Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'll start with a big call at the outset: if there were a competition to choose the government's nastiest, meanest bill—it is a long list to choose from—the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017 would have to be near the top, if not at the top. That's coming alongside the bill to let people say more racist things—that was a good one!—the bill to give the minister for immigration the power to deport people based on the class of race and religion, the cuts to the pensioner energy supplement and so on and so forth. Another day, another attack on the most vulnerable from this government, the Prime Minister and the Liberals.

This is not the first time that we've debated this bill or these measures. It was six months ago that I and many Labor members spoke in this House when it was coupled up with some of the more outrageous proposals around the drug testing of people on welfare, which could be better named the 'drive up crime bill', as the former Australian Federal Police commissioner called it. All that bill would do is drive up crime. The government banged it through the House and took it to the Senate, and it was defeated. Those measures were quite rightly rejected by senators. Yet the government, like goldfish swimming around in a bowl, has no vision for the country and no real policy agenda, so we're back here six months on, debating the same nasty, mean little cuts. It is a nasty, mean bill. It will make life even harder for the most vulnerable Australians. The cut to 80,000 people on income support is bad enough. Social services groups have called these cuts out as worsening homelessness, which we saw in the latest census figures reach record levels across the country. We've come to expect this stuff, unfortunately, from the Liberals, but I had hoped the Senate crossbench would stick to their original position and defeat these kinds of measures.

I draw attention to and make some remarks on one particular clause in the bill, amended as a result of the Senate's work. The bill kills—pardon the pun—the bereavement allowance. It should not die without a fight. What is the bereavement allowance? It's a short-term payment to people whose partner has died. It's paid for a maximum of 14 weeks at the rate of the age pension with the same income and assets tests, so it's a well-targeted, tightly targeted payment. If you are a pregnant woman, you can stay on this payment until your pregnancy ends, until you give birth. How decent! This is not a forever payment. This is not a payment where people live their lives on welfare, as we keep hearing; this is a short-term, targeted payment. How many people does it go to? All this fuss is about cutting a payment that goes to 900 Australians every year. The government tried, by axing this payment, to push people whose partners had just died onto Newstart. Every one of those 900 people would have had $1,300 taken off them while they were grieving.

I say unashamedly that I'm proud to live in Australia, a country where we can do things like treating people decently when their partner has just died. We don't force pregnant women to go onto Newstart and go to job interviews. The government wants to chop it and pay it at a lower rate, as I said. It's absolutely pathetic. It's a mean, nasty, small little cut. It's not about fiscal repair at all. We moved amendments to this bill in the Senate to make it a bit less awful, to protect the bereavement allowance. Senator Hanson voted with the government to kill it. It is important that this point is understood because, after she did so, there was an enormous backlash on social media, so she posted stuff trying to pretend she didn't vote with the government to kill the bereavement allowance. The voting record shows she voted with the Liberal Party to kill the bereavement allowance. The 'battler's friend' is a Liberal stooge. Time after time she talks a big game in the community, whether it's on penalty rates, cuts for pensioners or whatever, but then she lines up and votes with the Liberal Party. Let there be no mistake about it.

After that ridiculous display, once she realised, 'I might have a bit of a political problem here; that's a bit much,' she introduced a series of amendments in a panicked way to pretend she had not just killed the bereavement allowance. All this legislative mess, as I said, is about saving $1,300 over 14 weeks for 900 people. Senator Hanson's amendments, which make the whole thing more complex—she could have just left the bereavement allowance there; it's well understood, well administered and well targeted—instead make things a little bit less awful for most of those 900 people but still leave an indeterminate number, maybe only 30, worse off. Why are we doing this? Why are these our priorities?

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