Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak emphatically against this bill, just as the member for Braddon did and just as other members on this side do. I do so because this bill will hurt families, mums and dads, pensioners and young people across Australia, and especially in my electorate of Hindmarsh. I say that, because the electorate of Hindmarsh has one of the oldest demographics in the nation, with one of the largest numbers of age pensioners in the nation. All these people are in the firing line as a result of this federal coalition government's latest proposed round of cuts.

This will entrench inequality in Australia. This particular bill will make the gap that exists between the haves and the have-nots even greater. Instead of giving people a leg up to assist them, to ensure that they keep up with the pace of increasing bills—getting a little bit ahead, paying their bills—this bill will ensure that that gap becomes greater and they fall further behind.

Inequality in Australia is at a 75-year high. It has not been higher than this for 75 years. In other words, we are back where we were 75 years ago when it comes to people that have and people that have not, and that is very sad. At this particular point in time, with a 75-year high of inequality in Australia, at a time like this, we should be addressing inequality; we should be looking, as I said, to give people a leg up, to assist them to keep up with the pace of increased costs, to keep them in line with CPI. We should be ensuring that the little bit of subsidies that we do give to the most vulnerable people—we are not talking about people who are millionaires or people who are doing quite well; we are talking about some of the most vulnerable people in our electorates and in this nation. We should be doing all we can to address that inequality and to assist them at this particular time.

The coalition government seems intent on increasing the gulf, bit by bit, by dismantling the safety nets that we have in place and the social security net, and this is what this bill does. For that, I think the government is extremely out of touch. You cannot get more out of touch than taking away from our poorest people, people who depend on the very small subsidies that they receive.

This omnibus bill will do nothing other than grow the gulf between rich and poor in this nation. Since the omnibus bill was first announced, in 2015, the government has said that they would not pass their child-care package unless cuts to family payments were first passed by the parliament. That is playing one particular group off against another, and it is extremely cruel. Essentially, they are holding families with young children to ransom. This is a government that just will not listen.

The majority of savings measures in the bill have been previously introduced, but have not passed the parliament, most dating back to the 2014 budget, and we have all heard about the zombie measures. This government keeps resurrecting these cuts in different ways, threatening in different ways. And every time that they are resurrected, they are threatening again the most vulnerable people in our society. They just do not get it. Back in 2016 the government lost so many seats—they nearly lost the election—and they still have not got the measure that people see these cuts as very unfair. Australians do not want these unfair cuts, neither do I and neither do those on this side of the House. I am proud that Labor will continue to oppose them.

For years now this government has failed to deliver any childcare relief, because they insist on linking the changes to the cruel cuts to family budgets. With the introduction of this bill, the government is not just holding families to ransom to pay for child care, but now they are also adding pensioners, young Australians and new mums and dads. This bill introduces $2.7 billion worth of cuts to family payments alone. They say they need to do this in order to pay for the $1.6 billion childcare package. It does not make sense; they are robbing Peter to pay Paul. That is what this is. In total, it rips $5.6 billion from the household budgets of low-income Australians who desperately need that money to pay their bills, buy clothes for their kids, put food on the table and send their kids to school. We will not support this bill.

Let's take a closer look at how this bill will hurt hardworking Australians—for example, pensioners who receive the energy supplement. The government wants to remove that energy supplement from the most vulnerable Australians: our pensioners, people with disability, carers and Newstart recipients. These are not people who are wealthy. These are not people who are doing it easy. These are people who are doing it quite tough. This cut will rip approximately $550 from the pockets of pensioner couples, and $229 from a single Newstart recipient already struggling on a very inadequate payment. What happens when you rip $229 from someone who is just making ends meet and, in some cases, not making ends meet but being basically dependent on different welfare agencies, on top of all this?

The reality is that this government has been in since 2013 and there has been no job growth. I could understand that, if there were plenty of jobs and they were creating wonderful opportunities for young people, then, yes, you would certainly look at these things. But the economy is not doing well, and we have seen a decline in job growth, so it is the worst time to put these cuts in.

The other cuts are to migrant pensioners. Pensioners are being targeted in other ways apart from the cuts. If this government gets its way, after six weeks overseas, pensioners born overseas will have the rate of their pension reduced. This will unfairly punish people who choose to spend a period of time overseas visiting family. I know that in my electorate many aged pensioners of migrant background decide to visit their country of birth to see relatives for a few weeks or maybe a month or two or just to spend the warmer season during our winter over there—just as many people move to Queensland in winter; it is no different. Yet they will be punished for wanting to go overseas to visit family.

