Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I, like all my colleagues on this side of the House, absolutely oppose this Social Services Legislation Amendment (Budget Repair) Bill 2015 and am pleased to speak against it. I speak on behalf of many people in my community who came to Australia and made a home in recent decades. They have contributed in extraordinary ways to this country. When they retire they seek to return home for periods of time to visit family, see their homeland, perhaps visit the graves of relatives, spend time with grandchildren and see people they have not seen in a long while. It is something we should expect in a country as diverse as ours.

Once again, we see this government talk about budget repair. It is a government that has doubled the deficit since it took office 2½ years ago. It talks about budget repair by ripping away at the most vulnerable in our community. Whether it is aged pensioners, people on disability pensions or young people they are in the sights of this government. It will try to fix a government problem by transferring the problem to the budgets of some of the most vulnerable people in this community.

This bill has four dreadful measures. One is from the 2015 budget and three are rising, again—like bad smells—from the 2014 budget. All demonstrate the appalling unfairness of this government. Regardless of who is the leader of this government, after 2½ years of them we have seen, time and time again, attempts to rip away at the welfare of the most vulnerable people in this community.

The first measure was introduced by the previous Prime Minister and is back, again—well and truly owned by current Prime Minister Turnbull. It is a dreadful measure. It changes the proportional payment of pensions to people who are visiting overseas. Pensioners who have spent fewer than 35 years of their working lives in Australia will have their pensions reduced after just six weeks overseas. Currently, there is a provision in the law where, if you are overseas for more than 26 weeks, there are reductions in the pension paid to you. This bill reduces that to just six weeks, which will affect people in their retirement, people who have been looking forward to their retirement, people who have been working hard for decades and have been unable to make trips overseas, perhaps because of the cost or because of their working lives—people who have been looking forward to visiting their first home, where part of their heart remains.

We all know that so many of our migrants that come to Australia love Australia and they live here as the most extraordinary Australians. But there is a part in their heart that will always be in their first country. One of the things that makes Australia great is our connection to the world. So many pensioners—my Maltese Australians, my Turkish Australians, my Lebanese Australians, my Greek and Italian Australians and all those who have come since then from Latin America, from Asia and from Africa—expect that, once they retire and their working lives are over and they have more time, they will be able to return home for a period of time.

This clause in the bill will cause grief in my community. In a community like Parramatta where you have so many people who came to Australia and made it home, this will cause nothing less than grief. I have spoken to so many people who were looking forward to those retirement years when they could return to their first home for a period of time. We all know that when you get older economy air flights are not that comfortable, so it is quite usual for people returning home in their retirement years to spend long periods of time out of this country when they are visiting overseas. Six weeks is a short period for a retired person to visit a country that they have not seen for decades. It is ironic of this government that, if you can afford to go many times for six weeks at a time, you are not affected by this. But if you cannot afford to go many times, if you are going to have to save up and go once for a longer period of time, you are well and truly affected by this bill. So those that are least able to afford these incredibly important trips home in their retirement years will be most affected.

It is as if this government not only do not get fairness but they do not actually know who we are. We are a country that has been built on migration. Forty per cent of pensioners were born overseas, 60 per cent of us have one parent who was born overseas, 25 per cent of the population generally were born overseas and we are a richer country for it. We are richer country because of this diversity. In the years of the late sixties and early seventies, when John Gorton, Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser opened the doors and allowed the world in, we became a richer nation. There is not a language that we do not speak in my community—not one. Conflict aside, there is not a place in the world that Australians cannot walk and know it. There is not a place we cannot trade, because we have the world in us. It makes us strong. Our migrant communities that came here from other parts of the world and brought the richness of their culture and their language and their traditions—not to mention their food and their music and their fashion—are all alive and well in Parramatta. They brought things to this country that are valuable. Communities like the Maltese community worked in the factories. They were an incredible part of the workforce down at James Hardie in my electorate—and paid the health costs of that. These have been extraordinary communities that have quite often taken low skilled work in factories and held parts of this country together for decades. Now, unless they have worked here for 35 years or more, they will be impacted if they decide to visit their families for more than six weeks at a time. I urge those on the other side of this House to understand the grief this will cause and go back to your party rooms and seriously talk to your colleagues about reversing this decision. It is incredibly harsh, and it is a recipe for heartache and, in many cases, grief.

The second measure is the abolition of the education entry payment. It is also an appalling measure. The education entry payment is a payment that goes to recipients of Newstart, the parenting payment or the partner or widow allowance, and there are currently 87,000 people in receipt of this payment. It was $208 a year, intended for the purpose of assisting people with study costs. This goes back to the 2014 budget. It was originally introduced in the 2014 budget measures bill. There was no vote in the Senate. It was discharged from the Notice Paper. It was then reintroduced as the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 1) Bill 2014, and there was no vote in the Senate. Now it has been reintroduced once again, so this is the third attempt by this government to put this amending legislation through the House to abolish the education entry payment.

I notice the minister's remarks that it is not a problem abolishing this because students can get help through VET FEE-HELP. Once again we have a government that loves debt—if it belongs to somebody else—and that is imposing measures on the young people of Australia, in particular, that will see them start their professional lives with thousands of dollars, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, of debt through the vocational education system and $100,000 debts or more if they are in the university system, if this government has its way. It is an appalling measure that should be rejected at every turn.

There is a third measure that I want to talk about: the abolition of the pensioner education supplement, which is a payment of between $31 and $61 a fortnight, depending on levels of study. It helps pensioners, mainly disability pensioners and carers, who are studying. There are 41,130 recipients who will lose their supplement if this bill passes. Three-quarters of those are women and 30 per cent are under the age of 25. This is a small supplement of between $31 and $61 a fortnight to help people, a large number of whom are on the disability pension, return to study. It is an incredibly important contribution to people who are trying to improve their lives, get back into the workforce or improve the capability in the workforce.

That is three appalling measures that are in this budget, all of which will tear away at some of the most vulnerable in the community. I strongly urge the members of parliament on the other side of this House to reconsider this bill and withdraw it for a third time.

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