Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) to a question without notice asked by Senator Brown today relating to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017.

My question today to Senator Brandis was about the omnibus bill and the cuts that are contained within it that will affect pensioners, families, young people and many, many more. This bill represents $5.6 billion in cuts to Australian families. My question to Senator Brandis was whether he had spoken and explained these cuts to One Nation, because it is very important, as we look at the proposal that will come before the Senate, that One Nation understands exactly who will be affected by these cuts and by this bill that will come here.

Senator Hanson should come clean—she must come clean—on where she stands on this unfair omnibus bill. Australian families deserve to know. One Nation need to understand that these cuts will have a significant impact on families, on new mums, on pensioners, on people with disability, on carers and on young job seekers. They want to know where One Nation stands. Does One Nation stand alongside those on the other side—the Liberal Party and the Nationals—on the side of harsh cuts to everyday Australians? Or will they, as the Labor Party will, oppose the government's cuts and stand on the side of fairness and of hardworking Australian families and pensioners? It is important to know.

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Of course you will, even though you advertise them as your own cuts!

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Perhaps Senator Brandis would care to listen, because he did not seem to understand in question time what this bill is proposing to do. It is important, I believe, to outline just what these cuts will mean for Australians.

They include cuts to family tax benefits—cuts that will leave a typical family on $60,000 over $750 a year worse off. They include cuts to paid parental leave that will leave 70,000 new mums worse off. They include scrapping the energy supplement—a $1 billion cut for pensioners, people with disabilities, carers and Newstart recipients. They include a five-week wait for Newstart, forcing young people to live on nothing for five weeks. We have had this before the Senate before and it has been rejected. To expect people living on Newstart to live on nothing for five weeks before they can access income support is completely and utterly disgraceful. They include cuts to young people between the ages of 22 and 24 by pushing them onto the lower rate of youth allowance—a cut of around $48 a week, which is a cut of around $2½ thousand a year. They include scrapping the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment. They include a cut to the pension of migrant pensioners who spend more than six weeks overseas. These are some of the $5.6 billion worth of cuts that are wrapped up in this bill.

I ask the question and the Australian people ask the question: does One Nation support the Turnbull government's cuts in this bill, or will they stand with Labor? Will One Nation stand up for pensioners? Will they stand with Labor to make sure that this bill is rejected? Will they fight these cuts? Will they oppose this bill? They are the questions One Nation needs to answer because this bill is an absolute attack on the most vulnerable people in Australia. Those people are the ones that are saying to One Nation: 'Do not support this bill. Do not support this government in their attack on us.' (Time expired)

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is amazing that Senator Brown has made comments about One Nation supporting this bill. I do not think I have actually put it out there that I am supporting the bill, so it is speculation again.

Let's get this right: we are hitting $500 billion in debt. For years we have seen both sides—mainly Labor—buying votes. 'Let's just hand out more and more money and buy votes.' I remember when John Howard's government came in they handed over, I think, around $22 billion in surplus after they took on a $96 billion debt from the Labor Party. So the government got it right and they had a surplus there when they handed over to the Labor government. Ever since then there was Kevin Rudd—didn't we love the over $900 he handed out to every Australian? That was really wonderful. A great move. I think it was $75 million that went overseas to people living overseas. The money was never spent here in the country.

Senator Brown talked about the Newstart allowance. A person that finishes school has to wait for five weeks to get Newstart allowance. If they finish school in November then they say, 'I can get the dole.' They go in and they get the dole. They get the dole all over Christmas. Why go and work? They are getting a handout. There is no incentive to go and work. There is no incentive to apply for a job. Then comes February, when it is time to start back at school, and they say, 'Oh no, I'm going back to school now, so the government won't have to pay me any more money.' It is not the taxpayers' responsibility. It is encouraging these kids to say they should get out and look for work, especially at a time of year when we have tourism and over the Christmas period.

Jobs—she talked about the Newstart allowance. What I can pick up out of this program—the omnibus—is the incentive from the government to give youth a chance to work. They are offering them $200 extra a week on top of their Newstart allowance—$200 a week extra if they want to go and work. The employer who takes them on in long-term employment are going to get between $6,500 and $10,000. What they are doing is encouraging our youth, who sit around and do nothing. They are tied up in drugs, tied up in gangs and out in the streets, causing problems. There is an incentive that you really should get out and work.

Let us talk about the pensioners overseas and about how we are cutting the pensions. Why should the Australian taxpayer be paying someone who wants to go overseas for more than 26 weeks at a time or up to 26 weeks at a time? Their pension is sent to them. Their families get the money here in Australia. I am told all the time that much of that money is going out through the post offices. The amount of money that is leaving Australia to go to overseas for these people to get their pensions is not staying here in Australia. It is not creating jobs. It is not creating wealth here in Australia.

