Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Siewert for her question. No-one has ever said it would be easy to live without a job, but one of the things that we have said as this government is that our very highest priority is to say to anybody who is living on Newstart that we will do everything that we can in the power of this government to get them off Newstart and to find them a job. We have never, ever said that Newstart was supposed to be a wage or a salary replacement. We have never said that. It is a safety net. And, in Australia, when it comes to our social welfare system, we enjoy probably one of the strongest safety nets of any country in the world. But this social welfare system is funded by the taxpayers of Australia, and we have an obligation to the taxpayers of Australia to make sure that we continue to manage it in a sustainable way. And this extends to the responsibility to those taxpayers, because we must never forget in this place—governments do not have money; only taxpayers have money. The taxpayers make available, through their taxation, the money that we use for a very comprehensive social welfare system.

But my absolute focus, as the Minister for Families and Social Services, is to make sure that this system is both fair and sustainable so that, for anybody at all in Australia who finds themselves in a situation where they need the support of their government, through taxpayer funds, to look after them in times when they need a little bit of help, our system is sustainable not just today but into the future so that future generations will always know that that safety net exists for them should they find themselves in hard times. So to anybody out there who is on Newstart: you can be absolutely assured that the highest priority of the Morrison government is to create jobs but also—