Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today is the last sitting day of parliament before the budget—the fourth budget of this Abbott-Turnbull government. The people of Australia have every reason to be worried. The people in my electorate of Paterson have every right to be worried because this government has its priorities all wrong. Today, and all this week, it has been squabbling and horse trading in the Senate trying to pass $50 billion worth of tax cuts to big business. At the same time, it is leaving 1½ million Australian families and millions of children worse off by freezing the family tax benefits payment rates. That means payments to low-income families will not keep pace with the cost of living, which we know is going up all the time. The government has swaddled these cuts with child care, trying to pretend that these cuts are about helping families with the cost of child care, but no-one is buying that story.

These cuts will come into effect on 1 July, the same day the Turnbull government intends to abolish the deficit levy to high-income earners. Abolishing the deficit levy will mean a tax cut for a millionaire of $16,400 a year. That equates to $315 per week. If the government had kept the deficit levy, it would have found $4.4 billion in savings from one-third as many families with a far greater propensity to afford them than our poorest families. So, on one hand, this government wants to give $315 a week to a millionaire and take $440 a year from a family on $60,000 a year with two primary school aged children and take $540 a year from a single-parent family on $50,000 a week with two high school children. Talk about having your priorities absolutely wrong.

It has cut pensions. It refuses to stand up for our lowest-paid workers. It wants to cut money from community legal centres which help the most vulnerable in our society to access justice, all the while handing out money to millionaires and promising tax cuts to big business and overseas shareholders; all the while watching our economy grow below trend, watching unemployment increase and watching underemployment reach record highs. This government thinks the answer to record low wages growth is to cut them further. This government thinks robbing poor Peter to pay rich Paul is the answer. I do not believe that the Australian people are going to wear it any longer.

I read an interesting piece on The Conversation this week about inequality. It was written by Professor of Psychology Nick Haslam from the University of Melbourne and is aptly called 'Distress, status wars and immoral behaviour: the psychological impacts of inequality'. In the piece, Professor Haslam writes:

It is well known that economic inequality is rising … that rising inequality is associated with a range of economic and social ills.

In addition to the better known effects of inequality, such as worse health and more violent crime, inequality also has profound psychological effects. These include lower life satisfaction and higher rates of depression, but, most importantly, an increased mistrust of other people: the sense that the system is unfair and that others are advancing themselves by questionable means. That mistrust leads to a breakdown in cohesion and a sense that these divides, into the haves and the have-nots, are deep and inevitable. Mistrust undermines social cohesion. It really undermines social connection and civility. A society where people do not trust one another is at risk of ill-health and violent crime. Economic inequality has very real psychological and social consequences.

But the government is not taking any of that into consideration. I really believe it does not care. And what could illustrate that better than the Turnbull government's submission to the Fair Work Commission on the minimum wage? The government has asked the commission to take a cautious approach to raising the minimum wage, and said that it was an efficient way to address relative living standards and the needs of the low-paid. We are talking about nearly 200,000 people who are paid $17.70 an hour. Raising the wages of the lowest paid—how could that not be efficient? It is the most efficient way. I call on this government to do more to settle this inequality.

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