Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Families and Social Services (Senator Ruston) to a question without notice asked by Senator Siewert today relating to the JobSeeker payment.

The answer is: yes, the government is still intending to drop jobseeker back to the old base rate of $40 a day. And when I asked whether they had done any projections or modelling on the expected mortgage defaults, the answer, obviously, was no, because the minister filibustered that question and did not adequately answer it.

Who thinks realistically that the 1.64 million people that are unemployed in this country and receiving jobseeker—that was the last answer we got on the number of people at the COVID select committee—are all going to be employed by the end of September when jobseeker ends? I bet you no-one thinks that all those people are going to be getting jobs by that time. As much as we wish it were so, realistically, it's not going to happen. The government needs to be planning for that. But are they? What are they going to do for all those people? Are they planning for the fact there's going to be a massive number of people that will have to default on their mortgage payments or that will have to default on their rent?

Where do they intend all these people to live, for a start? We are going to be escalating homelessness, for a start. I asked, 'Okay, what advice are you going to be providing to Australians in terms of which bills they don't pay, because you cannot meet all of your bills when you are living in poverty on $40 a day. Which bills? Energy? Food?' Food is usually the first to go because it's discretionary.

So we're going to drop people back into poverty on $40 a day. What impact is that going to have on our economy and our recovery? It will have a very significant impact—a devastating impact—on our recovery. It will also impact on the states because the states will also be losing out on those people's income who are spending and injecting money into the state economies. It'll also be the states that are expected to supply the community services, the emergency relief, the homelessness shelters, when people start having to default on their payments. It isn't good enough. You need to keep the rate.

Question agreed to.