Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

I cannot support this omnibus bill. It is very bad policy and it lumps in bad policy with good policy. The government has negotiated with us, the Nick Xenophon Team in good faith on individual pieces of legislation, but this bill does not reflect that good faith. I and the Nick Xenophon Team will always support sensible welfare reform and will continue to negotiate with the government from this position. However, we definitively reject many of the cuts contained within this bill. That is because they are too deep, too harsh and, most critically, they target the same vulnerable group of people again and again.

Most importantly, there is no evidence that the measures in this legislation will assist young people to find employment or assist single parents of older children to find employment or earn more money. They will do nothing to assist pensioners to keep lights on in the home, and it will do nothing but cut financial assistance from some of the most vulnerable citizens.

The Nick Xenophon Team takes budget repair seriously. We know it is a necessary foundation for the future prosperity of our nation, but if heavy-lifting on budget repair is going to be successful, then all segments of Australian society need to tighten their belts, not just the poorest third.

I would like to talk about family tax benefits. For the life of me, I cannot understand why the government is determined to abandon Howard's battlers for whom family tax benefits were created. In the national broadsheet The Australian on 1 December 2015, former Prime Minister John Howard was quoted by Judith Sloane as saying that he did not 'regard family tax benefits as a form of welfare'. It is true that the original scope of the Family Tax Benefit scheme was relatively generous, and it is for this reason, perhaps not unreasonably, that some have labelled it as 'middle-class welfare'. However, the halcyon days of generous payments for middle-class families are well and truly over. Family tax benefits have been cut again and again, and what little remains now provides critical support for struggling families. Some people argue that governments do not have a role in subsidising families and that it should be completely up to families to bear the costs of any children they choose to have. However, you cannot ignore that, statistically, impoverished and disadvantaged children often beget more disadvantage. This is a cycle we cannot and should not actively choose to reinforce.

More importantly, times are changing. Families are more vulnerable than ever in this country. In ACOSS's 2016 report, Poverty in Australia, it is estimated that 730,000 Australian children are living in poverty. Everyone who looks at real estate pages sees how many more zeros there are in home prices—prices which more and more Australian families simply cannot afford. Even rental markets are increasingly tight, with more and more families in insecure housing and impermanent month-to-month leases. In light of this, the government's proposed cuts to family tax benefits are just too harsh. Of the 1.1 million families who will lose FTB A and FTB B supplements, over half are sole parents. A two-parent family with two children under 15 and a dual combined income of $60,000 a year stands to lose just over $400 a year in family tax benefits. A two-parent family with a single income of $60,000 a year and two children under 15 will lose even more. They will lose $756 a year. A single parent with an income of $40,000 and a 17-year-old child in high school will a year lose a whopping $3,387 a year. That is nearly 10 per cent of that family's income.

We as a party are willing to discuss with government the streamlining of supplements into fortnightly payments so that families are able to budget more effectively. However, we do not believe that families who are in the lowest incomes—those who are receiving the maximum amount of family tax benefit—should be worse off, and they most certainly would be. What do we want for that single-parent family on $40,000 a year with a 17-year-old? We want that child to finish school, undertake further education and to give them the best chance possible of escaping the poverty trap. Why would we want to reduce that likelihood? A wise woman once said to me, and that woman is my mother: when money troubles come in the door, love goes out the window. I believe that the cuts in family tax benefits would increase rates of separation. Why would we want to do that? Why would we want to put more families in crisis?

I would like to move on to talk about childcare reform. The Nick Xenophon Team considers that the childcare reform measures within the bill to be important for families and for the childcare sector. They will see hundreds of thousands of Australian families better off and should see increased workforce participation as a result. The childcare sector is united in support of many of the measures contained within the bill and they have conveyed to me how important those reforms will be. However, the reforms are not perfect and I have some issues with how they will impact on low-income families.

I also have concerns about the Budget Based Funded services that are not mentioned in the new package. These include Indigenous services and remote services which differ in practice from a traditional childcare model, as well as mobile childcare services, which are particularly valuable and well regarded in regional areas. For many remote Indigenous communities, budget based childcare services operate in a different manner to other childcare services due to the fact that they cater directly to the community's needs. Many of these centres run youth programs for children, and, while they do not fit perfectly into the childcare funding model, the positive impact on their community is incredibly significant. Similarly, the mobile childcare services ensure that children and families in disadvantaged regional communities have access to high-quality children's services. These services are invaluable for those living outside of the cities for whom the closest permanent childcare centre may be hours away. I will be seeking assurances from the government that these services will continue to be funded under any new scheme. If the government is serious about childcare reform, it should bring it to the House as standalone legislation. These measures were introduced in the 2014 budget and three years later there has been no reform. The children who were born on budget day in 2014 are now unlikely to see the benefits of the long-promised new package. Let's remember that the government already has—and we, of course, support this measure—$950 million in savings that it has already managed with reform to child-swapping arrangements and ensuring that it is cutting rorting out of childcare systems in family day care. A further $250 million was announced by Minister Birmingham today in expected savings. That alone would pay for this childcare reform.

