Nick Champion (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This March—this month—marks the 20th anniversary since Newstart last had an over-the-inflation-rate increase. That of course was done by the Keating government at the time, and now we find that across the country economists and groups likes of St Vincent de Paul and ACOSS are all rallying for another increase to Newstart. Even John Howard believes that the pause he put in place to increases in Newstart has gone on for too long and that it's probably time to look again at this payment.

Over that 20 years many things have changed in the economy, but of course one of the most brutal things that has changed in the economy is the treatment of older workers. It used to be that people would be able to work at least reasonably close to their retirement age. But now there is an increasing group of workers who, despite having been employed, paid their taxes and been good employees—that is, that they rocked up to work every day on time and held reasonably stable jobs—now find themselves made unemployed by the big structural changes that have gone on in the economy. Often those people struggle to get back into employment.

I've seen this time and time again in my electorate: these workers who have done the right thing by the country but then later found themselves—often with an injury, but not always—on Newstart. In 2013 41 per cent of Newstart recipients were aged between 45 and 65, and now half of Newstart recipients are aged 45 to 65. Now, we've got a bragging, arrogant government who insist that everything's going super well, that they're back in black and that they can afford to do other things. One of the things they could afford to do, as a stimulus measure, is to increase the rate of Newstart. Even if they insist on rolling out these myths that people get extra payments and that there's a job out there for everyone if only they tried hard enough, they could at least look at this group of mature-age workers who are struggling every day not just in Labor electorates but in National Party electorates and other electorates across the country.

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