Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Like the member for Moreton, I too for a number of reasons will not support the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Better Targeting Student Payments) Bill 2017. Firstly, this bill targets women—75 per cent of those people receiving the benefits that this government seeks to cut will be women. I can understand that the government might not understand that. They don't have a very long list of speakers, or in fact anyone in here, to defend it because they probably don't understand what it's like to be a woman. They don't have a high representation of women. But 75 per cent of the people affected by this are going to be women.

Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister, is at it again. What does he have against battlers? That should be the question we are all in here talking about. What does he have against people who are trying to study and are already doing it tough? This is a fundamentally unfair bill. As the shadow minister, Jenny Macklin, has already told this House, we will absolutely not support it. This bill contains changes to the eligibility requirement of the relocation scholarship, the education entry payment and the pensioner education supplement. As the member for Moreton asked: where are the Nationals on this? Why aren't they in here? The bill cuts the requirements of eligibility for the relocation scholarship, which will mostly affect kids from the bush.

We have been fighting to maintain all of the payments that will be cut by this bill. Those students are struggling enough as it is. They are income support recipients making themselves ready for work. If Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister of this country, actually cared about helping income support recipients find work instead of demonising them on the front pages of the tabloids, he would stop trying to make it harder for them to just get through their day. The Liberals are relentless in their actions and their attacks on vulnerable people, and this bill shows the Prime Minister yet again trying to slash support to low-income Australians. This is very, very typical behaviour, though. He is constantly underestimating the true cost of living for everyday Australians. I am just here to put on the record for him, again, that the cost of living is three per cent higher in Western Sydney, in the seat I represent, than it is in Sydney. I am not going to go into the details of why that is, but I suggest he does some further reading on the comparative costs of living for harbourside mansions and battlers in Western Sydney. He is saying one thing and doing another.

The cuts are unfair to the students receiving an education entry payment. These students are eligible for the payment if they are in an approved course and are a recipient of Newstart, parenting payment single, the disability support pension, special benefit or a carer payment. In 2016-17, about 11,700 people received the education entry payment. I would put to anybody that that is not a huge number of people—11,700 people, in some of the most vulnerable positions in our community, are recipients of this payment to help them get ahead. This is what this payment is for. They are in study. They are doing everything we're asking of them. They are trying to better themselves. What are the government doing? They are going to cut them down. They are casually going to come along and take some money off them, saying: 'It won't matter to them. What would they notice? How will that affect them?' Of those 11,700 people, 4,805 were recipients of parenting payment single. Let me tell you from firsthand experience about being a single parent. It's tough. It's hard work. Some 2,986 were recipients of the disability support pension, 2,762 were recipients of Newstart and 826 were recipients of the carer payment.

As well as being a single parent, I'm also the carer of a child with a disability. So let me tell those people opposite, because clearly they've missed the empathy gene on the way out the door before being given birth to, it is really, really hard work to be a single parent and to be a single parent of a child with additional needs. It takes an enormous amount of additional time, energy and resources. Making a cut to something that is trying to support them is inhumane. I note that those opposite also have no problem coming along to Carers Week events, posing for photos, wearing badges and espousing the importance of all the unpaid work done by carers, but, when it comes to actually supporting the work of carers through something like this, they've left the building.

In my electorate, 115 people received the education entry payment in the 2016-17 financial year to September 2016. The government likes to talk about corporate tax cuts and the now very discredited trickle-down economics, but the very people they say will benefit from this measure are the people they are penalising with the measures they have on the table now. And all this is to what end? I think the member for Warringah and his mates who are on the other end of the spectrum to where we sit are certainly going to be appeased by measures like this. Cutting the education entry payment will make things more difficult for students. The effect of this bill is that every student who is currently eligible for the education entry payment will be subjected to criteria to determine the level of their study load—from 25 per cent to full-time study. The education entry payment is an annual payment of $208 to assist with the cost of education. Depending on the determination of a student's study load, up to full time study, the recipients of the education entry payment could receive a cut of $52, $104 or $156, or it could be cut entirely.

Does the Prime Minister know how much a textbook costs? In my electorate, at the Western Sydney University Penrith campus in Kingswood students enrolled in the engineering materials course are prescribed by their lecturers Fundamentals of Materials Science and Engineering. A brand-new copy of that textbook costs $196—let's just call it 200 bucks. Second-hand, you can pick one up for $152. If the Prime Minister was studying engineering materials, he could easily afford, from his harbourside mansion, a hundred new copies of this book—a thousand new copies! But for a student on a supplement studying one subject and facing these cuts, the cost of this textbook could be the making or breaking of someone studying that course. Again in Western Sydney, students studying enterprise law are prescribed by their lecture a business and law textbook—$137 for a brand new one and 110 bucks for a used one. The $1.75 million donation that this Prime Minister made to the Liberal Party at the last federal election to secure his own job would have purchased a whole lot of those textbooks.

I raise Western Sydney University because 60 per cent of students at that university—of which I'm proudly an alumni member—are first in family. Sixty per cent of those students are the first in their family to have the privilege to attend university. Fifty-seven per cent of their students are female, 37 per cent are from linguistically-diverse backgrounds and 25 per cent are low socioeconomic students. For the battlers who are struggling to make ends meet, who are on Newstart, living with a disability or caring for someone, it is a massive, massive whack to their budget, and it is fundamentally unfair. This is more of the same of what we've seen from those opposite—pushing the cost of education onto the student and making it more and more difficult to study. We should be supporting students because they're having a go.

