Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This budget tells people on income support exactly where they stand with this Labor government. After all the spin, the speeches and the stories about understanding poverty, Labor has delivered nothing to lift people out of it—no increase to JobSeeker, no increase to youth allowance, no increase to the age pension and no real increase to the disability support pension. There's nothing for the people skipping meals, rationing medication, sleeping in cars or choosing which bill they can afford to ignore. The government says that it's increased income support by $11.8 billion, but let's be honest. That is overwhelmingly the system doing what it is already required to do—indexing payments for inflation and accounting for more people needing support. That is not reform, and that is not lifting people out of poverty. The government's own advisory committee has told them again that working-age payments are too low, that previous increases are inadequate and that JobSeeker and related payments must be substantially lifted, and Labor again has ignored them.

The Prime Minister used to speak often about growing up in public housing with a mum on the disability support pension. It was a powerful story. But, for people living that reality now, that story is wearing very thin. You cannot build your political brand on poverty and then govern as though poverty is acceptable. You cannot tell people you understand what it means to struggle and then hand down a budget that leaves them trapped below the poverty line. The Greens will keep fighting to raise every income support payment above the poverty line because no-one should live in poverty.