Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me no pleasure to speak in this debate because it is a debate that we should not be having. We should not be passing this legislation; we should be supporting the amendment which has been moved by the shadow spokesperson Ms Macklin. The amendment she has moved summarises very aptly—to anyone who may be listening—why we should not support this bill. We should not give this bill a second reading because, as has been said by successive speakers, it will hurt pensioners, families, new mums, young Australians, while holding childcare assistance and the national disability insurance scheme to ransom. How could they do that? How could they possibly do that while at the same time they are contemplating passing legislation to give $50 billion worth of tax cuts to big business? Of that, $7.4 billion is to go to big banks. How could they do that?

We are calling on the government to drop their unfair cuts to pensioners, families, new mums and young Australians and fix their childcare changes so that vulnerable and disadvantaged children are not worse off and so that Indigenous and country services do not face closure. On that point, I note the member for Blair's contribution; he points out the impact of those changes on Indigenous childcare services around the country, two-thirds of which will suffer cuts.

When I observe debates in this place and when I watch ministers speak, I expect that they will speak on behalf of the nation and try to do things which are good. This is not good. I expected the Prime Minister, when he was elected Prime Minister by his party, to make a difference in this place, but he has not. What this legislation does is prove yet again how out of touch he is. He is arrogant, out of touch; he has no understanding of the differentials that exist across this great society of ours or of the suffering experienced by people who are disadvantaged or lonely or with an illness or people who live in remote communities and the costs they have to confront just to put bread on the table. The Prime Minister has no idea of this, no idea at all. He has no empathy, no understanding; he is simply out of touch. He is so out of touch that his party can contemplate putting these proposals before us.

That is remind ourselves just briefly what some of these proposals are. There are cuts to family tax benefits. My electorate of Lingiari, for those who are listening, covers all of the Northern Territory except Darwin and a large slice of Palmerston. It is 1.34 million square kilometres, and 42 per cent of my electors are Aboriginal people, most of whom live in remote communities, are impoverished and live in conditions worse than any other electorate almost in this country—apart perhaps from some remote electorates which share some of the common characteristics of people living in remote communities who are poor and unhealthy. They deserve a break, but with this legislation, yet again, the government is giving them a kick in the guts. We are expected to stand up here and say, 'Well, that's terrific, Prime Minister. You know what you're doing. This piece of legislation, which will cut family benefits to 11,257 families and up to $200 per child, is a good thing. We should cop that, while you sit in your place of residence surveying the coast and no doubt the harbour and think about giving tax cuts to big business. How could you be so out of touch?'

Around 9606 families in my electorate will lose $354 as a result of the abolition of the Family Tax Benefit Part B end-of-year supplement. A single parent with an income of $60,000 and a 17-year-old high school student will be over $3300 a year worse off. The government is going to cut the energy supplement, which will cut $14.10 a fortnight or $365 a year out of a single pension. Pensioner couples will be $21.20 a fortnight worse off or around $550 worse off a year. How can you do this? On what basis are you doing this? Is it because you have a problem with your budget, which is all of your own making? You now want to attack the poorest and most vulnerable in the community.

Mr Wallace interjecting—

It is of your own making—just check the debt levels, comrade! What were they when you came to office? What are they now? Debt and deficit—all of your own making. You have been in government for almost four years now and what do we get? 'It's their fault. It is not our fault.' I am not arguing against savings; what I am arguing against is a $50 billion tax cut for big business. Leave the money for the poor people, the most vulnerable in the country. You have no idea.

Let me just give you an illustration of what poor people are. Let me give you an illustration of people who will be affected by this. Every year in June, the Northern Territory Department of Health, to its credit, publishes the Market Basket Survey of the cost basic food items in remote stores in the Northern Territory. Those of you over there with tin ears, just listen for a moment. These are remote stores in the Northern Territory. This is the 42 per cent of my electorate who are Aboriginal people and live in remote communities—a large proportion of them—where jobs are difficult and they rely on income support of the type we are talking about here today. The Market Basket Survey includes a food basket that consists of food that meets the energy and recommended nutrient needs of a family of six for a fortnight. The basket looks at bread, fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy. The latest survey, which is now nine months old, found that the cost of a sample basket of goods in a Darwin supermarket was $580. The survey found that the same basket of goods averaged across 81 remote communities cost $817. The further you travel from Darwin, to the remoter parts of the Territory, you pay more. The communities in the Central Australian region are paying $844—a massive $264 difference. They pay 46 per cent more for exactly the same basket of goods that you could buy in a supermarket in Darwin.

These people will be directly impacted by these cuts and we have the government talking about wanting to close the gap. They come in here and parade around saying, 'Close the gap.' They tell us how they are bound and striving to make sure that we change life expectancy data for Aboriginal infants and adults and that they will fix the health issues for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. You will not do if they cannot afford to buy food, yet the direct impact of these cuts will challenge the capacity of Aboriginal families who live in remote communities in the Northern Territory to do exactly that. We hear government members saying, 'This is all about savings, Warren.' The burden of those savings should not rest on the poorest, defenceless and most vulnerable people in the community. That is clear. The government say that, somehow or another, this is fair and reasonable. When you expose yourself to the facts, it is demonstrably untrue.

So I say to the Prime Minister and the Treasurer—we do not see a lot of him these days; I wonder why—just how out of touch do you want to be? How arrogant you are. Put yourself in the shoes of the people I have just been talking about and think about how you would manage life. Just to remind ourselves, a family in this context was seen as a grandmother aged 60 years, a man aged 35 years, a woman aged 33 years, a male aged 14 years, a girl aged eight years and boy aged four years—a family of six, which is considered large in some communities, but not in the remote parts of the Northern Territory, I can tell you, where extended families living together is the norm. These vulnerable people will be impacted by these changes. You cannot tell me that, somehow or another, what you are trying to do is fair or in any way reasonable.

The thing that really gets to my gut is the proposal to cut support for young people aged between 22 and 24 who will be pushed from Newstart onto Youth Allowance, losing around $48 a week, or almost $2,500 a year. How do you, in all conscience, do this? How do you do this? Do you think they all have rich mums and dads? As an infamous person on the other side once said, 'Get yourself rich parents.'

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