Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Strengthening the Safety Net) Bill 2023. I would like to start off by thanking Senator Janet Rice and, before her, Senator Rachel Siewert for the passionate and compassionate work that they have been doing for years. I'd also like to thank my colleagues who have made such impassioned and heartfelt speeches today, making a case for why no-one in this country should be living in poverty—although we shouldn't really have to make a case for that in a wealthy country like Australia, where the government is banking $20 billion in surplus, where the government is giving $313 billion over the next 10 years to the wealthiest people who live here, where the government is putting $368 billion into war machines while leaving millions to live in poverty. That is just shameful.

Poverty is a political choice and one that this government, sadly, continues to make—one bill after another, one budget decision after another. They are actively choosing to leave people behind while boasting about a $20 billion surplus. What inhumanity, what callousness and what absolute disregard for so many people living in this country who are doing it so tough—people have to choose between heating and eating, people who have to choose between paying rent or getting medicine. This is what's happening in this country, and yet here we are tinkering around the edges. As my colleagues, including Senator Rice, have said, we see the evidence of this terrible political choice in this bill that we are debating today.

Let's not forget what the Liberal government, in their nine years, did. The Liberal Party left the rate of income support below the poverty line for those nine years. They actually slashed the social safety net, left people on inadequate rates of payment and refused calls from across the community to take any action. But we did hope for change at the last election, because people voted for that change and wanted to see that change. We hoped for something very different from a Labor government, because, in opposition, they did promise something very different. A few people have said this before. Their mantra before the election was: 'No-one left behind.' Then we saw their first budget, and there was no increase in JobSeeker. In the lead-up to their second budget, there was a concerted call from across the community and the sector, from advocates and community members, from people with direct lived experience, from experts, from national peak bodies to raise the rate above the poverty line. Labor's own backbenchers joined the Greens and others in calling for a substantial increase in income support. Sadly, in the budget earlier this year, we saw that the Labor Party did make a very deliberate choice to leave behind young people, students, renters, disabled people and people relying on income support. Their mantra of 'no-one left behind' was just that—a hollow political slogan.

We need to lift JobSeeker and all income support payments above the poverty line. While Labor's JobSeeker increase is woefully inadequate in the bill in front of us—it's less than a cup of coffee a day—it is absolutely atrocious that the Liberals want to block even that from going to those who need it most. How out of touch are you with what's happening on the ground in this country and how many people are suffering? We are in a cost-of-living crisis. Millions of people in this country are hurting. They're struggling to put food on the table; they're struggling to pay rent. The Greens very unapologetically are going to fight for those people so that everyone in this country will have enough to cover the basics, at the very least. Labor has the numbers in this parliament to make sure that everyone has enough to cover at least the basics. But, instead, they are choosing to keep people on starvation payments and locking 400,000 young people out of youth allowance.

I have to say it like it is: the government's wicked stubbornness in offering a pittance to those on JobSeeker and youth allowance means that they're pushing already vulnerable, struggling people further and further away from training and studies or any semblance of a good life lived in dignity. As the Greens spokesperson for education, I have heard from so many students in the past few months alone about how they are struggling. I do want to talk a little bit about student poverty. It must be really depressing and overwhelming to be a student right now. There was a time in this country when you could actually live a good life while being a student, but that time has long gone. Students are struggling to afford groceries, to pay for medicine or period products, to afford train or bus tickets or to pay weekly bills. They are surviving on instant noodles and lining up in queues for free food. Students are struggling to pay rents to keep a roof over their heads. There are facing rent hikes from greedy landlords. International students are suffering the most at this point in time. They are pitching tents in lounge rooms and sleeping in bathrooms.

Students are caught in a terrible debt spiral. Labor allowed student debts to rise by an astronomical 7.1 per cent on 1 June this year, handing down an even longer and larger debt sentence to millions of students. On top of that, another 3.9 per cent increase is predicted next year. We had that same increase last year. That means that, under a Labor government, in just two years, student debts have ballooned 15 per cent. The situation gets even worse for students who are required to work for free as part of their degrees while knowing they'll be paying off this debt for decades. It should be the other way around: degrees should be free and students should be paid for the work that they do. They should be on liveable incomes while they are doing their placements. Last month, I joined Students Against Placement Poverty to launch their campaign against unpaid placements, which is yet another unfair and unjust aspect of our education system. Hundreds of thousands of students are working countless hours without any pay or compensation.

Work placements are especially common in feminised fields of study. This further entrenches gender inequality. We already have that gender inequality entrenched as the rental crisis and the housing crisis soar; we already have that gender inequality in women having more student debt. And this pitiful increase in JobSeeker doesn't really address that problem at all.

One student at that forum which I joined last month spoke through tears about completing placement in a hospital and needing to work seven days a week just to afford to live each day. And this is what they said: 'You can't process anything when you have to work seven days a week. How do you learn and how do you get better?'

So students and young people are being pushed to the limit at the moment. Students in many situations are going months without a day off. They finish their placements at 5 pm and go straight to another paid shift at a pub or a grocery store. Students are having to choose between putting petrol in the car to get to placements and putting food in their stomachs.

Inflation is on the rise because of corporate profits, not because people should not live under the poverty line. Young people and students are working multiple jobs. They're cutting back on necessities but still they're barely scraping by. Yet here we are debating a bill that wants to keep them in that horrific situation where they can't make ends meet. It is an absolute travesty that the Labor government is allowing this to go on.

How is it that senior executives and CEOs of some of Australia's largest listed companies are pocketing 14 and 15 per cent average pay rises? How is it that vice-chancellors of universities are getting above million-dollar annual salaries and yet so many in this country can barely keep afloat? That is absolutely obscene. And yet whenever someone points out to the government how bad things are for students and for so many people living in this country, the response is, 'The current system is working perfectly. We'll put $4 in everyone's pockets a day and things will be hunky-dory.' Well, they won't. Those people will still be living in poverty.

Something needs to be done right now and the government has the power to do this. We are here. We have the numbers to be able to lift people out of poverty. The system at the moment is completely broken. A welfare system that doesn't lift people above the poverty line to ensure that they are living in dignity is an utterly cruel one. An education system that piles thousands and thousands of dollars of debt onto people is a broken one. We all know students are struggling. We all know young people are struggling. We all know millions are struggling. To say anything different would mean we're completely out of touch with any reality.

Labor can lower the age of independence for youth allowance from 22 to 18 and raise all student social security payments above the poverty line to at least $88 a day. You could not bank that $20 million surplus that you have and boast about; you could actually support and help people today. You could take meaningful action for renters by freezing rent hikes. You could wipe student debt, pay students a living wage for placements and make uni and TAFE free. There is absolutely no doubt, as I said earlier, that we can afford these measures. It is just a matter of political priorities. Labor has made the terrible choice to give $313 billion in tax cuts to the wealthy and spend $368 billion on dangerous war machines. Meanwhile, supporting struggling students and those doing it the toughest is apparently too costly: 'There's no money for that anymore.'

Despite the hardships that students and young people are facing, I am in awe of their courage to speak up, organise and mobilise to turn things around. They are rallying in the streets, bravely telling their stories and building a powerful movement for change. And that is what will change things. It will be those movements on the ground. It will be the work that the Greens do with the community—which is doorknocking and talking to people and listening to their stories and bringing them to this place—that is going to change Australia, that is going to force the government to change, that is going to change the world. I want to thank all those advocates and activists for showing such grit in the face of the really difficult circumstances that they face every single day. This fight will go on until every single person in this country is lifted out of poverty. At the end, I'd like to foreshadow the Greens second reading amendment, which Senator Rice will move later.