of course it assists some people, whether it's their salary, social security payments or Centrelink payments—whatever it might be. Of course it can help some people. You provide that assistance where it's needed, where they want it, where they ask for it and where they've got support around them.

As some might know—I don't know which of you here would—once upon a time many years ago, I was a social worker in what was then called the Department of Social Security. The mechanism to be able to quarantine some aspects of people's unemployment payment or pension so that their rents were paid and so that other things were paid has always been there, and it's done with support specific to the individual on a case-by-case basis. To compulsorily put it across an entire community or, as is attempted through this bill most particularly, across the entire country—and that's where this will end up; let's not kid ourselves—and everybody who receives income support, with the very strong underlying implication that they can't be trusted with their money, or that it's not really their money, that it's somehow or other somebody else's money and they shouldn't really have a say in what happens with this money, because it's provided through government payments?

We all get paid through government payments. There's no shame in that. It's something people are entitled to. People are legally entitled to income support payments, whether it's sole parents; whether it's people with disability pensions; whether it's carers; whether it's people with family payments, some of which won't apply in this case but many others will. That's a legal entitlement. It's a lawful entitlement, something our community and parliament have agreed that people should get and for very good reasons. This inference sometimes very explicitly stated—'Well, it comes from a government payment; therefore, people shouldn't have a say on what they spend it on'—is appallingly authoritarian. We had a very eloquent speech from now ex-Senator Brandis—rather long, but eloquent—late yesterday noting the appalling shift towards authoritarianism on the Right. He was misrepresenting it on the Left, I might say, but nonetheless we will take that as a debating point. But what could be more authoritarian than a government saying: 'We're going to tell you how you can spend your money. We're going to tell you where you can spend your money'? This is extremely dangerous in all sorts of ways, but it's particularly dangerous right now for the individuals it will affect.

This is particularly relevant to my own state of Queensland because the next places that are being targeted for this include the communities of Hervey Bay and Bundaberg. I would like to really pay tribute to the many people in those communities in my state who are on income support themselves—people who by definition are already struggling; people, some of whom I have met, who in many cases are long-term carers or are on disability payments for the long term. If they couldn't manage their money, they would not be alive. They can manage their money way better, I would suggest, than pretty much any of us. I would like to see any of us in this place try to cope and survive on the amount of income those folks have for more than a month or two.

Of course there are individuals who can't do that, and they need support, but, if you want a group of people in the country who are good money managers, go to people who are on long-term income support payments, people who are carers, people who have disabilities. They'll tell you how to do it far better than a government can—particularly this government.

I went to Hervey Bay, probably about six months ago, before I was back in this place, with Senator Siewert. I'd like to thank her for her commitment to going to regional Queensland—it's a long way from Western Australia—to hear from the people directly in the community. These people from Hervey Bay and also from Bundaberg—I pay particular tribute to Anne Jackson and others; sorry if I've missed out other names—organised a group of people on a bus to travel all the way down from Bundaberg through Gin Gin to a public meeting in Hervey Bay about this very issue. These were all people directly affected. These were community campaigns by people who, by definition, are battlers, who organised and campaigned because they could see not only how it would affect them but the extreme dangers this measure would have, the damage it would do, the harm it would cause because of its compulsory nature. Let me reaffirm that: it's the compulsory nature of this.

It can work for some people in some circumstances with support and with proper analysis of each individual. But to just do this blanket authoritarian control, this delegitimisation of people's control over their own lives on such a monumental scale, honestly, how could anybody think that is actually going to help the majority of people? I would like to thank those people in Hervey Bay and Jenny Cameron, who drove Senator Siewert and me around that day, and Katherine Wilks—I know there are many other names I don't have. I can't remember the numbers, but it would have easily been over 100 people at that public meeting. You've just got to hear their stories of what it would mean, hear what their lives are like, what impacts this would have. People are already copping the crap of being abused, singled out, vilified, misrepresented, stereotyped and demonised because they're a carer, because they're on income support or they're unemployed. There's plenty of unemployment and underemployment in those regions, as we all know. The last thing they need is another volley of vitriol from the shock jocks, the corporate media and everybody else wanting to reinforce some myth that somehow they're a piece of crap when they're actually more resourceful than many.

To use another example, the City of Logan, just to the south of Brisbane, as those from South East Queensland would know, is a city and a region that's often unfairly stereotyped as being a high-welfare area and there's all the negativity that goes with that. I would like to mention an event that happened just a few weeks ago on 20 January. A group called the Anti-Poverty Network in collaboration with the 'say no to the cashless welfare card' team organised a day of support for people in the local community. This group has been sitting outside the local Centrelink offices in Logan once a week for many months now, just giving information. They're not handing out party-political information; they're giving information to people about their rights and how to engage with Centrelink. If this government wanted to properly help people who are on income support payments, how about it fix up the outrageous disgrace, the unbelievable disgrace, of the non-existent service for people trying to make a phone call through to Centrelink? And that's not a slur on the hardworking staff in Centrelink, who have to deal with very difficult circumstances, but come on. I've already mentioned this since coming back to this place. But 10 years ago I was in this place asking questions about how outrageous it was—the waiting times, the inability for people to get through. These are people who are already battlers on low incomes, and they can't get through to get information about their own income. I'd like to see any of us anytime we have a problem with our travel allowance, a flight or our salary payments or whatever, sit on the phone for an hour before somebody would talk to us. Let's see how long it would take before we decided to fix that. But, in 10 years, this problem has got a hundred times worse.

