Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

Labor governments believe very strongly in a strong social safety net. We need that safety net to be there for all Australians if and when they need it. We will always do what we can to support people in our nation who are doing it tough and need our assistance. This is why we have put forward the targeted and responsible measures in the bill before us today, the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Strengthening the Safety Net) Bill 2023. Far from being a small patch, you can actually see in all the detailed, targeted measures in this legislation and in a wide variety of other measures we are implementing as a Labor government a commitment to all of the key areas within social security, within the cost of living, and to support Australians when they need it most. We are in the process of implementing a $14.6 billion cost-of-living package, which was announced back in the 2023-24 budget.

What we have before us today is an amendment to strengthen the social security safety net. As a package, the measures in this bill provide additional assistance to some two million income support recipients. The amendments in this bill will see an increase to the rates of JobSeeker, youth allowance, parenting payment partnered, Austudy, Abstudy, disability support pension youth, and the special benefit by $40 per fortnight from 20 September. These are significant increases in our social security payments.

What they also do is set a new benchmark for these payments. What the last government did during COVID, when they boosted payments temporarily, did not amend the base rates and did not even apply CPI to them. They simply made those temporary increases without ever doing anything substantive to address the underlying problems in the base rate of social security. Here, we are increasing the base rate for all of these working-age payments by $40 per fortnight from 20 September. This is a responsible, balanced increase targeted at people on some of the lowest incomes in Australia, who rely on this safety net for support. We have, in this increase, additional support to some 1.1 million people. Our approach in government, to contrast with that of the coalition opposite, is to see this rate indexed by CPI at regular intervals, which is particularly important at this point in time of high inflation. We also see, in the bill before us, increases in Commonwealth rent assistance.

We also see eligible payments—JobSeeker, parenting payment—indexed on 20 September as usual. The government could have said, 'We will apply that indexation only to the CPI and the payments as at 20 September,' but, no, we are applying that CPI indexation to the new $40 that's on the table. In this context, you can see the rate of JobSeeker for a single person with no dependants increases not by $40 but by $56.10, to $749 per fortnight, with an indexation of $16.10 to that $40. It's all very well for the Greens to simply say all that's on the table is a $40 increase. That $40 is a substantial increase, and it is an indexed increase—you can see, as I've just outlined, the rate of JobSeeker for a single person with no dependants increasing by $56.10. With this regular indexation, between May 2022 and September 2023 the basic single rate of JobSeeker payments will have increased from $643 to $749, a 17 per cent increase. That is $106 more in people's pockets each fortnight to help with cost-of-living pressures. This is some $2,700 in additional support each year.

The Labor Party in government is also expanding eligibility for the existing higher rate of JobSeeker to single recipients aged 55 and over who have been on income support for nine or more continuous months. This is a significant and targeted change. The higher rate of social security currently applies to people who are moving towards pension age from the age of 60. However, we know that there are many people doing it tough, including women moving towards retirement. The majority of people who this income support change will benefit are, in fact, women—55 per cent of them.

We're increasing this payment because we understand the additional barriers older Australians face when they're looking for work. This includes age discrimination and often poor health. In fact, I was talking the other day to my taxi driver, who had moved into transport because of such discrimination—being discriminated against because of the presumption of poor health. This taxi driver had clearly found a way of continuing to participate in the workforce, which can and should still continue to be our priority—to make the most of the skills of older Australians, particularly at a time of low unemployment, when many businesses are working hard to find the staff they need. I really want to encourage them not to look past the skills of older Australians. I won't outline some of the measures we're looking at as a government today in this speech, other than to highlight that we understand the importance of that workforce participation. It is a problem, and it's a problem that evolved under the last government where the proportion of mature aged recipients on JobSeeker payments significantly increased. Eighty-one per cent aged 55 or over stay on payments for more than a year.