These people come here to Australia as migrants. They are not here for a lengthy period of time. Then they get on the pension. They say, 'I want to go back and live in my country of origin,' and we are supporting that. I think it is reasonable to say that if they want to leave Australia for more than six weeks at a time then they have to answer the taxpayer about why they should get their pensions. This is reasonable. If you have been a taxpayer in Australia for 35 years or more, that is fine. Then it goes on a pro rata basis. That is being responsible, and we are being accountable to the taxpayer.

I have put up other options to the government such as my apprenticeship scheme. I am saying that, if we pay for an apprenticeship scheme of 75 per cent of the first year's wage, 50 per cent of the second year's wage and 25 per cent of the third year's wage, that would be a great scheme.

If you talk about child support—these child agencies—where is your accountability? What did the Labor Party do about it? A couple of guys in New South Wales ripped off $27 million. Another one here in Canberra ripped off $1.2 million. Where is your accountability to the taxpayer? If we do not start reining in this debt and stopping this handout welfare mentality, there is not going to be enough money to look after the pensioners, the aged, the sick and the hospitals. That is what we need. So stop buying votes and get responsible, because the people are depending on us.

Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to return to the question asked of Senator Brandis and the answer. I listened very carefully to his answer. He was basically asked, 'What has he done with respect to explaining to his new preferred partner, One Nation, that single pensioners will be $365 a year worse off and coupled pensioners $550?' That is a pretty straightforward question. He said: 'I'm explaining it to the whole Senate, not just to One Nation. I am explaining it to the whole Senate.' I said earlier in the week that you have to own the work you do in this Senate and, if you support this cut to single pensioners and coupled pensioners, you have to own that work. People will say, 'Who voted for the measure that took $365 or $550 off me?' The answer from Senator Brandis was, 'One Nation is likely to support that because they look at the economic rationalist picture.'

As Paul Keating said: 'We're not on the side of privilege. We're not on the side of power. We're not on the side of big business. We are on the side of the angels.' We are on the side of the pensioners—single pensioners who are going to be ripped off $365 a year and coupled pensioners $550 a year. You can come in here and you can lecture the chamber about gross debt. Last I looked, America owed more than its total bloody economy. China owes more, and it is almost impossible to decipher the Chinese figures. There are not enough auditors and accountants in the world to work out what is going on over there. You can come in here and say: 'We've got a $500 million debt, and we need to take it off single pensioners and coupled pensioners. We need to take it of single parent families. We need to take it off 655,000 single parent families. We need to take $354 a year off them.' Why? Because this government wants to give tax cuts to big business and all of this responsibility has to be paid by the most vulnerable in the community.

How will One Nation explain to the Australian voter that they have been part of a process which will mean 1.5 million vulnerable single pension, coupled pension and single-parent families will lose amounts between $365, $354 and $550 per year? How will they go out and explain that? How will they go out and say: 'We're looking after you. We're looking after the vulnerable in Australia'?

Senator Hanson can have her views about youth not seeking employment. I do not see it. I live in one of the poorest suburbs in Adelaide, in Kilburn. I am very proud to live in that suburb. I have lived there for 20 years. I see people going out every day looking for work. I do not see them lining up to lie down and get on the dole. I see them out there challenging themselves to go and find jobs. I see a very different Australia to Senator Hanson, who says that people just say: 'Oh well, I've finished school. I might as well get on the dole.' I see then come into my office and ask for jobs, for trainee positions, all the time. That is true of almost all the businesses around the area where I live. People are applying for work. They are not looking to get on the dole and bludge their life away. So I have a very different view of the world.

Look, if One Nation goes hand in hand with this government to attack the conditions of single pensioners, couple pensioners and single parent families for $354, $365 and $550, hopefully that cohort of people will recognise who did it. They will then have to own their handiwork and, hopefully, they will not attract as many votes as they attracted in the last election.

This is a continual theme from this government: 'We've got to fix the deficit! We've got to fix the budget! How do we do it?' They do it by attacking the most vulnerable people, the ones with less capacity to pay and the least ability to tighten their belt: 'We're not looking at transfer-pricing. We're not looking at offshoring by companies that are avoiding tax responsibility. We're going to hunt down single pensioners, couple pensioners and single parent families.' Come on! You have to own your work. If you vote for this sort of stuff you will get it back in the ballot box, hopefully in spades.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the things I always like to wake me up in mid-afternoon in this place is a lecture from the Australian Labor Party about how to manage the economy. I come from a Labor household, believe it or not. I grew up in a Labor parish—Catholic—in the fifties. I have said before in this place that if my dad could he would punch his hands through his coffin lid and mark the box: 'I'm Labor, whoever the candidate is.' But that was that Labor, and now we have this Labor; and to be lectured by you on economic management is absolutely offensive in my view.

