Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Strengthening the Safety Net) Bill 2023. At the outset, I confirm that the Greens will not stand in the way of people getting this tiny, tiny increase that is so not enough. It is an insult. This bill would increase the JobSeeker rate by $2.85 a day and after you add indexation it works out to be about $4 a day, which is woefully inadequate in a cost-of-living crisis and in a housing crisis. This so-called safety net bill reinforces what we already knew: Australia's social security system is not fit for purpose. Centrelink payments are not a real safety net. People can't afford food, rent, medicine and this bill doesn't change that.

The Albanese government is spending $313 billion on tax cuts for the wealthy, but it's claiming it's too poor to increase JobSeeker above the poverty line. In a wealthy country like ours, there is absolutely no excuse for keeping the income support below the poverty line. It certainly doesn't help people get jobs, and it condemns them to a life of poverty. There is no excuse for keeping the most vulnerable in poverty while offering tax cuts to the wealthiest Australians. Where are your priorities? I thought we had a change of government. We were expecting a change of policy. Labor promised in opposition that no-one would be left behind. But this bill leaves people behind—young people, students, renters, disabled people, women and people relying on income support. It leaves them so far behind. Labor has the power to help people but it's choosing not to.

One in eight people in Australia live in poverty, according to the latest figures from the Australian Council of Social Service, or ACOSS, and more than one in six children. Households where women are the main income earner experience twice the level of poverty as those where a male is the main income earner. There are 300,000 single mums who rely on Centrelink as their main source of income. We know that women make up more than 60 per cent of those relying on the lowest income support payments. We also know that women and girls made up more than 60 per cent of clients of homelessness services this year and last year. We know that rental prices are skyrocketing; we've just seen the biggest quarterly increase in rents in 35 years. And we know the fastest-growing group of people at risk of homelessness is women over the age of 45; it used to be women over the age of 55, before COVID, but now it's women over the age of 45. Across the country people are living in tents and cars, if they have one—children living in tents and cars.

As the women spokesperson for the Greens, I know these risks are compounded for women and children trying to leave abusive relationships. Women are given an impossible choice: stay in an unsafe home, or leave and put themselves and their kids at the mercy of a system of inadequate support, stretched DV services, housing shortages and punitive income tests. Professor Anne Summers undertook one of the most comprehensive studies on the interrelationship of poverty and violence, and found that a lack of money and financial support was a significant reason why women were unable to leave their violent partner. Condemning women to stay in violent relationships because of a lack of a decent rate of income support and a lack of investment in housing is indefensible. It risks the continuation and possible escalation of violence, social stigma, the loss of independence and agency, and the very life of the woman. That study by Professor Summers also found that many women who temporarily left violent relationships returned because they had no money. Painfully, returning to their violent partner seemed a better choice than being homeless and trying to survive in poverty.

The Albanese government policy, through the current National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, is meant to be to encourage and support women to leave violent relationships. But continuing welfare measures that are below the poverty line ensures that as many as half the women who are able to choose to leave violent relationships end up in poverty. The consequences of the Albanese government's choice to not stop poverty are very stark for women who are seeking to escape domestic and family violence.

I want to move to the single parent payment, which this bill also addresses. My wonderful colleague and our portfolio holder Senator Rice has already flagged we will move amendments to raise the single parenting payment cut-off threshold to when the youngest child turns not 14 but 16 years old, as well as amendments to raise income support to $88 a day so people aren't forced to live below the poverty line, which condemns them to a cycle of poverty and joblessness. Single mums are particularly vulnerable. They make sacrifices every single day—skipping meals so their kids can eat, skipping a doctor's appointment so they can pay rent, putting off dental care or not getting it at all so they can buy their kids school uniforms. Since the Gillard government's cruel decision a decade ago to drop the eligibility for the single parent payment from 16 to eight years old, single parents are losing about $100 every week once their youngest child turns eight. There's no logic to that. There's certainly no heart to that. This is an arbitrary cut-off that makes life harder for single mums and their kids. It's a change that can tip people into homelessness, and governments must act to properly fix it.

In the budget, now operationalised through this bill, the government lifted that age threshold from eight to 14, but I note that the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce, another government body whose advice the government is sadly ignoring when it comes to matters of poverty and need, said it should be 16. They said it should revert to what it was before then Prime Minister Gillard dropped it from 16 to eight. It is an arbitrary cut-off that fails to recognise the costs that single parents face when they're raising young adults. The government contended that, by age 14, children are reasonably settled into high school, but there was no rigorous analysis of the expense involved in raising high school children. There was no rationale. There was certainly no consideration of the 23 per cent rent increase in private rentals in my home town of Meanjin—or Brisbane, as it's known—in the last 12 months. The government said it was 'responsible budgeting'. I don't think it is responsible to condemn single parents to poverty and to fail to reverse that abominable change, which damaged so many families.

Many single-parent families remain stretched beyond capacity. Advocates like Anti-Poverty Week and the National Council of Single Mothers and their Children have urged the Albanese government to reconsider this. The government should support the Greens amendment, which would raise the age to 16, not 14, as the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce recommended and as single parents, and single mums in particular, around the country are begging for.

I also note that the government has been ignoring correspondence from Senator Rice and me and also, I believe, from the crossbench. It has failed to provide for families that fall through the gap—if their child turned eight after 30 June but before September, when the changes to lift it to 14 kick in. For those families, that's now up to three months of being dropped down to a payment that is clearly inadequate to meet their needs. It's three months in which they will struggle even more to put food on the table, to buy school uniforms and to pay the rent. The government must do something to support these families and prevent them from falling into poverty and homelessness. Why are you not fixing that? You can't expect people to be $100 worse every week for three months, in this cost-of-living and inflation crisis, just because you can't be bothered to change the commencement date on a provision. At the stroke of a pen you could fix this situation. I urge the government to support the amendment to close that three-month gap.

Labor's so-called safety net bill does not do enough for those who most need the safety net. Anglicare's 2023 rental affordability snapshot of over 45,000 rentals found that zero per cent of rentals were affordable for a single person on JobSeeker, and the tiny increase in the base rate and Commonwealth rent assistance that this bill will provide will do nothing to change that situation. In fact, Anglicare found that it would make one additional home, across the whole country, affordable for a person on JobSeeker—one additional home.

I'm incredulous that the government can be so wilfully blind to the real peril that so many people on JobSeeker and single mums are facing. Those opposite have the ability to fix it and choose not to. Poverty is a political choice, as Senator Rice so eloquently reminds this government every time she speaks. When you've got $313 billion that you're prepared to give to the wealthiest Australians and billions more for nuclear submarines, and you've got a $20 billion surplus, how dare you not spend that on lifting people out of poverty! How dare you have that as your priorities! We changed the government; we expected the policies to change. The Australian people are incredulous at the underdelivery of this limp new government. How dare you condemn people to stay in poverty when you've got the ability to fix it!