Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On one of the very first times I sat in this chamber I watched the Minister for Social Services introduce a bill to make unemployed people wait longer for their benefits. I thought: 'Okay, I'll listen to the arguments here. I'll listen to how he puts the case.' I was staggered to hear the lack of understanding of what it takes for a young person to put their hand up and apply for unemployment benefits in the first place. This minister, who now says, 'We don't need these measures any more, only because we can't get them through,' says nothing about the reasons why. He had conviction when I saw him speak. He absolutely believed that young people should wait, as long as this government could force them to, to be able to claim unemployment benefits, at a time when their self-esteem is low, because they have not been able to get a job, and when they have financial pressures on them.

What did he say about what those young people could access if things were a little bit tough? I remember this, because I was gobsmacked. He said, 'There may be some young people who experience hardship at this time, and we'll have a special fund for them.' Hello! What Earth do these people live on that they do not appreciate that to put your hand up and say, 'I'm struggling. I can't find a job and my family can no longer help me. I've called in all the favours that I have,' takes enormous guts. They have no idea of that, and yet they wanted people to wait. That is why I have no belief at all that there is any genuine intent to take these measures out of their agenda. They are parked. They have put them aside. They have said, 'Right now we just can't get these through. It's all a bit too tough. No-one is buying our arguments, so let's put them to the side.' That is what is driving this motion. That is why this minister has not a single word to say about why these measures are being taken off the table in this budget. They really believe in these measures, and nothing will persuade me that they have changed their minds.

It is not just making young people wait longer for unemployment benefits; it was the belief that it was okay to tell 22- to 24-year-olds, 'You should get $48 a week less because of your age.' Is your rent less because you are 22 to 24? Is your phone bill less? Is your electricity bill less? No, your costs are just the same, yet you are being discriminated against because of your age. This is the mentality of the people who sit opposite.

In the months that I have been here, I have been stunned to see the heartlessness that comes from the other side. This budget has just a veneer of civility. It is just a little smear across the top to make it seem a bit more acceptable. But I heard one of my colleagues, the member for Blaxland, this morning, and I thought he summed it up beautifully. He described it as 'a bucket of prawns sitting in the sun, not too bad on the first day, but by day 3, gee, it is going to smell'. Here we are; it is not even day one, and it is already smelling.

Every day that I have been in this place and my colleagues have been here, going back to 2014, when many of us were fighting in our communities against the measures in those budgets, we have fought, and in some ways you might say that these things are a victory for us. I would believe that if I thought that they had changed their minds, but this is a temporary reprieve, and it will only be a matter of time before those on the other side see an opportunity to sneak these things back onto the table. That is why we will be fighting every step of the way to make sure that what is taken off the table stays off the table.

It is not just the attack on young unemployed people. Let us talk about women with children. There was great celebration yesterday in the other place that a senator was able to breastfeed her child in the Senate for the first time. I think we would all acknowledge what an important step that is. Yet there is no true conviction from the other side of parliament that that is something we should be celebrating, because they want to make sure that women are forced back to work long before they would choose to finish breastfeeding. The cuts to paid parental leave that they wanted to bring in were not just on pragmatic grounds; it was because these women were 'rorters'.

I am not sure if they have any idea what it is like to have a baby. It takes it out of you just a little bit. Personally, I found the first year pretty tough the two times that I did it. Twice was enough. To have a little bit of time home with a child I think would make all the difference. I did not have that luxury. I was working for myself. There was no government scheme. Thank God for Labor that there is a government scheme in place that means all women who have been working can access it. I was back at work within a couple of days to meet a deadline, so I know how it feels to juggle working, raising a baby, looking after a baby—just getting enough sleep, for heaven's sake.

Yet on the other side they were happy to say: 'No, these women are rorters. They're double dipping. Happy Mother's Day.' Less than a year later, of course, as we come up to Mother's Day this Sunday, they have recognised that the rest of the world does not see things the way they do. The rest of the world hasn't got the heartlessness that they so easily access. The rest of the world, particularly in the other place, recognises that their policy to remove the access to government paid parental leave and to allow employers who have negotiated with their workers, the workers who have fought for additional time—the other place recognised that it was totally unacceptable to take away those rights. You can see—maybe they know it too in their hearts.

Opposition members: No!

No, they don't. No, what am I thinking? I still like to think that that there is some hope, but, yes, you are right; there is none.

Government paid parental leave needs to remain an absolute basis for women to be able to plan their future, and then employers need to be able to work with their staff so that they can find a way that works for both the worker—the mum, her family, her kids, her new baby—and the business or the organisation they are in. We cannot take that right away from any of the parties in that arrangement.

There is another group of people who I felt for in the government's matters that are now off the table, and that is the people from other countries who have chosen to come to Australia, become citizens of Australia and work their guts out here but hoped that in their retirement, in their pension years, they would get back to their homeland.

In my electorate in the Hawkesbury that is the Maltese community. They have grown vegetables, they have built businesses and they have educated their children at St Monica's, Bede Polding and all the wonderful Catholic schools that we have in our electorate, which of course are going to be facing real challenges as we move forward thanks to those opposite. As they get their pensions they think, 'I would like to go back to Malta and I would like to spend some time with my sisters, cousins and family that I have not seen.' Yet this government wanted to take that right away from them. That was a disgrace. When people have worked hard they deserve the opportunity to choose to have some leisure in their older years and to really enjoy the fruits of their labours. They may not have been able to stash away enough money to be able to do it on their own; they needed the pension to do that. It is there for people who need it and we should not ever have looked at taking that away. Those opposite should be ashamed that they even considered it.

But, sadly, they are not ashamed, and this is probably the bit that is heartbreaking: they actually still want to bring these measures through. We know that they would—given a change in polls, given a change in leader or given a change in the Senate—reintroduce these and any other measures that they could in a flash. This is a bit of cleaning up to make it look a bit neater. It is trimming around the edges, but really we know that they are still sitting there. They are still there waiting until there is a moment. And that is the horror of this government: it is only going to take a moment for them to step up and put all this stuff back on the table with all the other things that we know they would like to do, like $100,000 degrees for university students. It is all the things they have talked about: 'Let's make sure that the federal government does not fund any public education.' We know that, given the chance, all the things that they have had brain explosions about over the last few months would come back.

It really goes to the heart of their problem: they are so out of touch. They are out of touch with what ordinary people feel, what families feel, what pensioners feel, what self-funded retirees feel and what working mums feel. They are completely out of touch, and in fact the reality is that they will never ever be able to understand what it is like to be a real Aussie. They are in a totally different world, all of their own.

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