Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is so classic for government MPs to stand up and say: 'We cannot be everything to everyone. We have to be honest. We're not here to be loved by everyone.' Then why are you going after only the lowest paid people in our community? Be honest with the Australian people. Don't just come in here and say, 'We've got to provide tough love; we've got to go after the pensioners; we've got to go after the young people and the unemployed.' Why aren't you going after the people who are really making a profit in this community? Why aren't you getting real about cracking down on multinationals who are not paying their fair share of tax? Why is this government so obsessed with going after pensioners and going after young people who are unemployed and not going after the people in our community who are getting a free ride—like big multinationals who are not paying their fair share of tax and wealthy superannuants who are getting generous tax breaks from this government? This government are not being real and genuine when they come in here and say, 'We've got to make the tough decisions.' The only tough decisions that these people are making are the tough decisions that hurt the people who can least afford it.

This is a government that is not committed to supporting those on the lowest incomes. This is a government that is here to prop up and support their mates in big business and support the people who actually have the means in our society. It is a government that is obsessed with attacking people on the lowest incomes, and this bill that is before us, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Budget Repair) Bill 2015, is another example. All they are doing with these budget measures—they call it budget repair—is going after people on the lowest incomes. What have they got against people in our community on the lowest incomes? Where are the real tax reforms? Where is the real budget repair for the other end of town? They would have a little bit more credit with the Australian people if they would say, 'This is what we are doing across the board'. But no, instead—as we have now seen in two budgets—they are going after working families, they are going after Australian pensioners and they are going after our young people. The changes in this bill are another example of that.

They are changing the proportion of the pension payment to pensioners who are outside Australia. That is just a mean measure. It does not take into context the global community that we now live in, the relationships that we have with other countries. I have had a couple of people come and speak to me about how challenging it is for their mother, who receives a part pension from overseas, because she may have had her early years in another country and a pension here in Australia. They tell me that it is a nightmare to try to get the paperwork right—not just for Centrelink, not just for themselves but for the country overseas. There has got to be a better way to do this, and this government and these measures are just going to make that challenge more complicated.

This bill also introduces measures contained in the 2014 budget. These are changes that the government have not been able to legislate. These are the abolition of the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment. How could you deny pensioners who want to gain further education a supplement to do so? It shows that this government and these MPs do not understand who the pensioners are in their community. They do not understand that there are people on a pension who want to do more, who want to seek an education.

It is very expensive to study these days in Australia—very expensive. And yet this government is saying to those who want to put their hand up to do extra study, to do extra coursework, 'We're not going to support you in that.' It demonstrates how out of touch this government is, because they do not understand how hard it is to survive on a pension in Australia today.

There are several types of people on retirement incomes in our country. I have mentioned the wealthy superannuants at one end; then we have people who are on super; then we have people who are on a mix of super and pension. They are the people who are surviving. Then you have people who are solely on a pension. The only way you can describe the circumstances of a lot of them is that they are living in poverty. If they have been fortunate enough to be able to pay off their home, if they have solar panels on their roof so they can knock out that one electricity bill, then those pensioners are making ends meet. But pensioners who might be renting, pensioners who do not have solar panels on their roof and pensioners who are on a single income are living in poverty, and they need more support from this government, not less—particularly women who find themselves in the situation where they want to do extra study, yet this government will not be supporting them if these measures go through.

This bill also introduces measures to freeze the income-free areas for all working-age allowances other than student payments and for parenting payments for singles, from a new start date of 1 July 2016. This bill also maintains the levels for three years for income-free areas and other means-tested thresholds for student payments, including student income bank limits, from 1 January 2016. This is a measure that is just mean. They are going to say to people who go out there and start earning a little bit of extra money, 'We're keeping the amount that you can earn at a set level.' So to people who might be on a payment whilst they are studying and to people who might be on a payment whilst trying to find more work, this government is saying, 'Your income bank is frozen.'

You can tell that many members of the government, when they were studying at university, did not try to survive on youth allowance. That is what it was back in my day. You are forcing people into poverty because they cannot earn a few extra dollars to subsidise their youth allowance. The cost of living goes up every single year: the cost of the basics, the cost of rent, the cost of books and the cost of study go up. So, if people want to pick up that extra shift at work, they now cannot, because they will lose part of their youth allowance. What this government has not realised—because they are so out of touch with people in the lowest income bracket—is that they are forcing people into poverty. If they take the extra shift, they are no better off, because they lose part of the income that they receive through youth allowance and their other payments.

