Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This Liberal government has never seen a group of vulnerable people that it didn't want to target. It's a government in search of a policy agenda, it's a government in search of a reason for being, but it's never a government in search of a group of Australians to target and it's always, always, vulnerable Australians that it sets its sights on. This bill targets pensioners. It targets young people looking for work. It targets older workers who have lost their jobs. It targets people at a time in their lives when they need assistance, not punishment. It targets people who have worked hard, who have paid their taxes, who want to go and see their family who live overseas or perhaps support sick family members who live overseas. It targets hardworking vulnerable Australians in their time of need.

If you feel like you've seen this Liberal government trying to make these cuts before, if you feel a bit of deja vu, it's because you have seen it before. These cuts to allowances for pensioners and other people who need them were bad when the then Treasurer, now the Prime Minister, announced them in the 2016-17 MYEFO. They were bad when he put them in the 2017-18 budget. They were bad when they were introduced into the parliament in 2017 in what was called, ironically, the payment integrity bill. And they're bad now. At least the 2017 Liberal government were apparently too embarrassed to bring on for debate a bill ripping $185 million from the pockets of Australian pensioners. They introduced it, but they didn't bring it on for debate. Not so the Morrison government—no, this Morrison government is apparently not at all ashamed of trying to bring in more cuts for vulnerable Australians, more cuts for middle-aged and older Australian workers, more cuts to Newstart, more cuts to pensions. It is not at all ashamed of its legislation which would make life even harder for Australians who are already doing it tough.

So here we are, debating what is still called the payment integrity bill—and you might ask yourself if everyone in this chamber understands what the word 'integrity' means, particularly those on the other side—and Labor is opposing it because this is legislation which would make it even harder for Australians who are already doing it tough to get by and would punish Australians simply for wanting to live their lives. Australia has had the slowest growth in a decade. We have stagnant wages, productivity in decline, record household debt, high underemployment and declining living standards. What do the Morrison government have as a plan to address the floundering economy and make life just that little bit easier for the people in my community of Dunkley who are struggling to pay the bills on their low wages? Businesses are finding it difficult to find customers who have enough disposable income to spend, and people right now are working out how they're going to pay the out-of-pocket costs for their health care and the aged-care costs for their parents and their loved ones; how they're going to pay for child care so they can go back to work; and how they're going to find stable, secure and well-paid employment. What do the Morrison government have as a plan for people in my community? Nothing. But they do have this bill—an old, bad idea to rip money from the pockets of pensioners and those looking for work. They have a plan to make it worse, not better.

This bill cuts Newstart—have no illusions about that. It will force Australians who are desperately trying to re-enter the workforce to eat into their meagre savings before they can access income support. I am deeply concerned about how this government's attempts to make people who have lost their job expend their meagre savings and assets before they can access Newstart or sickness allowance and will impact on older workers in my community in Dunkley. As I go around my community, when I'm not in Canberra—when I'm at home every day; when I'm out holding seniors' morning teas for 650 people in a week; when I'm talking to people in the local malls and shopping centres in Langwarrin and Karingal; when I'm at the shopping strips in Carrum Downs, Frankston North and Monterey; when I'm holding community drop-in clinics at the community centres at Orwell and Belvedere—I am constantly faced with stories of men and women in their 50s and older who simply cannot find work. Sometimes their parents approach me and say that they're retired and should be enjoying their life, but they're spending their days worried sick for their daughter or son who's 55, has worked their entire life and has been made redundant, not through any fault of their own, after they have paid their taxes and done the right thing, because their employer has gone out of business or because the changing nature of work means that the job they're doing is no longer needed. Sometimes they've lost their job and they can't get back into the market, because of age discrimination. I am told about people who, in desperation, have taken their age off their CV and managed to get interviews, but then for some reason they don't get the job when people find out how old they are. It's a real problem. Sometimes it's simply because the economy is floundering and there just isn't enough work for everyone who wants it. They might get a job, but they certainly wouldn't get enough hours and it's not secure.

Every day across my electorate of Dunkley I meet people who want to work and people who need to work to support themselves and their family; people who have taken course after course to try to reskill, to try to upskill, to try to get themselves in a position where they can find a job; and people who need a federal government that will back them in, not one which attacks them with cuts to allowances. Of course, we know that this is an issue across Australia. We know that middle-aged and older Australians who are re-entering the workforce find it particularly difficult not just in my community. It's because of the structural barriers to finding a job and the age discrimination that we know exists. Again, we know that it's not just in Dunkley that older workers will need to retrain and upskill and will need to spend more time on further education. If you're lucky enough to live in Victoria and you want to do one of the courses that the Labor state government has made free, you can do it at TAFE, but for too many Australians—many, many Australians across the country—that further education costs money and it's often money that they don't have. The number of Australians over the age of 55 on Newstart has skyrocketed by 45 per cent under the Liberal-National government. Over 55s represent the largest cohort, or over a quarter, of all Newstart recipients. This bill attacks those very people, make no doubt about it.