These are people who maybe have saved their whole lives just to visit their homeland. They will be punished and only allowed to be there for six weeks. Currently, pensioners can stay overseas for 26 weeks and receive their full pension. Following that time, the pension is reduced to a rate that depends on the number of years they have resided in Australia. It could be someone who has been saving their entire life to go for a holiday to the homeland where they were born to see relatives for the very last time and spend maybe two or three months overseas. But these cuts mean that after just six weeks these people will be affected and they will only be allowed to stay for six week.

These people who will have the rate of their pension cut have lived in Australia for less than 35 years. It is estimated that this particular measure will affect around 190,000 pensioners who came here as migrants many years ago. This will affect many pensioners in my electorate, and many have raised it already with me and are concerned about this particular measure They are good people—people who worked, people who paid their taxes—who now, in their twilight years, wish to go and spend perhaps a few weeks in winter over in sunny Europe in the Mediterranean, perhaps, given the Deputy Speaker's background, in Italy or Greece or many other countries, and rightly so. It is their right to be able to do that, just like it is the right of any other retiree who wishes to go to the northern part of Australia for winter.

We are discriminating in a big way here, and I find this very wrong. Certainly I am hearing the message loud and clear in my electorate from the 190,000 people affected by this, and many other electorates around the country would be hearing the same things that I am hearing. Coupled with the changes to the asset test, this could result in many pensioners really struggling to make ends meet. People who have worked hard all their lives deserve dignity in their retirement. The last thing they need is to be treated like a burden on society by this particular government, the coalition government, and by the Treasurer. This is terrible. These people need to be treated with dignity.

The other area of concern is family payments. We have heard a lot about family payments from the speakers before me and from others on this side of the House. This coalition government admits that these cuts to family payments will leave 1.5 million Australian families worse off. These cuts add up for families who are struggling to make ends meet. For example, a typical family with two children and a single income of $60,000 will lose around $750 per year. A couple with one child on $75,000 will lose over $1,000 per year. That could be the school books or school uniforms. It is a big hole in someone's budget.

Those worst hit will be single parents whose youngest child is 17 or over and finishing school. These particular families will lose over $3,000 a year in FTB alone. This period when a child is 17 is a time when children cost more. As a father who has two adult boys, I remember the period when they were 17 and finishing high school. That is when the real expenses come in. This is wrong. The costs increase as they get older; we know this. This is a time when it is vital for parents and carers to be able to support their children to stay in school, and these cuts will hurt families in a very real way. On this side of the House, we will stand up for low- and middle-income Australians and families, as we have done since this government began its attack on them in its cruel 2014 budget.

Another area which is being hit hard is paid parental leave. The coalition government's cuts also target new mums and dads. Around 70,000 new mums with a median income of $62,000 would be $5,600 worse off on average. That is a big, big cut—$5,600 worse off. But what can we expect from a government that calls new mums, as we heard earlier, accessing their entitled paid parental leave as 'double dippers' and 'fraudsters'? These are working women who have bargained for paid parental leave, often at the sacrifice of wage increases. This government is destroying the incentive for employers to provide leave to their employees and making mums choose between returning to work early and cutting their living standards. This is not on. We do not agree with it. We will stand up for their employers, who have done the right thing by providing them with paid parental leave.

We need to protect this scheme, which we introduced, which deliberately allows new mothers to combine leave from their employer with the government scheme. This was done to ensure that as many mothers as possible can get to the 26 weeks of leave recommended by the World Health Organization to spend that early time with their babies—the most crucial time for children. The coalition government wants new mothers to have less time with their babies, capping the scheme at 20 weeks. For instance, a retail worker who gets eight weeks paid parental leave from her employer will have access to only 12 weeks from the government instead of 18 weeks. This means that this new mum will have 20 weeks of paid leave at home instead of 26 weeks. She loses around $4,030 in support. How can that be right when we are reducing the time and taking approximately $4,000 off that person? It cannot be right. It is wrong.

Another group of Australians who will really bit hard by this bill is young Australians and income support recipients. Young Australians are very much in the firing line of these cuts. What we have seen is a government that wants young job seekers to live on nothing for five weeks—absolutely nothing. So how can we, in all seriousness, expect young people who fall on hard times to live on absolutely nothing for five weeks? You have lost your job. You cannot get a job. You have fallen on hard times. On top of that, we say, 'Not a single cent for five weeks,' just to make it tougher for them and to make sure that they really hurt. That is what this government is doing, and it is wrong. How are they going to pay their rent? What about bills, such as electricity? What are they going to eat? In addition, the government wants to rip $48 a week out of the budgets of young Australians by shifting 22- to 24 year-old job seekers from Newstart onto the lower Youth Allowance. That is almost $2,500 a year!

Labor will always stand up for Australian families by protecting them from these harsh Liberal cuts. We must stand up and protect the rights of our most vulnerable people. I am proud that we will be voting against these measures.

See this speech in context