Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I want to clarify some matters for a lot of people in my electorate who will be showing up at Centrelink offices and other government offices throughout the electorate. I have a low-SES community, and a lot of people show up in person, so this has relevance to the Human Services part of the portfolio as well as the Social Services part of the portfolio. I remind the minister that ACOSS described this budget as a budget to divide the nation, and I also remind him that this year there has been a really substantial drop-off in consumer confidence. Part of the reason for the drop-off in consumer confidence was that the minister was running around the country, really from Christmas onwards, talking about some sort of welfare crisis in the country, and a lot of people in my electorate certainly take deep offence at that.

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

There is not a budget crisis either. These sorts of matters are probably beyond the member for Bass, Deputy Speaker, but let me try and explain it to you anyway.

Minister, I am interested in particular by the HILDA Survey that was put out by the Melbourne institute very recently, which showed that all the language around the welfare crisis in this community is rubbish. It was just designed to scare people, to concoct this budget emergency that does not exist, this big con, so that you can swing the axe harder at people in my electorate by constructing this fake emergency, this welfare crisis. I remind him that HILDA said that, in 2001, 23 per cent of working age people in Australia received a welfare payment each week. In 2011, that had dropped to 18½ per cent. That is one fact. The other fact is that welfare spending in Australia accounted for just 8.6 per cent of GDP in 2013, compared to the OECD average of 13 per cent.

So my first question is: why does the minister think he knows more than the credible people who put together the HILDA Survey? On what planet is this minister more credible than the people who put together the HILDA Survey? That is my first question. The second one relates to this whole thing—and, again, people will be fronting up to offices that he, as the minister, administers and asking this question. They heard the Prime Minister say that there would be no changes to pensions. Of course, there were. And now they hear the minister say and they hear the Prime Minister say that the pension has not been cut. My second question to the minister, then, is: if the pension has not been cut, why do you claim on page 203 of your own budget papers—

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

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