Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Strengthening the Safety Net) Bill 2023. In the wake of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, it is vital that we, as a parliament and a nation, reflect on our attitudes towards unemployment and the serious harm that results from the attitudes that we have towards the unemployed. Thousands of innocent people were made to feel like criminals by a system that demonises the unemployed and treats people not having a job as having a personal failing. We cannot carry on in this very damaging and deluded belief that poverty has a role to play in our institutional response to unemployment. You cannot starve a person into sustainable, well-paid employment. It's a malicious delusion that has been allowed to persist for far too long.

In its first interim report, the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee was extremely clear on this point: the rate of JobSeeker is so low and so far below any measure of a livable income that it's a barrier to entering the workforce. Decades of toxic talking points have created a situation where income support payments are not lifting people up and helping them into employment. Instead, they have become a pit that one has to climb out of.

We have become hostage to a punitive mindset that is so intent on punishing misfortune that we've engineered perverse systems that actually compound it. Our treatment of the unemployed keeps people in grinding poverty while requiring them to navigate the mismanaged mess of Workforce Australia. The impact of that grinding poverty extends not just to the unemployed person but in so many cases to their children, their family, their household and their communities. If we want to support people who are out of work to find secure, well-paid jobs, we need them to be able to access a basic standard of living.

People without work need to be receiving enough support that they are no longer forced to choose between meals and medicine. An extra $40 a fortnight doesn't get them there. It doesn't get them even close. The increase in the JobSeeker rate does not just fail to get people above the poverty line; it fails to get them anywhere near the poverty line. An increase of $40 a fortnight still leaves the payment 41 per cent below the poverty line. This is a national shame in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet. Many people living in my home state of South Australia are already worse off than when this increase was announced. The additional $40 the Treasurer promised them in May was swallowed in June by a rent increase or an interest rate rise. Without real steps to address the housing crisis, including freezing rents and committing to build enough social and affordable housing to clear those huge waiting lists, the housing stress experienced by jobseekers is only going to get worse.

We've also heard statements from advocates and community organisations that an increase to the income-free area would make a positive difference in the lives of people on JobSeeker and other payments. I foreshadow that my colleague Senator Hanson-Young will move a second reading amendment on this issue that will suggest an increase to the income-free area in this policy amendment.

The Labor government have made a lot of excuses about inflation and government debt, but the reality is: the Albanese government are not afraid to spend money on other things. The Labor government are very happy, for example, to spend $313 billion over the next decade on the stage 3 income tax cuts—tax cuts that overwhelmingly go to the wealthiest Australians, especially to older people and to men, much more than they go to young people or to women. The Labor government is prepared to spend $368 billion on nuclear submarines. The spending choices of this government reflect its priorities, and it is currently choosing to keep people without work living in poverty. It's a great shame that we do not see that level of commitment, the willingness to invest, when it comes to providing people with an adequate safety net while they are looking for work.

It is an obscenity that we are debating a meagre $40 a fortnight rise for people living in extreme poverty while the government plans to give almost $350 a fortnight in tax cuts to the top two per cent of wage earners, without a second thought. We need to scrap the stage 3 income tax cuts and increase the JobSeeker payment above the poverty line, to $88 a day. Raising the rate above the poverty line would help people rather than hold them back from finding work. We saw during the height of a pandemic that governments can end poverty and ensure a strong social safety net. We should not need a pandemic for the government to choose to end the suffering of thousands of Australians, their households and their children. I just repeat that the amendment I foreshadowed is in Senator Hanson-Young's name.