Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak against the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Family Payment Structural Reform and Participation Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2015. I say from the outset that the reason we oppose this bill is its inherent unfairness, plus the fact that every member of the opposition knows, and what the families in my electorate of McEwen that I represent have learned in a very short space of time, is that you cannot trust a word that the Turnbull government says. It offers something with one hand, but then takes it away with the other. It promises to do one thing and then does the complete opposite. How can the families in my electorate believe that the proposed changes to family tax benefit parts A and B, as outlined in this bill, will not hurt vulnerable families?

The Minister for Social Services tries to put a bit of gloss on it. He has tried to convince the Australian people that he is willing to compromise on measures in the bill, keeping in mind that 'we still have to save enough money to pay for changes to child care'. These are the long overdue childcare measures which we have not yet seen in parliament and we are expected to just take their word and support it. It is not going to happen. We do not know what the childcare measures are actually going to mean. We do not know who will benefit. We do not know who will not benefit. We do not know how much the Turnbull government's proposed childcare measures will cost. In fact, we know nothing about them. Cuts to family payments appear to be a convenient way for the Turnbull government to pay for its so-called new policy announcements.

How can anyone reasonably consider whether the benefits of picking on the low-hanging fruit, such as cuts to family payments, would yield the greatest benefit to the Australian community when the key policy announcement about what they say it is for is not even on the table? Let's not forget that cuts to family payments are the low-hanging fruit for the Turnbull government, because it refuses to consider tax reform to ensure big multinational businesses pay their fair share. Instead, you have the Turnbull government asking the opposition and Australian families to trust them and just agree with the changes outlined in the bill. No, thanks. The Turnbull government is playing a dishonest game. It is using sleight of hand to tell Australian families that they will be better off under the proposed changes. On one hand, the changes would supposedly see families have a small increase to the fortnightly rate of FTB A. Meanwhile, the changes would see the FTB A and FTB B supplements being cut. The loss of these supplements means that the rates of both family tax benefit A and B are reduced overall, leaving families worse off.

I have listened to families in my electorate who have told me what the possibility of losing thousands of dollars in family tax benefit means to them. It means less money to save and prepare for school. There is no money for school shoes or uniforms—and we all know how fast kids grow—or for school camps and excursions. In the first version of this bill, it was obvious that the Turnbull government thought that ripping money away from vulnerable families would be a walk in the park. The Prime Minister was mistaken. Labor opposed the first version of the bill and we are doing it again. We argued that the changes were fundamentally unfair. We forced the government to back down on two of its measures: their plan to freeze family tax benefit rates and to freeze eligibility thresholds. We successfully argued to get payments to grandparent carers back on the table. They would have been cut in the previous bill by the Abbott-Turnbull government. Why would you go and attack grandparent carers?

We will still fight on. This version of this bill is not good enough. Even the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights is of the same opinion. With scrutiny of this bill from Liberal, National, Labor, Greens and Independent MPs and senators, it said that this bill fails the fairness test. In its report from November 2015, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights found the proposed measures in the bill were not able to be justified. The report from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights released on 2 February this year showed that nothing has changed between the previous version and this version of the bill. This means that the committee's questions on the veracity of the bill were not answered by the minister.

Can the Turnbull government actually grasp the meaning of the word 'fairness'? Let's see how we go. The new cuts to families in this bill will leave some families worse off than the cuts in the previous version of the bill that the Abbott government proposed would have done. That is unfair. Asking 1.5 million ordinary Australian families to accept the loss of more than $700 per child every year by losing their family tax benefit part A supplement is unfair. About 600,000 of these families are single-parent families, and 500,000 of those are on the current maximum rate of family tax benefit part A. This means their annual income is less than $51,000.

In the electorate of McEwen, these cuts to the FTB part A would impact on more than 17,000 families. 1.3 million Australian families will lose their FTB supplements, a cut of more than $350 per family every year. The 600,000 single-parent families I mentioned before are in for a very rough ride. Not only will these families have their FTB reduced when their child turns 13; it will then be cut entirely when their child turns 16. In my electorate, almost 15,000 families will be directly affected by this attack.

