Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I think we need to take stock at the beginning of this committee stage to recognise what we're talking about—that is, the ability for those living on income support to be living dignified lives, to be able to fulfil their potential, to be able to get through and not be living in dire and abject poverty, to have a society where we care for everybody, or, in the words of the Labor government, where we don't leave anybody behind.

This bill is called 'strengthening the safety net', and it is very clear from the evidence before us, it is very clear from the cruel policies of the previous decade of the Liberal government, that we don't have a safety net. In the words of one of the submitters to the inquiry into this bill, what we have is a parachute with holes in it. Eventually, people relying on that parachute with holes are going to hit the bottom. What the bill before us today will do is put a tiny patch on one of those holes in the parachute; it is not going to stop jobseekers hitting the bottom.

The Greens, of course, want to see increases in income support so that people can live lives of dignity, so people can get by, so they have an income that is liveable so they can survive. This bill does not do this. This bill has an increase of $2.85 a day in income support—$2.85. The government is crowing about indexation, which is something all governments have done. I don't understand why we should suddenly be giving kudos to the government for indexing payments when it is a standard thing and has always happened. The payment for people on income support will be increased by $4 a day, which would still leave them way, way below the poverty line. Four dollars a day will not cut it for people who are only eating a meal a day. Four dollars a day is not going to cut it for people who can't afford to put a roof over their heads, who are currently living in tents, living in cars, living on the streets, couch surfing, being moved back into an overcrowded family home, having to stay in a situation of family violence because they can't afford to move out. Four dollars a day is still going to leave people in dire poverty, yet this government had a choice.

They have made a choice to increase income support by only that tiny amount at the same time as they are going ahead with the stage 3 tax cuts that are going to give $9,000 a year in tax cuts to every one of us in this place, to every billionaire, to everybody in the top two per cent of society. You have chosen to do that rather than lift people who are living on income support out of poverty. You have made the choice to give only this paltry $4-a-day increase. On the other hand, you're going to spend $368 billion on war machines, on nuclear powered submarines, and you have chosen to give only a paltry $4-a-day increase when you're sitting on a budget surplus of $20 billion that could make a meaningful difference to the lives of people living in poverty. That's where I want to start. That's what this bill is doing.

There are some good things in this bill. We absolutely support the changes to parenting payment single so that single-parent families will be able to access parenting payment single for children up to the age of 14. We want to see it up to the age of 16; I am going to move amendments for that to be the case. We also want to see those payments brought forward as quickly as possible so we don't have this ridiculous situation of families whose kids are turning eight right now being taken off parenting payment single and going back into dire poverty by living on JobSeeker, who are going to be struggling for the coming three months until their payment then goes up again. We will be moving amendments for the date that that comes in to be brought forward from the date of royal assent.

Fundamentally, there is so much more that could be done, and the evidence shows that that's what should be being done. The government's own Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee—which it set up, handpicked, with its own former Labor minister chairing it—told it that it needed to make a serious increase to the rate of JobSeeker and other work related payments. Yet you have squibbed that. You have not listened to that advice. You are leaving people behind.

I want to start off, Minister, by asking: do you think people living on income support should be forced to live below the poverty line?