The government has had three years to bring in this measure and, year after year, at this time of the year, working families reaching their $7,500 threshold are wondering how they will afford child care. The most recent MYEFO shows a reduction in the projected cost of the childcare package of almost $1.29 billion, and yet the government is still insisting on a further $4 billion worth of savings above and beyond the cost of childcare reform. A package such as this is an investment in the future of Australia. If the government's prediction of 240,000 more people entering the workforce as a result of this childcare package is true, then the benefit it brings far outweighs the cost of it, so we say, 'Bring it on and bring it on in a standalone way.' This reform should not be used as a bargaining chip with which to strip vital support away for the lowest income Australian households.

In relation to the energy supplements, the instability and high cost of power in South Australia is devastating households, business and employment in my state. Both state and federal governments are playing the blame game and we are yet to see workable solutions actually implemented. State and federal governments share responsibility for the problem and both state and national regulators have made major mistakes in recent months. It is becoming increasingly apparent that it is not only South Australia that is vulnerable to instability in our energy grids. According to the Tariff-Tracking Project, average electricity prices have increased by more than 80 per cent across Australia since 2009. In South Australia, they have increased by more than 125 per cent over that period. Until the federal government makes some serious efforts to address Australia's energy prices and energy security, until they reform the national electricity market—and that does not mean swapping a piece of coal on the front bench; it means true reform—and until they increase competition and put downward pressure on electricity prices, the Nick Xenophon Team simply cannot support closing the energy supplement to new welfare recipients. Let's remember that by doing this we would also be creating a two-tier welfare system and discouraging people from taking on short-term work, because we know that if they manage to get a three- or four-month contract and were back on Newstart they would be living on less money than they originally had under the Newstart program.

I would like to touch on the four-week waiting period for young Australians. Many in this House would know that I have been particularly vocal about that issue over the several months that it has been in the parliament and certainly in the media. The Nick Xenophon Team cannot and will not support discriminatory waiting periods for income support based on the age of a recipient. Young Australians who are in need of real support from the government should not be treated any differently from older Australians who also need support. We are all in favour of young people being activated and getting into the workforce. However, if you are being starved out of a foxhole, how do you do this? You have no capacity to find a job. It costs money to look for work. We all know this.

And we know that youth homelessness is on the increase. According to Homelessness Australia, under-24-year-olds already account for a whopping 42 per cent of homeless people. That is 26,000 young people aged 12 to 25 who are homeless. And 70 per cent of those young people left home to escape family violence and child abuse. It is just a ridiculous policy measure to think that, by starving a young person for four weeks, we would somehow magically assist them in finding a job. There is just no evidence that the long waiting periods will create any new jobs, or that they are going to get young people into work. So, just as we would not support discriminatory waiting periods for older Australians to receive the aged pension, we do not support the four-week waiting period for Australians under 25 to receive income support payments.

Similarly, we cannot support discrimination against young people by preventing them from accessing Newstart until they are 25. Many of them are already parents of five-, six- and seven-year-olds by this stage. Young independent jobseekers deserve the same level of financial support afforded to older jobseekers. The cost of looking for a job—and of public transport, phone calls, internet, work clothes, printing and job training—is not magically cheaper just because you are under the age of 25. Water, rent, electricity—they are no cheaper for independent Australians who are 25, 35 or 50.

The Nick Xenophon Team deliberated long and hard on the issue of paid parental leave. We had hoped to navigate a course that would extend the number of weeks available to lower income primary caregivers, but without deeply cutting those who fought hard for the benefits afforded to them by their employer-funded paid parental leave schemes. We just could not make it through with the government, despite many, many hours—many days—of negotiation.

Besides the United States, Australia has the least generous government-supported paid parental leave system in the OECD. Paid parental leave is not just another welfare payment; it is an employment benefit, and the investment in it is an investment in Australia's children.

There is a deep concern that the government's paid parental leave scheme will ultimately shift the full responsibility for paid parental leave in Australia onto the government. The government's proposal of 'topping up' paid parental leave provided by employers only serves to destroy the incentive for employers to provide parental leave in the first place. We were told this by employers firsthand. They have said to us: why would they bother providing their employees with any weeks of paid leave if the government is just going to top it up to 18 weeks or 20 weeks anyway? Better to compensate their employees in other ways, such as return-to-work bonuses.

The government's proposal will inevitably shift the responsibility and cost for paid parental leave from a shared public-private concern to a wholly-funded government concern. And, although the government will save money in the short run, we are deeply concerned that the government is actually creating a future unfunded liability as employers respond to the new incentives and just stop paying parental leave as a workplace prerogative altogether. This policy position is in complete contrast to the government's position of small government.

In conclusion, I and the Nick Xenophon Team will continue to deliberate carefully on all proposals the government puts forward on the measures contained within this bill. But, as it stands, we cannot support the omnibus bill, and we most certainly cannot support cuts to our most vulnerable Australians.

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