Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

To conclude my remarks on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017: what we've seen, in the measures that the government wants to introduce to delay payments to people who apply for welfare assistance, is a desperate move from a desperate government. Then we saw, in question time today, an answer from the minister which has outdone Chemical Ali during the war in Iraq, when he was denying what was happening there. Just as in the sketch in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the Black Knight was denying what was happening to him at the time, the minister, totally out of touch with reality, suggested that the process that people are going through with Centrelink at the moment has been improved and that there are no problems with it. Nothing could be further from the truth than that.

What the government is saying is: 'We're going to put you through an even more difficult process than you already go through right now. You won't get your payments commenced until the process is finished—not at the time you start—by a department that is totally either underresourced or overwhelmed with applications.' The government knows exactly what it's doing. It is deliberately and intentionally wanting to delay the start of the payments in order to save a few dollars so that it can then try and balance its budget. Nothing could be more unjust and unfair than what this government is proposing.

The last matter, as to the unfairness, goes to the treatment that this government wants to dish out to people who are 55 years and over, where it is now saying that you can no longer fulfil your commitment to society by volunteering in your community; you will have to, like the rest of the people looking for support payments, go through applying for jobs or be in paid employment. I made the point earlier, at the beginning of my remarks, that there simply are not jobs out there. When there are far more people looking for jobs than there are jobs available, employers will not give people who are 55 years and over much of a look-in at all. It is going to be incredibly difficult for them to get jobs which are simply not there. And yet, again, this government is saying to them: 'If you don't go through this process, we will also take away payments from you.'

It is getting about as low as it possibly can when it starts putting those sorts of pressures on people who are clearly depending on the welfare system not because they want to but because they have no choice. We will have more of those people over the coming months—particularly in the region that I represent, because of the closure of Holden—and, quite frankly, to bring in this legislation and make their life even more difficult than it currently is just shows the depths that this government will sink to in order to try and balance its budget.

For those reasons, of course, I will not be supporting this legislation and will be supporting the amendment moved by the member for Jagajaga. The government may well be trying to get the legislation through by saying that, amongst the 18 measures contained in this legislation, there are some good ones, but the bad ones clearly outnumber the good ones, and this legislation should not be supported.

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