Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

As I indicated at the start of my remarks, the Labor opposition will be supporting this more generous indexation of youth payments. But what is important to families is of course to know the whole context of what this government is doing to family budgets. I was just talking about the impact of the government's cuts on pensioners. Some single pensioners will lose $8,000 a year as a result of the government's pension cuts, and some couples will lose up to $14,000 a year.

We also know that there are very significant cuts in the 2014 budget to family tax benefits. Today we have seen some signs that the government is considering retreating from these very unfair cuts, at least in part, and I think we can expect to see the detail of that. The government has insisted for the past two years that Australian families should just accept these cuts to family tax benefits, should accept that families should, apparently, pay the price of fiscal repair. But Labor does not see it that way. We have argued long and hard for the past 18 months that the cuts from this government have unfairly targeted low- and middle-income earners. It now seems that families will be protected from some of these cuts and Labor are very, very pleased to have fought the hard fight for those families. We will continue to fight this Liberal government's cuts to paid parental leave—another cut to families, cuts that 80,000 new parents each and every year will feel. These cuts are just as savage today as they were when they were introduced.

As this legislation specifically focuses on young people, I will draw the parliament's attention to two attempted cuts to young job seekers. This Prime Minister sat around the cabinet table as every single Liberal-National Party member in this parliament agreed to what I consider to be the toughest cuts of all, the cruellest cuts of all, which would have left young people under the age of 30 with absolutely nothing to live on for six months. I am pleased to say that that got defeated with Labor's hard campaigning. But we are now seeing the next iteration of this cruel cut. Now, young people will face a one-month wait for any income support, and that is for young job seekers under the age of 25.

If this new Prime Minister gets his way, young people on income support will be left with nothing to live on for a month, and we should not forget that. Even as we consider this bill, we have to remember that there is another group of young people who are going to be harshly impacted by this government's cruel measures.

Another very harsh measure for young people on income support between the ages of 22 and 24 would see a cut to their income support of around $46 a week. That is around $2,400 a year. We saw just a few weeks ago that this government has reintroduced this bill that would see these cuts implemented. That was one of the first acts of the new Prime Minister—to reintroduce the same unfair cuts to young Australians as Mr Abbott had attempted to do. These measures have already been defeated in the Senate and, of course, Labor will do everything in its power to try to defeat them again. It does seem that the new Prime Minister is still going to pursue these very, very harsh measures.

You would have to wonder what liberalism actually means in the face of these very harsh cuts. I do not think any of us here today should pretend that we have a government that have the interests of our young people at heart. These cuts that are currently before this parliament are very harsh indeed and the government have relentlessly pursued them. They have tried to demonise young people, calling them the leaners of Australian society. The argument from the government was that all of this was to be done to improve the budget. In fact, the government have achieved the remarkable, simultaneously cutting into the incomes of pensioners, families and young people while, at the same time, doubling the deficit. Unemployment is up, growth has slowed and, at the same time, they have this legacy of cuts—all supposedly geared to improving the state of the economy, all of that demonstrably false. None of us should ever forget any of that. All of this pain would have been on pensioners, families and young people yet, at the same time, amazingly, the government have doubled the deficit.

Tonight like every single night, we should never forget this government's attitude to the most needy members of our society and we should also, at the same time, never forget that these cuts have failed to achieve the stated objective of budget repair. The sum total of this government's record on social policy is to demonise the vulnerable for absolutely no gain. This is why the bill before the chamber tonight is a surprise.

There are four main components to the bill. The first, commencing from 1 January next year, will see a removal of the family assets test and the family actual means test from the youth allowance parental means test arrangements. Removal of the family assets test will see around 4,100 additional dependent youth allowance claimants qualify for the first time, accessing average annual payments of $7,000 a year. Removing the family actual means test will see around 1,200 more people receiving youth allowance for the first time, as well as increasing payments for around 4,860 existing students by approximately $2,000 a year.

The bill also aligns the parental income test exemptions for youth allowance with existing arrangements for family tax benefit part A; removes the maintenance income from the youth allowance parental income test assessment; and applies a separate maintenance income test for the treatment of child support like that currently applying to family tax benefit part A. Also, where a family has a dependent child who receives an individual youth payment that is parentally income-tested and younger siblings who qualify for family tax benefit, the family pool for the youth parental income test will include all FTB children. They are all positive measures.

According to the minister's second-reading speech, including all FTB children in the family pool for the youth parental income test will allow around 13,700 families with dependent children in both the family tax benefit A and youth streams to become eligible for an average increase in payment of around $1,100 a year. Around 5,800 families who currently miss out on payments due to the combined high-taper rates will also become eligible for an average payment of around $1,300 per year. According to that same material, the changes will reduce the regulatory burden on around 30,000 families subject to the family actual means test and around 200,000 families subjected to the family assets test.

For these reasons, Labor will support the bill.

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