Ross Hart (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My question to the minister is directed towards the funding and support that is supplied towards carers. As we know, we have approximately 2.8 million unpaid carers who work tirelessly every day to care for children with additional needs, sick or elderly family members and people with a disability. This is, of course, National Carers Week, which is a great opportunity to celebrate their extraordinary contribution. We should thank them every day for what they do for all of us.

However, instead of acknowledging their fantastic contribution towards society, in the past this Liberal government has attempted to cut carers payments. Indeed, in the horror 2014 budget, the Liberal government launched an unprecedented attack on carers by attempting to slash the indexation arrangements which existed, then, for the carers payment. Labor stood, at that time in my electorate, to stand up for Bass carers to block that unfair carer payment and pension cut but, of course, the battle is not over. We think that this minister is softening up the public for cuts to financial support for carers—of course, in association with other reviews such as reviews of the disability payment which, incidentally, has been the subject of an editorial in The Age today. That editorial highlighted how this government's cruel and unfair processes are materially affecting people who are severely disabled in our community. Under the cover of a review of whether somebody who is profoundly disabled is able to return to work, people who have been longstanding recipients of disability payments are being asked to re-establish their entitlement to disability entitlements, to pensions that they have long enjoyed.

Some of this can be extremely offensive. If somebody is, for example, suffering from cerebral palsy—a condition which is unlikely to change—then their ability to work, their ability to earn an income, is not going to be affected. In other words, to use the simplest language, they are not going to get better. If somebody has another severe disability then they can be reassessed every day of the week, and their condition will be unchanged.

In some respects, the criticism of the government in this area is entirely warranted, but, of course, when we look at the issue with carers, we have the interaction between the people who are currently in receipt of the disability support pension and those who are caring for them. In light of The Age's criticism—Fairfax's criticism—of the unfair treatment of those who are in receipt of disability support payments, is the minister able to reassure the House that, if he is signalling a new direction for review of entitlements to welfare in this country, he is going to take a view which is, on the whole, better than that which is currently being employed with respect to review of disability support payments? In other words, the people who are currently suffering from severe disability will not be required to have their family prove to Centrelink that their condition has got better and that their present disability is going to remain as the key criterion for their entitlement to be paid a carers pension.

I would like the minister to be honest with all recipients of carers payment. Is he planning to cut the carers payment or is he planning to push people off the payment entirely? His language up to now, which talks about the number of people who are in receipt of the carers payment increasing significantly over an extended period of time, speaks of something that is other than a reasonable assessment of people by reference to disability, certainly when we are talking about severely disabled people in this community.

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