Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You are hoping for a very big growth with regard to wages over the next few years. You should look at your budget papers and actually see what you are saying. If you shackle the unions, there is not going to be much wage growth over the next few years, quite frankly. You might find there is another way.

I want to turn to a specific aspect of Australian society at the moment which must be seen in the context of the recent survey by NCOSS of people who live on welfare. In this inquiry, NCOSS uncovered the following fact:

One in five respondents receiving the Newstart or Youth Allowance reported not having enough money for basic essentials like housing, food and electricity.

Furthermore, they noted:

73% of respondents receiving the Disability Support Pension and 63% of those receiving the Newstart Allowance reported that their income had fallen behind the cost of living in the last two years.

In that survey, they also noted:

The top five most common items that respondents had gone without in the last 12 months due to lack of finances were: 1. Buying Christmas presents—

Well, perhaps the government said: 'Bad luck!'—

… Dental appointments—

We had some comments on that in question time today—

… Car Service … Buying presents for a loved one's birthday … Medical appointments or procedures.

Finally, they noted:

Nearly one third of respondents (32%) receiving a Disability Support Pension reported that they had gone without meals in the last 12 months in an effort to save money.

This government is trying to sell a subterranean, nuanced message to the Australian people—we are with you, we are there with the hardworking people of this country; we are not with those people who are bludging, freeloading et cetera. But these are the economic realities of those people. Today the Salvation Army also went on the record with similar findings. I will quote one example from an individual from this NCOSS study:

$240 a week is not even enough to pay for housing let alone gas, water, electricity, fuel, rates, insurances, let alone food. I want to be able to survive on my own without begging for food, it's shattering to know that I can only eat what charities give me, I have no control over my own life.

A further comment from another respondent was:

Almost all of my payment is used up with rent alone. I have $25 a week to spare, so I have to really budget other things and work as much as possible.

The reason I raise this survey and the dire circumstances of these people is not only to make the point that the government wants to marginalise and discriminate against these people. I want to comment on something that was confirmed this week by the Australian National Audit Office—something that I have noticed in my electorate that is unprecedented in the last 2½ decades. I did not see this under the Howard government; I did not see this under Labor governments. It is the deplorable situation in Centrelink at the moment, where people's claims are rejected and they are told to go onto a call line. We have a situation where the National Audit Office has revealed that 13.7 million calls were unable to enter the network—that is, the calls were blocked and the callers heard the 'busy signal'. Around 30 per cent of people abandoned their calls to this centre. There were told by Centrelink: 'Get lost! We are not going to deal with you further. Go on the call line!' And 30 per cent of them had to abandon their calls.

People on very low incomes, as I indicated a few minutes ago, are asked to hang on the lines for 35, 40, 50 and 60 minutes and use up valuable money on mobiles. Public phones are not available these days to a lot of people. It is also noted in ANAO's analysis of Centrelink's performance:

… average speed of answer does not clearly indicate what service standard customers can expect, due to distribution of actual wait times.

There is no KPI on that. Furthermore, the ANAO commented:

… in the short to medium term the telephone remains a key access channel for Centrelink services …

The government can talk all they want about how people can get on the internet and go digital. But the reality, as the ANAO says, is that for many years people will still depend on phones.

I have seen this in my electorate office—and that is why I am raising it. There is the situation where a woman with breast cancer is waiting four to five months for an answer about her entitlement. There is another situation where a young person, who was working for many months, is now seeking to study and to utilise a form of Centrelink payment along the way. Her father said that not once, within the last 4 months did Centrelink, give either himself or his daughter the courtesy of any communication that she required 70 weeks of payslips. Not once were they advised that three years of group certificates was insufficient. This is a situation where for more than 70 days there was no assessment of her situation. This is a pattern around the country.

There is understaffing of the department and inadequacy in the call system. This is a government that takes pride in sacking 17,000 public servants. It is a lack of performance in regard to service delivery leading to very real suffering for Centrelink recipients. These are people who are in dire circumstances, who have very little left after rent, and are basically being asked to get on the phone if they have a problem. It is a phone service that is an absolute basket case. It is a situation where they cannot get their issues rectified.

As I said, I hear this very frequently in my electoral office. It is about time that the government did a bit more than a diversionary and sudden urgent need to have an inquiry into whether people are defrauding Centrelink. The timing of this inquiry is very interesting as it is within days of the ANAO report being made public, which showed a debilitating, incompetent, mismanaged Centrelink. Senator Payne then suddenly decided that we needed to basically go towards left field to get away from the issue of service delivery and inquire into who is supposedly defrauding the system around the country.

We have a much reduced Treasurer. He is still trying to argue last year's case that there is an emergency and that we have to get the deficit down. But the Prime Minister has just left him on the beach. The Prime Minister's message is: 'This is a political crisis. We do not want to go down the road we did last year. We want to try to sell a very kindly message rather than talk about the deficit and rather than the "absolutely necessary" measures of last year. They are no longer important and we are abandoning them.' Bad luck, Mr Treasurer, for your credibility.

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