I am on a unity ticket with Senator Hanson in relation to the reflection she had on your responses to this very responsible legislation. This problem has to be fixed. We have a $320 billion debt. It belongs to us. It belongs to everyone on the floor. It belongs to the people up in the gallery. It belongs to all the people out in the country. There is no nefarious thing at the bottom of the garden that owns the debt. It is our debt. It is a national debt and it will impact on us. It impacts on us now. When these good people go to borrow money for their homes they are paying nearly three-quarters up to one whole point, of interest because they are competing for money that the Labor government had borrowed over a very short period of time.

When the Labor Party to came into government the debt was zero, there was $60 billion in the Future Fund, which has now grown enormously under the very competent management of people like Peter Costello, a former very well respected member in the other place. Those opposite really do think that this debt is going to evaporate. They really do think that these structural deficits, where we are borrowing something like $40 billion a year, $1 billion a week, to pay debt and to pay for things that we cannot afford in this nation, things that were left on the balance sheet of the nation, that went unfunded. They are important things in some instances, mind you. The national disability scheme is one of them. We should have put that in place 50 years ago, not five years ago, but no-one put anything on the other side. We want to restructure education, do all of these monstrously wonderful things and throw on at them, kick buckets and buckets, but there was no money left in the forward estimates by the Labor Party when government transitioned to us.

What the good people of this nation know—particularly those who are in my age group, because we have watched it over 30 and 40 years—is that Labor comes to power and Labor does some good work on occasions. I can say that there are things this nation has now that it would not have if it was not for the Labor Party. But every single time they had just with the plastic out and go for years and run up enormous debts, and the people out there very concerned about it. They understand basic economics. They understand that you cannot spend more than what your income is. So what happens is that after a while they get alarmed and they put our government in to bring the debt back down. After a few terms they get a bit tired, the belt is a bit tight for them with the austerity measures, and they groan, 'Gee, Howard's a good operator. Gee, Howard's done well for the economy. Gee, Howard and Costello have put this nation in a very strong position.' What do they do? They nod off; they are not thinking, and they put the Labor Party back in, and they have a credit card in each hand and up the bill goes again

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And a GFC!

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will tell you now, I look back and I do not understand how you could run up a $300 billion debt in six years, despite thousands of dollars being given to people. Clive Palmer has declared that he got one of the cheques for $900. Clive Berghofer in my community—net worth $300 million—got a cheque, and then some pink batts up in the roof and a whole host of other things.

What I say to you people is: I join the unity ticket with One Nation here. Do not lecture us on matters of the economy. You are absolutely hopeless. You are hypocritical. You cannot count. You need to take your shoes and socks off every day and run a toe up for every billion dollars of repayment on debt, which could have been spent in our electorates on hospitals, education, defence—a whole range of things. Do not come in here an lecture me, today or any other day.

Chris Ketter (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After that unedifying contribution from Senator O'Sullivan I cannot leave that diatribe unaddressed. Senator O'Sullivan, it is unfortunate that you are leaving the chamber at this point, but I think it is important for you to understand that when the IMF did a study in 2013 about which were the most wasteful periods for government spending in the 50 years to 2013, it found that it was two periods of the Howard government that were the periods of the most profligate spending in Australia's history in that 50-year period. It was former Prime Minister Howard, when the rivers of gold were running in at the peak of the mining boom, who was spending hand over fist. At the end of former Prime Minister Howard's period of government, when he was again spending hand over fist to overcome the electoral poison that was WorkChoices at the time, the IMF also identified that as a period of government that was profligate in its spending. It was needlessly wasteful spending. So I am not going to sit here and listen to Senator O'Sullivan's contributions, which paint a picture that Labor governments have been economically irresponsible. That is not true. The period of spending post the GFC by the Rudd government was not identified by the IMF as profligate spending. I think that needs to be said to place the economic position of the Labor government on the record. I am grateful that Senator Hanson is in the chamber to hear that. I encourage her to look at that IMF report.

The information provided by Senator Brown in her question to Senator Brandis illustrates the twisted priorities of this government. Senator Brandis claimed that he had explained the need for these cuts and he said that they are essential for budget repair. This is plain wrong. Unlike the government, Labor is committed to budget repair. Unlike the government, Labor is committed to preserving Australia's AAA credit rating.

Budgets are about choices, and this government, time and time again, makes the wrong choices: cuts to pensioners, cuts to single parents and cuts to low-income families. First, if the government was really serious about budget repair, they should abandon their plans for the $50 billion corporate tax cut. Handing out cash to big businesses—like the Commonwealth Bank with its $4.9 billion half-year profit, which was announced yesterday—amounts to corporate welfare. I understand that about $7 billion of that $50 billion corporate tax cut would end up in the pockets of the four major banks.