Currently people claiming Newstart, sickness allowance, Austudy and youth allowance—because young people aren't left out of this list of vulnerable Australians who are attacked—have to wait up to 13 weeks to access the payments if they have liquid assets, for example, savings or a redundancy payment, which are over $5,500 for a single with no dependents or $11,000 for someone with a partner or dependants. These are hardly enormous sums of money. The existing waiting period at these levels is a week and increases up to a maximum of 13 weeks for liquid assets of $11,500 for singles or $23,000 for those with dependants. What does this government want to do? It wants to extend the maximum liquid asset waiting period from 13 weeks to 26 weeks for people with liquid assets of more than $18,000 for singles, or $36,000 for couples and people with dependants. Again, they're hardly staggering amounts of money, particularly when you're talking about having to pay unaffordable rents, rising electricity costs, childcare costs, healthcare costs and education costs—let alone putting food on the table. But it's not just cash in the bank, of course, that liquid assets are made up of. The government's own department says liquid assets include: some payments made, or due to be made, by a person's last employer—including redundancies that haven't been made; amounts deposited or lent to banks or other financial institutions, whether or not you can access it immediately; assets given to a son or a daughter in some circumstances; loans to other people and compensation payments.

This bill means that applicants will need to spend down more of their assets before becoming eligible to receive a payment. As many of my colleagues on this side of the House have said before me, this is just mean. It is mean-spirited. It will not help anyone to find a job. It does nothing to help people find a job. There is no rationale for increasing the liquid asset waiting period for people who lose their jobs or who are made redundant, no rationale other than a cash grab, no rationale other than taking money out of the pockets of workers just when they need their savings the most.

The current waiting period of up to 13 weeks is long enough. Some people find another job in 13 weeks. But it is really important that those who don't aren't forced to run down their savings to the point where they become vulnerable to losing their home. They're not able to meet unexpected expenses. They can't do the things that they need to do to keep on looking for a job. They have to spend their time wondering how they are going to feed themselves, feed their family and pay their rent as well as trying to stay strong when day after day they're putting in job applications and not getting jobs or when day after day they're going to work but they can't get enough hours. They have to be on Newstart because their job isn't enough for them to survive.

We need people to be able to concentrate on how to get a job and how to help themselves to get qualified to get a better job, not being made vulnerable to unexpected expenses, unaffordable housing and simply not knowing how they're going to get by day-to-day. That financial buffer is really important. It is really important. This bill just wants to erode it. This government just wants to erode it.

How can it be the case that we can have a government that wants to have more people in a position where they've eroded all of their savings and they get put on Newstart and they're expected to live on $40 a day? The current rate of Newstart is not enough to live on and it is not enough to support people looking for work. It is time to raise the rate of Newstart. This government should be raising the rate, not cutting Newstart.

I recently sat down with volunteers from St Vincent de Paul conferences from across my electorate of Dunkley. They asked me to support their call to raise the rate. I support them absolutely. St Vincent de Paul conferences across Dunkley have assisted almost 10,000 people over 12 months in my electorate—5,500 adults and 4,000 children—with food, household assistance and other assistance totalling $360,000. These are good people volunteering and putting their hands in their own pockets to help vulnerable people. They came to my electorate office in Frankston to tell me that they are seeing that the number of people on Newstart who urgently need assistance to supplement the current meagre rate is on the increase, and they are desperately worried about how they're going to be able to continue to help those people and everyone else who needs help.

St Vincent de Paul—like ACOSS, like the Business Council of Australia, like social welfare and business groups across our country—are calling on the government to increase the rate of Newstart. They are right to do so and it is time to do so. It's not just unemployed people needing Newstart; it's also the underemployed. More than 1.1 million Australians are underemployed. Over 130,000 Newstart recipients actually have a job. They just don't earn enough or receive enough hours to escape having the payment. Employers are receiving an average of 19 applications per vacancy advertised. And, to our shame, three million, or one in eight, Australians live in poverty and one in six children, or three-quarters of a million, live in poverty.

At a time when Australians are doing it tough, when the economy is weak and getting weaker, these cuts to the pension and Newstart are not only cruel and vindictive; they are reckless. The name of this bill is so ironic. How dare a government that brought us robodebt try to talk about payment integrity? My constituent Graeme Howarth, from Carrum Downs, called my electorate office last month about having an age pension robodebt of nearly $7,000 and how Centrelink wouldn't help him. Centrelink gave him the run-around and didn't know where the debt came from. So he started to pay it back. We told him: 'In order to get your robodebt looked into, you have to put in a formal appeal. Call the robodebt appeal line.' He did. Lo and behold, Centrelink have cancelled the debt and are refunding the amount he's already repaid. It's toxic. It's flawed. The government has had to admit it. It's time to completely scrap robodebt and look after vulnerable Australians instead of targeting them.

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