I say to my colleagues on the other side: if you have not caught on yet, none of the proposed measures in this bill represent fairness. How bad is Turnbull doing that he makes Abbott appear more humane and fair? The Minister for Social Services cited one of the recommendations of the McClure report in his press conference. He focused on the report's recommendation to simplify the system. by reducing the number of payments and supplements. Rationalising the system in this way would be a good start to structural reform if—and this is key—appropriate checks and balances, including fairness, were transparently applied. But we simply cannot trust the Turnbull government to be transparent or to ensure that the interests of ordinary Australian families are looked after.

For example, what about the other recommendations of the McClure report? Why were they so selectively ignored? One of the recommendations was that family assistance should increase with the age of children. This recommendation was based on research into the cost of raising children and identified key points in the life cycle—starting primary school, starting secondary school and the final two years of secondary school. I am sure if you talked to any parent they would agree with the research outcomes. A comment made in the McClure report was really interesting, and I cannot wait to hear the views of one of my Liberal colleagues on the other side on why the recommendation was disregarded. It said:

Payments for low income families with children and young people should support children to finish their education and transition to the workforce.

Well, the measures in this bill definitely do not do this. Family assistance payments will be cut by the time a child reaches the age of 16 when they still have two to three years of critical schooling left.

I wonder what Australian families will take away from this. Will it be that the Turnbull government believes that only kids from middle- to high-income families should finish school? They have seen the Liberals support $100,000 degrees, so maybe they will not be surprised. When it comes to fairness, the Turnbull government is no better—in fact, it is worse—than the Abbott government, and that is a pretty tall order. It is a different leader with the same policies. They promise not to do something to get elected and then implement it anyway. I am sure this is in the back of Australians' minds when it comes to the GST.

There is a clear distinction between Bill Shorten's Labor and Malcolm Turnbull's coalition. Labor fights for the majority—the millions of Australian families, workers and business owners trying to get ahead with a handful of dollars—whereas the Turnbull government stands by the handful of people with millions of dollars. After all, the Turnbull government refuses to make multinationals pay their fair share of tax and gives superannuation tax concessions to the people who are for the people in the top one per cent income bracket. Instead, the Turnbull government would rather take money from the pockets of all Australians, hit them with a 15 per cent GST for good measure and then tell them that they are better off because of changes to their personal income tax rates.

We still have not seen the Turnbull government's tax reform package, so this assurance is not going to pay the bills in the meantime, is it? This bill should be pulled. If we really want to see fair structural reform in the area of family payments, we should start again. Labor is not opposed to structural reform of family payments, as long as it is fair and reasonable. The Turnbull government's bill views Australian families as the bottom line of a spreadsheet. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights did not endorse the previous version of the bill. It sought justification from the minister for the proposed changes. Its questions still remain unanswered in this bill. The losers in this bill are the single parents and families with children in their last two years of schooling. That is why they are relying on Labor. They know Labor can be trusted to stand up for Australian families.

We have also heard members opposite in this wide-ranging debate—I do not know how joint strike fighters got involved, but somehow they did—saying, 'We've got to repair the budget mess.' December's interest debt this financial year was $1.352 billion—$43 million per day. Gross debt since this government removed the debt ceiling limit has gone over $400 billion. That is up 47.2 per cent from when they first got elected. Net debt is now $274 billion. That is now up 57 per cent since those opposite got elected. They like to come in here like peacocks—the Prime Minister fluffs up, puts his tail out and talks about economic credibility—but the numbers do not lie. This government has increased debt, it has increased deficit, and we have been every day watching this government attack Australian families and Australian people at the same time it protects those at the top end of the scale. That is why it took things like the low income superannuation contribution—a measly $500 for people earning less than $37,000 a year—off people. The Australian people know that this is not right. They know that the Prime Minister is not right. They know that the government is not right. They also know that Labor is there to stand with them against these unfair cuts.

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