According to evidence from ACOSS provided to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry, this mechanism, this compulsory income management trial, costs about $10,000 per person for a 12-month period. The actual cost to the program over the forward estimates is unknown, because it's commercial-in-confidence. Let's not forget that—there's a bit of a commercial deal happening here as well. There's a valid line of inquiry on that, but I'll leave that because I want to talk about and focus on the people who are directly affected—the battlers, the powerless, who are being hit by this. So it's $10,000 per person per year. Newstart for a whole year is $14,000. Yet this government says we can't afford to increase that. It's been disgracefully declining in value for years. Maybe they don't want to put that $10,000 into increasing Newstart. How about putting it into providing proper, tailored support for people?

This information day, the community day in Logan on 20 January that I mentioned, simply provided opportunities for people from the community to get support. The event brought people experiencing hardship together with a whole lot of services in the area. There were agencies such as Multilink, whose key focus is on settlement of new people into the community; language support; help for aged and disability sectors; support for children, young people and families; and programs focusing on healthy lifestyles for people. Metro South HHS provided free dental checks to over 20 children and advice to adults and information about oral health. A number of people received professional legal advice. Social workers helped people who needed guidance relating to homelessness and housing. An Auslan interpreter assisted with interviews and general translation. The Life Without Barriers group discussed their foster care program. The Retail and Fast Food Workers Union was available to talk to anyone experiencing workplace difficulties—an area that many people who are underemployed or on casual work and who are on and off income support payments have to engage with. These services were complemented by the Anti-Poverty Network Qld booth, which was run off its feet for most of the day by people needing guidance relating to Centrelink and Job Network agency issues.

All of this was done by volunteers, most of them on income support payments themselves. If you've got people in a community like Logan, who are on income support payments themselves, who can organise all of these things in the community for people for free, and the best this government can do is come up with this punitive, controlling mechanism to take away people's control over their own lives and what they spend their money on compulsorily—no way off it—how about you put that money into providing services? Clearly, the need is there. It's left up to the people on welfare to organise it and provide it themselves, because it's not being provided by this government. If you want to try and get it from this government, you spend two hours on the phone to Centrelink, and then your call drops out and you've got to call again. That's about the best this lot can do.

This is the same tired old script: pick on the powerless, bash the battlers. We had lots of media coverage about a vehicle called the 'Battler Bus' driving through regional Queensland at the last state election. I'd like to see the folks who travelled on that bus. It will be interesting to see how they vote on this legislation, because it's the battlers in regional Queensland who are going to cop it from these measures.

This is a clear test. Do people actually care about the lived experience of the battlers, or is this going to be another huge, monumental Big Brother: 'we know what's best for you'? Even with the best will in the world—let's forget about what is pretty obvious political pointscoring being done here by some in the government. The old pick-on-the-stereotype-of-the-dole-bludger mechanism has been tried and true for many years. Let's put that to one side. Will you actually support the battlers in their community by helping them as individuals, rather than this monumental Big Brother sledgehammer dropping down over an entire region saying, 'This is what we're going to do to all of you?' If you don't support it, it means there's something wrong with you. It means you're part of the problem. Let's see how the crucial people on the crossbenches vote with regard to this.

Now, it is important to look at the evidence. I appreciate that some from the government, with good intentions, have pointed to people in individual communities who are supporting this measure. I can understand, on the surface, why people would think: 'Well, this might work. Other things aren't working; let's try this.' But the big thing is it's compulsory. It doesn't work. I'd hate to turn into an old social worker 30 years down the track, but the evidence for so long—so long—has been that, if you do this, it does not work; it does more harm than good.

We've got the evidence from the Northern Territory intervention, as Senator Siewert mentioned. You could call that an experiment, which, as usual, was inflicted on Aboriginal people. It didn't work. I'm sure there were some individuals it helped—I'm not disputing that—but, overall, community wise, it did not work. And it cost a fortune. It worked for some of the people who got paid big salaries, coming in from outside. It worked for them; it did not work for those communities as a whole.

Talking about listening to the evidence, I will remind this chamber—and I will never forget this—in the period just before I finished in this chamber last time around, of the tabling of the Little children are sacred report and how, suddenly, overnight, we had to have this massive intervention on Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. We had to beg and kick to just get a Senate inquiry on the Friday before the legislation was heard the following week, debated and passed in this chamber.

The Senate committee that I was part of—I think Senator Siewert was part of it as well—asked to hear from the authors of the Little children are sacred report, the report that was meant to be the trigger for all this, and the committee wouldn't allow us to hear from them. It blocked us hearing from the people who wrote that report. We had to have a special phone hook-up at lunchtime, outside of the committee, so that we could hear from them directly, and they told us all the things that were wrong with this approach. Sadly, they were proven right. Let's not repeat that mistake again.