These cuts are unfair to students receiving the pensioner education supplement. Almost 38,000 get the pensioner education supplement, and of those receiving that supplement 4,805 were recipients of the parenting payment and are single parents, 2,986 are recipients of the disability support pension, 2,762 are recipients of Newstart and 826 are recipients of the carer payment. That's a lot of people who are trying to study; that's a lot of people who could be affected by these cuts. To be eligible to receive the pensioner education supplement, a student needs to meet the study rules and already be receiving one of the payments outlined. These people are trying to study either full- or part-time at a secondary school or completing an undergraduate degree, a TAFE course for a diploma or a graduate masters course. These payments are predominantly received by people with disabilities, carers, sole parents and unemployed people who have taken up training or studying—which is exactly what we should be imploring them to do and supporting them as they do it.

In my electorate, in September, 391 people were getting the pensioner education supplement—that is, 391 people who are already doing it tough, relying on our social services safety net. The government wants to take away the supplement from these students. We are, in my electorate, battlers. We are strong. We are 'have a go' people. We don't sit around and expect people to do things for us. We get out there and have a crack. I often speak in this place about how good and how salt of the earth the people in my community are. These students in my electorate do not need more cuts from this government. They are single parents, people with a disability, people looking for work, and carers. Let that sink in. The people who are in receipt of this kind of payment are exactly the people that this country and this government should be supporting. They are struggling to stay studying. We want them to stay studying. We want them to have a better life. We want them to do better. We want their kids to do better. They already have barriers to study and work such as health issues, caring responsibilities or simply being on a low income. These cuts are just going to make it more difficult and put more hurdles and more barriers in place. Their studies could lead to a better job and a better life and improve their wellbeing. Now the Turnbull government and all of those people who support this legislation want to make it more difficult for them.

With the proposed changes to the pensioner education supplement, these people will be paid only during study periods and not during their semester breaks or holidays. We have what I would term 'semester breaks' from parliament. Imagine if you said to all the MPs here: 'You're not going to get paid during those breaks. You're only going to get paid when you go to Canberra.' We know that a lot of work is done when we are back in our electorates, but we're on a break from parliament, and these kids are on a break from school or study. The government is going to stop these supplements during that period of time. Imagine you are a low-income earner and studying and you are already struggling to pay bills, but because the semester or term has ended that payment stops. That reliable income that you have budgeted for is not there. These people often have jobs as well while they are studying. When I went to university I had four jobs in my first, second and third years at university. I had four casual jobs to pay my rent and car payments, and it was just enough to make ends meet. Working and studying was a huge load, but I did it—and I did it with the help that I was able to receive. We know that the bills don't stop coming in those semester breaks—the rent still needs to be paid and the lights still need to work—so why would we stop the payment to these students during their semester breaks?

The cuts are cruel. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says that he wants people to find a job—tick; that's great. A fundamental thing for everybody is to have a job, but it makes it more difficult to study. The thing that we know will improve our chances of finding a job is education. I think I have even heard the Prime Minister say those things himself. These cuts will affect the students who are already doing it tough to get a better life. Not only that but the Australian Council of Social Service estimates that 75 per cent of pensioner education supplement recipients are women. The changes in this bill will disproportionately impact women who have started a course or are training to get back into the workforce. Women are traditionally, as we are very well aware, the primary caregivers. Time and time again we see people in Western Sydney who dragging themselves up by their bootlaces being unfairly targeted as not worthy.

The pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment were both introduced to help social security recipients with the cost of studying. The Liberals have been trying to abolish the education entry payment and pensioner education supplement since 2014. The education entry supplement and the pensioner education supplement are commonly paid to recipients of parenting payment single, 94 per cent of whom are women. Women are already subject to great gender bias in Australia. I'm really looking forward to coming in here the next time this parliament sits and, as we come to White Ribbon Day, watching everybody march out their white ribbons, roll up their sleeves and say, 'What great people we are.' When you are just out there as a talking head and are not actually interested in doing the work that goes on to bridge some of the gender gaps in this country, it is easy. But the action required from this government is seldom there.

The slashing of penalty rates also disproportionately affects women. Women face the discrimination of a gender pay gap of 16 per cent in pay rates and hiring, women attract lower wages and carry the load of unpaid caring and domestic work, and women are over-represented in lower paid industries. They are a third more likely to be underemployed and more likely to be employed as casual workers in insecure jobs. We've had a case this week highlighting the gender pay gap. One of our very high profile and esteemed women in the media, quite intelligently and cleverly, has really taken a stand; and congratulations to Lisa Wilkinson. This is why I'm up here talking about the gender pay gap.

Around Australia, 9,400 people receive both payments and are facing the government's cruel and unfair cuts. The Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee received a submission from People with Disability Australia and their CEO, Steph Gotlib. In their submission, which succinctly summarised the substantial financial hardship people will face under this bill, they said:

If the Bill is passed those on the lowest incomes, including people with disability, will be further pushed into poverty and financial hardship. It will make it harder for people with disability to start or to continue undertaking education. Plans to cut these payments are counter to the Government’s focus on increasing employment opportunities through further education. Whilst expectations for pensioners to undertake education increase, the very means of supporting access to education for pensioners are being cut.

The government is seeking to make savings off the back of the lowest socio-economic groups, battlers and vulnerable members of our communities, who are struggling to pull themselves up by learning, studying and expanding their horizons through education. I am very pleased not to be supporting this bill.

See this speech in context