We need a system that is fair and that acknowledges people who are transitioning into work and that supports them and does not force them into poverty. Yet that is exactly what this government, in freezing the income-free areas, is doing. They did this when they were last in government. They do not genuinely believe in supporting people back into work. They prefer the tough love approach—taking out the big stick. That is exactly what they have done here. They do not understand how hard it is to survive on these small incomes. They are now saying to those who may pick up extra work, 'You might have to give up that extra shift or lose a bit of the small income that you get from us, because we are freezing your income bank.' It is one of the meanest measures that are being put forward by this government. The government are so focused on protecting the one per cent that they forgot to do what government should be doing, which is to support the 99 per cent, particularly those on small incomes.

My electorate of Bendigo is a classic example of most regional electorates. About 30 per cent of the electorate survives on less than $600 per week. That means 30 per cent of the electorate are single-income households. Most of them are on some form of payment, whether it be a pension, Newstart or a combination of part-payment part-work. There is simply not enough work available today. This government has done very little to help create jobs in regional areas like my area of Bendigo. A lot of people are complaining and do find it hard to get the extra work. I know from working with UnitingCare of Bendigo in my electorate over the break that they are seeing more and more working families presenting for emergency relief, both before Christmas and after Christmas with the return to school. Our community of Bendigo have been incredibly generous. They have donated money to help UnitingCare help these families. There are quite expensive schoolbook lists this year. In one of our schools the book list was $1,000. For a family with three children to find $1,000 for each child for their schoolbook list is expensive, particularly straight after Christmas.

So these families are already doing it tough, and the measures that are being put forward in this bill, if they are enacted, are just going to make it that bit harder. It is another demonstration of how this government does not really appreciate or prioritise supporting those who are on the lowest incomes. The rhetoric they will use when they stand up here is that it is about the debt left behind by Labor; that it was Labor's problem; that Labor spends, spends, spends. It is not true. This government's plan, and what they are prioritising, is not about helping the people who most need it. That is the real difference between Labor and Liberal. It is about how you prioritise your spending and how you prioritise where government dollars will go.

They have demonstrated that they are not going to prioritise our schools. They are not going to put the funding back into the Gonski reforms to fund schools. Let us put that into context. A small primary school in my area, Epsom Primary School, has its library in a hallway. Their budget for buying new books this year is less than $1,000. Yet we have an Attorney-General who spent $15,000 on moving his personal library at Parliament House and $13,000 on his personal book collection. It is another example of how this government is prioritising the one per cent and not the rest of the country. If this government were serious about being fair and measured it would see reform at the other end of the tax scale and income brackets. That is not what we have seen to date.

It does not matter who the Prime Minister is—whether it be Tony Abbott or Malcolm Turnbull—the Liberal government inherently do not want to support people in our communities on low to middle incomes. Time after time we see bills come before this House that go after the very people who most need the support of government. The cuts in these bills may have originated under the former Prime Minister and the former Treasurer but they have been continued by this Prime Minister and Treasurer. It is another example of how the government say one thing and do another. This is a government that, for all of their rhetoric about change, have not changed, because deep within their values they believe that those on the lowest incomes should just be able to pick themselves up. It does not work that way.

The people that you hurt the most by these cuts are our pensioners, who have worked hard their whole lives, or the young people in our community who are trying to get ahead. Currently pensioners who stay overseas for 26 weeks receive the full pension. Following that time the pension is reduced at a rate depending on how many years the pensioner has worked overseas. That is just an example of how this government does not understand working, whether people have worked, what is working and the relationships we have with other countries. People know that it was Labor that increased the pension and built those reforms in, starting to get the pension back to an income that people could survive on. That was voted down by the opposition, the present government, when it was first introduced, for very similar reasons—arguing that this country cannot afford it. We can afford it. We just need to get serious about how we are raising our revenue. We have a government that prioritises the most wealthy self-funded retirees over those who need the greatest support.

If this government were serious about our young people we would see a genuine job creation plan on the table, not these attacks on their income-free banks. Time and time again I have this raised with me in the electorate: 'I'm worried about my son or daughter—they just can't get a start.' Entry-level jobs today do not exist like they did a generation ago. It is something that people on the other side seem to ignore every time they come in here and demonise young people, forcing them into poverty. If this government were serious about the next generation they would be out there partnering with industry to rebuild our apprenticeship program, rebuild our vocational education program and rebuild our entry-level jobs that just do not exist today. The measures in this bill go after the very people that this government or any government should be supporting. Instead, they choose to go after them again. I hope, as with previous attempts by this government, that the crossbenchers stand with Labor and vote against this bill.

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