Kristina Keneally (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for that answer. It does provide some clarity. I would like to encourage the government to remember that the status resolution support services payment, which is available to temporary protection visa holder and safe haven enterprise visa holders, was cut by the government. Many people were cut off that payment and told to go out and work. It was already a precarious situation for those people to get jobs because they had a temporary visa and were living in precarious circumstances. It is now even more difficult for them to maintain employment. I am aware, from asylum seeker services in both New South Wales and Victoria, that many of these people are living below the poverty line, noting that the SRSS payment was below Newstart levels—below $40 a day—so these were people already living on the extreme margins of poverty, many of them already forced into homelessness and having to live off the charity of non-government organisations.

So I encourage the government to use the power that, I anticipate, the Senate is about to provide to those opposite to consider how it can best support them from a public health perspective, because it is in the interests of all Australians that people living in the country, citizens or not, are able to access health testing, coronavirus testing and income support so they can self-isolate or continue to live at home, as we are directing them to do, if they are unable to work. I encourage the government to remember that it is in the interests of all Australians. A virus does not discriminate; it does not check your visa status before it infects you. If people are trapped here in this country, after 30 March in particular, it is in the interests of every single one of us in this country that every single one of us, citizen or not, has access to health care and income support if we are required to self-isolate.