Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

No, not you, Senator Sterle. I want to make crystal clear that when good legislation comes through this parliament that supports the need of our farmers and our farming communities, we will support it. And we will be supporting this bill. What we won't support and what we haven't supported is a government committed to driving through laws that rip up the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. What we won't support is laws that rip billions of dollars out of our infrastructure budget, laws that criminalise journalism, laws that criminalise the right to organise and the right to protest, and laws that have been written to score political points off the back of the crisis in our regional communities and are designed to entrench the power of the government and their big business allies. The Greens make no apology for standing up to the government when they want to divide the community, one sector of the community against another.

While the Greens wholeheartedly agree that we need to continue to support farmers experiencing financial hardship, it would be remiss of me not to point out the government's odd and unexplained selectivity when it comes to income support. It's clear from this bill and the adjustment of the deeming rate for pensioners that the government can understand that some Australians really are doing it tough and need some extra support. So I ask why the government is being selectively blind to other Australians needing help. The government is happy to support farmers, and it's happy to support pensioners, but when it is clear that almost 715,000 Australians are struggling to survive on Newstart, on under $40 a day, the government is nowhere to be found. Earlier this month, The Age published a story about Alex Phillips, a Melbourne local who has been living on Newstart for six years. This is how he managed to do it:

In order to maintain the $288 per week rent on his one-bedroom flat, and pay for utilities and food, he turned off his fridge and heating. He lived on two-minute noodles, 65-cent cans of baked beans, packet soups and bread—