Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Strengthening the Safety Net) Bill 2023, and I want to add to the chorus of my Greens colleagues who have spoken today and echo some of their comments in relation to what this bill represents. It legislates the four income support measures that were contained within the 2023-24 budget, the first one being allowing single parents with children up to the age of 14 to access the single parent payment. The others are increasing the rate of working-age and student payments such as JobSeeker, youth allowance and the partnered parenting payment, Austudy and the youth disability support pension to a measly $56 a fortnight; reducing the qualifying age for a higher rate of JobSeeker from 60 to 50 years, and increasing the maximum rate of Commonwealth rent assistance by 15 per cent. I'll be very clear from the start of this speech that these increases are not enough. An additional $56 a fortnight is not enough.

The Greens will not stand in the way of this increase today. We were pleased to see it increased over the weekend, but it's still not enough. This bill ignores all the evidence from the countless inquiries, all the advocacy from organisations, the testimonies of lived experience of Australians on these payments and calls from the members of their own parties to do better. Under this legislation, JobSeeker payments will still keep Australians below the poverty line while this government will persist with nuclear submarines and stage 3 tax cuts for billionaires. The government had an amazing opportunity to make a real difference. They absolutely did. Yet they chose not to. They made a political choice not to.

The Greens have long called for the base rate of all income support to be lifted to $88 a day. We believe that everyone has the right to access adequate high-quality resources to enable them to participate fully in society, and this includes the additional targeted services and supports that people need. It's about meeting people where they're at. It's very, very simple. People should have those resources that they need to live a fulsome and dignified life, and that should in fact not be a controversial statement to make in this country.

I would like to also acknowledge the work of my predecessor, former senator Rachel Siewert from Western Australia, who did an amazing amount of work in this place. After Rachel left, her incredible work has been picked up by Senator Rice, who has helped expose the true centre-right agenda of this government which in fact presents itself as progressive. It's beyond my comprehension how they can actually do that.

This bill is far from the ambition and compassion that people on welfare payments deserve to be shown. Under these changes, people will still be forced to make a choice between paying their rent, paying their bills, buying their medication and buying food. They're the choices they have. A survey was conducted of people living on Centrelink payments. It found that 62 per cent of those respondents, so over half, were eating less food or in fact skipping meals altogether. They're making a choice, that they've been forced into, between rent, bills, food and medication. People in this place and the other place have gone on record saying that they couldn't possibly live on these payments, and yet they expect millions of Australians in this country—the Lucky Country we call it—to live on these payments. What an absolute joke.

For those folks who are watching out there, those in the gallery, politicians in this place will say, 'We couldn't possibly survive on that,' but we expect Australians to. And the sick joke is that, on their comfortable salaries, politicians will say: 'This is all we had to offer. This is a choice we made in this budget. We were being responsible.' On the weekend we heard the minister, Minister Rishworth from the other place, go on national TV and say, 'This is what we had to offer in the budget, and we dished it up.' With an estimated surplus of $20 billion, this is all they have to offer Australians.

One in eight, or 3.3 million, people in Australia live in poverty right now. More than one in six of our children live in poverty. Poverty is in fact that political choice. This government and previous governments—the coalition can't escape from this—made their choice to keep people in poverty in this country. Being on income support is not a personal failing. It's not bad budgeting. It's not laziness or some of the other excuses that you've heard people use to talk about those who are on income support. It is the decisions that are being made right here in this building that are keeping people—women, children and our families—in poverty. Make no mistake, these are not just numbers—we can bandy those numbers around and talk about those; these are very real human people at the core of this issue. They are people that are isolated. They are crushed by the poverty that this government has now left them in.

I am going to talk to some of the quotes they shared during the Senate inquiry into the extent and the nature of poverty in Australia. One of them said:

To be on income support and have no money is very dispiriting. It is crushing. It is soul destroying. You become socially isolated.

Another said:

… I have seen how this country treats poor people. I've been on the receiving end of it long enough to have had a gutful, and it regularly—

I want to emphasise the word 'regularly' in the evidence this person has provided—

makes me think, 'Hey, maybe death might not be such a bad idea.'

During the inquiry into this bill, one witness also stated:

… this increase doesn't recognise how close I am to homelessness. It doesn't recognise how close many of my friends are to homelessness. It doesn't recognise the people who already are out of a place to live and how it's impossible for them to find anything.

…    …    …

I wouldn't call it a safety net; I call it a parachute with holes. If you're on JobSeeker, you're going to hit the bottom at some point. I do think ending up on JobSeeker puts you into a state of poverty, and it makes it much harder to get out of that.

These stories are absolutely heartbreaking. We must never forget about the real human impact that the development of legislation and laws in this country around welfare has.

This government has been very averse to breaking election promises regarding the stage 3 tax cuts, but it has never been more happy breaking promises that, as others have said today, were about leaving no-one behind. How many times did we hear that during the election campaign? Labor said they would leave no-one behind, but what have they done? In this bill they have left people behind, and they continue to do it. Young people, students, renters, disabled people and First Nations people are all being left behind.

So often it is the case that the impact of these decisions will be felt disproportionately, particularly by my people. In fact, 31 per cent of First Nations people across this country already live in poverty and over half of the First Nations people in very remote communities also live in poverty. At a time when we are talking about last week's report from the Productivity Commission about closing the gap and only four of the 19 targets being 'on track', we know that First Nations people are poorer, get sicker and die earlier. We all know these stories. I sit here and listen to people on both sides of this chamber say to me, 'We've been out to these communities.' Well, the pretty picture you're trying to paint when you do that for your own purpose is not the pretty picture here. Communities are not given the support they need, and that extends to the matters contained in this bill. The intersectional issues of poverty cannot be ignored. However, that also means no-one should be living in poverty. Regardless of age, race, gender or postcode, it is utterly shameful that millions of people in this country—a wealthy country like ours—are forced to live in poverty because of the political decisions of the government.

I would like to finish up with just a few statistics that might bring some understanding to this. Information that was talked about on Insiders yesterday shows that we've had increases to food and beverages of 7.5 percent and increases to rent. In a time when we in the Greens, along with the coalition, are being blamed for stopping the housing bill, rents in this country have gone up 6.7 percent, and everyone is deaf to that. This is particularly impacting upon people on income support. Electricity has gone up 10.2 percent and gas has gone up 22.2 percent in this country. It is unacceptable that we should sit here and talk about that $56 a fortnight that we're so-called giving to people to get them closer to getting out of poverty.

The quote that I want to finish with is from the Antipoverty Centre's submission to the Senate inquiry on the extent and nature of poverty in Australia. It says:

We reject the ideological underpinnings and framing of poverty as a "wicked problem" lending itself to intergenerational cycles of disadvantage that cannot be helped by simply giving people money.

This narrative serves the interests of the architects of the poverty machine and those who perpetuate it. It is the reason why, despite endless cycles of consultation, targeted programs, and "place-based" experiments there are more of us in poverty, not less.

Supports and services can never fulfil their aims while trying to counter the effects of having insufficient resources. The idea that people need enough money to live should not be a radical one.

The biggest barrier to escaping the poverty trap isn't inherent human flaws, it's poverty itself.

We must continue to understand and work to bring forward those stories of the human element of the impact of what's happening across this country. It is our job. The reason that we have been elected to this parliament is to make sure that we hear what the Australian public are telling us, and what they are telling us is that this is insufficient. This is not enough and we are not listening. This government is not listening. Over on this side, we are listening and, as I've said, the work that Senator Rice has done as the chair of this inquiry has been amazing. It continues to raise these issues, and we must never forget the stories of that impact.