Labor stands ready to work with the government to repair the budget in other ways, such as looking at reforming negative gearing and reforming capital gains tax concessions. Labor has demonstrated its willingness to work with the government to repair the budget, for example, in the omnibus savings bill last year. But budget repair has to be done in a way that is fair. That is the Labor way. This latest bill, which cuts money for pensioners, single parent families and 1½ million people across the board, is not fair. The government's calls for budget repair are hollow. The recent budget update shows that deficits have blown out by $10 billion over the forward estimates, and, since their first budget, the deficit for 2017-18 has blown out tenfold from $2.8 billion to $28.7 billion.

I noted Senator Hanson's contribution and I am somewhat heartened by the fact that, in her opening comments, she indicated that there was speculation about what the position of One Nation would be. I encourage One Nation to have a look at these cuts more closely and I would ask them to stand with Labor to protect pensioners, to protect young people and to protect the—(Time expired)

David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I get further into taking note of the answer by the minister to the question asked by Senator Brown, I want to respond a little bit to what Senator Ketter said. He quotes some report that concluded that the Howard government was the most profligate spending of governments and that its spending was during a period of rivers of gold. But the facts are that the Howard government inherited debt from the previous Labor government and, when the Howard government left office, it had paid that debt off. That is a clear and simple fact.

The facts are that when the Rudd government first took office, it inherited money in the bank, and when the Rudd-Gillard years finished, they did so heading towards $300 billion worth of debt accrued. Those are simple facts, and you can spin what happened in the meantime, and what happened under Howard, any way you like, and you can quote any report you like, but the fact is that when you have strong income coming in, you have the ability to spend a little bit more, to be a little bit more, and, to use the word you used, be profligate in your spending. Because you have the income, you can spend a little bit more. But the reality is, as with any household, when income falls, you need to adjust your spending to suit the income. Of course, that might mean that, in the terms you are using and of the study that looked at this, you become less profligate if you do cut your spending. But the reality is, under Rudd and under Gillard, any savings they made—they used to quote new taxes as savings—were way insufficient to be able to cut the cloth to suit the income that was coming in. As a result, at the end of that period, the Australian government, which, as was very eloquently pointed out by Senator O'Sullivan, had accumulated debt which is now payable and owed by every single Australian taxpayer, including not just those who are paying taxes now but those who will be paying taxes next year and probably those who will be paying taxes in 10 years. And maybe even in 20 or 30 years we will still be paying back the debt that was put in place under Rudd and Gillard and, in the absence of change, will be growing at a faster rate than it is now.

On that, as noted by the minister—I have taken note of his answer, but it is relevant to the matters that Senator Ketter raised—we have put in place, through this place since we got in, savings measures that will reduce our debt by $250 billion over the forward estimates. That is not to say that it is not going up. It is still going up, because the trajectory that we inherited would have had us placed far worse than where we are today if government had not changed in 2013. Despite our best efforts to put in place a range of measures that would have actually addressed that trajectory more quickly, brought debt down more quickly and brought us to the point where we would have been in a budget surplus earlier than we otherwise would have been, and which have been blocked by this Senate over and over again, we have still managed to put through measures that have delivered $250 billion worth of savings.

Coming more specifically to the question that was asked and the answer by the minister, I am not exactly sure what the ALP or what Senator Brown was trying to achieve by asking this question, other than to try to bludgeon One Nation into not making considered and well-thought-out decisions to support the government where it is appropriate. Quite clearly One Nation has positions that not everybody in this place always finds agreeable. The ALP has positions that I do not always find agreeable. Every party in this room has positions that other parties find disagreeable, and that is why they are members of other parties. That is the nature of democracy: we have different views on different things.

But what we have discovered so far with One Nation, if you put aside those positions that they have and that they hold very, very strongly and on which they are not going to move—some of which we do not agree with and some of which we disagree with most vehemently—the fact is that outside of those particular issues, One Nation will sit down and have a mature conversation with us about what we are trying to achieve. And if we can convince them of the merits of our case, as we appear to have done with the omnibus bill, then they will agree to support us. That is the nature of democracy: being able to sit down with other people and convince them that we have a case that stacks up, and if they agree then they will agree to support us on the floor on the chamber. And that is what they have done.

You try to spin the omnibus bill as being all doom and gloom, but the reality is that it is spin, and it is misrepresenting the omnibus bill. There are 18 schedules in this, which deliver a whole range of very beneficial outcomes for Australians across the board in a whole range of areas. (Time expired)

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the debate has concluded. The question is that the motion moved by Senator Brown be agreed to.

Question agreed to.