Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017—there are so many words in the name of this bill that do not make sense to anybody in the public and there is a reason for that. The reason is the government are hiding behind this longwinded bill. They are hiding behind the fact that they are not listening, that they have not heard and that they are deaf to what Australians consider to be the most important thing in this country, and that is fairness. When Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister, took over as Prime Minister, he paid lip service to the notion of fairness. In fact, I think he suggested he would look at everything through a fairness lens. Fantasy horror is a really popular genre at the moment on our television screens, in novels and in short stories. It is happening today in the people's house—this is fantasy horror. The zombie cuts are back. They are the walking dead. I am not sure whether the bill should be called the walking dead bill or whether those opposite altogether should be named the walking dead. It is an outrage that this government brings into this chamber a bill that purports to be about early child care and education but is in fact about cuts to services and cuts to the most vulnerable in our community. These notions have been rejected. The government have tried before to distinguish between the leaners and the lifters, between the haves and the have-nots and between tax-paying and non-tax-paying Australians. They are back again today pitching parent against parent. They are pitching parents who receive family tax benefit against those parents who might be able to get a little more out of this package for early childhood care and education.

But you note that the bill's title refers to childcare reform. I am going to say it again—and I will say it every time I get to my feet on this: what has happened to the notion of education in this package? What has happened to the notion of the investment in the early years of our young people to ensure our economic future? It has gone drastically missing. So they have dug up the zombies and they have buried the education parts of this piece of legislation.

This bill is a disgrace. It demonstrates that this government is not listening. It is divided in itself, deaf to the public; it is dysfunctional and it is divisive—it is the four d's. This is a government that cannot listen and cannot learn. No matter how hard the Australian public yell, they refuse to hear, they refuse to heed and they refuse to learn the lessons. Let us go through the zombie cuts that they are bringing back—the zombie cuts that are walking around this chamber today. You may not be able to see these cuts, but, if they tap you on the shoulder, you will feel them. They are cuts to family tax benefits that will leave a typical family on $60,000 a year around $750 worse off. They are cuts to paid parental leave that will leave 70,000 new mums worse off. The bill scraps the energy supplement, which means a $1 billion cut to pensioners, people with disability, carers and Newstart recipients. It gets worse. The government want to introduce a five-week wait for Newstart. It is just a five-week wait, they say. Say that to a young person who has just lost their job and has to pay the rent next week. Do they think that young person can get their bond back, rush home, live with the folks for five weeks and wait, and then go through the whole process and gain their independence again? They live on a planet that has nothing to do with the people in my electorate, what they need or the way that they live. The bill goes further. It introduces cuts to young people between the ages of 22 and 24 by pushing them onto the lower youth allowance. This is a cut of around $48 a week, or $2½ thousand a year. It is an outrage.

This bill needs to be seen in the context of layer upon layer of everything else this government is doing or refusing to do. To that $48-a-week cut to the benefits of our young people who are unemployed, add the penalty rate cuts that they are going to suffer, which might mean $74 a week if they are working on Sundays—and where are the incentives for young people to find work?

The government have completely and utterly lost their way. They need to find their ear. Somebody give them a conch shell so they can hear the Australian public and what they have been screaming since the 2014 budget. The government need to take some listening lessons. They really need to go back to their electorates, have some conversations and find out what people really care about. Then they need to examine their consciences and examine the direction in which they would like to take this country. At the moment, we have wage growth at a record low—lower than it has ever been since we started measuring it—and we have company profits relatively historically high. The government, rather than working within that framework, are intent on driving home these zombie measures. It is a disgrace. They should really start to think about who they are representing and about how they would like to take this country forward, because at the moment they are absolutely lost. They want to talk about child care and education, but they cannot do it without holding the rest of the country to ransom. They are doing it again. They are dividing the country, parent against parent this time. We have seen that before with their gold-plated PPL, which they pulled. Now they are back and they are going to cut the PPL and hurt families and hurt the connection between mothers and their children—and they dare to call this childcare reform. It is a joke. The government need to start to listen and listen carefully to the people who are speaking to them in this country.

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