Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

The budget that was delivered last night has left so many people behind. When you have a look at the Aboriginal affairs part of the budget—or the lack of it—there is nothing for additional remote Indigenous housing. There is nothing for services to close the gap and no additional money for closing the gap, except some money to go for administration and some money to go towards a dashboard going to the Productivity Commission. That will not help Aboriginal people at the grassroots, community level. There is very little in there for women and nothing for DV, domestic violence, in a real sense. Not one additional bed has been delivered in this budget. And, of course, the list goes on.

But the most egregious thing is what has been done in the JobSeeker area. Nine hundred thousand people on JobSeeker have been left behind. If you're over the age of 35, which the bulk of people on JobSeeker are, you simply do not get a look in. This is an incredibly short-sighted way that the government has handled this. People on JobSeeker have received no security, no comfort at all, from this budget. They still don't know what's going to happen to them after the end of December. There was no announcement in relation to a permanent increase to JobSeeker. So we are assuming it will snap back, as the member for Whitlam said, to $40 a day once the JobSeeker coronavirus supplement finishes.

I do welcome, of course, younger people being a focus of the budget, but it can't be just that and the ignoring of 900,000 people, understanding that the unemployment queues are going to grow on the government's watch and by the government's own admission by about 160,000 by the end of the year. The fact that there is nothing there, particularly in terms of people over the age of 35, is just astounding, and I know this because we've done the research. What's really galling about that is that the bulk of people on JobSeeker over the age of 35 are women. That is the biggest cohort of people on JobSeeker. Women on JobSeeker who are in rental situations are in absolutely dire circumstances.

There is no plan in this budget to support Australians who have lost their jobs. And, as I have said, over 900,000 people on JobSeeker will be excluded from help. In fact, it's 928,000 people on JobSeeker that will be excluded from help. That just seems to me to be incredibly short-sighted. How is that going to give people confidence to go forward? How is that going to give people, who have often been stuck on JobSeeker for a very long time because of things like age discrimination, confidence? If you are on JobSeeker and you're over the age of 60, you have very little chance, because of those pressures, of getting another job. There was nothing in the budget last night to give those people any hope or any feeling that they are being thought about by this particular government.

Let's be clear: the people on JobSeeker are probably the most vulnerable people within our society. They have a precarious future. They have to make choices between feeding themselves and their children—if they have them—and medication and rent. It's not an academic exercise for those people. They know where every single cent of their money is or is not. And we had a budget last night that made them the least priority of all. There was no priority in the government's thinking about that particular group of people. When you think about the fact that 900,000 Australians, nearly a million Australians, have been ignored by this government, it's a travesty and it's absolutely unfair.

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