Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] This bill is meant to be about how Services Australia, the government department that administers many of the services that so many people rely on, like Centrelink, could be improved. It comes from a government in the middle of a pandemic that has done nothing but attack the public service. I've had firsthand experience of this in my electorate. When the pandemic hit it was as clear as day, certainly to us in the Greens, that it was going to result in high levels of unemployment. We knew that because the social distancing restrictions that were imposed meant that large parts of the economy were going to grind to a halt. The government didn't seem to get that message. They came out with their usual trickle-down approach and of giving huge amounts of money to business and hoping for the best.

Of course, what happened was that millions of people found themselves suddenly unemployed. That meant—and again it wouldn't take a genius to think this through—high demands on services for Centrelink. Nowhere was that being felt more than in Melbourne, and in Abbotsford in the electorate of Melbourne where one of the busiest metropolitan Centrelinks is located. So what did the government do? The same government that comes along here now and says, 'Pass the bill because it's going to improve it.' What did they do? They said, 'We are going to close it.' They came up with the flimsiest of excuses saying that the tenancy was at an end and they couldn't find anywhere else. I'll tell you what, if you can't find a vacant office block in the middle Melbourne in the middle of a pandemic then you are not looking very hard, Minister. That excuse was so flimsy that everyone could see through it. People knew that not only could the Centrelink stay but it needed to stay. The cat was belled when the landlord came out and said, 'Oh no, we haven't actually evicted the Centrelink. We want it to continue.' So all of a sudden the government was boxed into a corner. The community stood up strongly and said, 'We want our Centrelink to continue.'

It takes a particular kind of genius to close a Centrelink in the middle of one of the biggest pandemics we have seen, with images of depression-era dole queues, as it was then, snaking around the corner in an area of high need like Melbourne. That's what the government did. The community said, 'No way, not on our watch' and the government has been forced into a back down. Everyone was going to be told to go off to South Melbourne, to travel seven kilometres at a time when everyone was being told to stay close to home. With five kilometre limits and being discouraged from getting on public transport, the minister said, 'Everyone should just get on a tram and travel seven kilometres to South Melbourne,' showing he had no understanding of the area of Melbourne or the needs of the people.

That is now going to stay. That decision has been reversed by the minister under community pressure and we are going to keep our Centrelink in Abbottsford. That is a terrific thing and it's testament to the community standing up to a minister and saying, 'People need their services, especially in the middle of a pandemic.' But it comes not as a bad and strange decision to make in the middle of a pandemic but as part of a practice from this government when it comes to dealing with the Public Service and with Centrelink. The government has now embarked on a systematic practice of shutting Centrelink offices and telling everyone, 'You are no longer going to be able to have your problems resolved by coming in and talking to someone face to face.' The government has closed a number of high-demand Centrelink offices and sees the Public Service only as something to cut. That's doubly wrong in the middle of a recession.

It's wrong in the middle of a recession because so many more people will be relying on the services, as was the case in Melbourne and as has been the case around the country, but it's also wrong because the Public Sector should be key to the recovery. We are going to need a plan to get out of this recession that we're in, that gets unemployment down not to the six per cent that's the Treasurer's target but down to two per cent, which is where it was in the period between World War II and the 1970s. One of the ways that we can do that in the middle of a recession, when the private sector is suffering great uncertainty, is by growing the Public Service and investing in the services that people need. Our recovery plan needs to be not only green to deal with climate crisis but also pink to deal with the number of women who have lost their jobs, quick to be able to be put in place right now and also safe. That's one of the things that the Public Service can deliver.

So investing in the Public Service instead of cutting as this government is doing is a key to economic recovery in and of itself, and we're going to need to do it, because the government the is locking in six per cent unemployment in its budget forecasts. That means two million people in this country either without a job or without enough work, and the government thinks that's fine. The government is choosing six per cent unemployment. It could drive it down to two per cent if it wanted to, if it had the courage to do what governments did after World War II: invest. Use this period to ask the big corporations to pay their fair share of tax, borrow since money is at the cheapest it's ever been and use it to invest. At World War II, this country had its highest-ever debt levels—120 per cent of GDP—and they brought it back down to normal within a decade or so because they used it to invest. But that's not what this government is doing. This government is saying, 'Instead of investing and bringing it back down to two per cent unemployment, we'll just factor in six per cent.' That's going to mean more demands on Centrelink and more pain for the Australian people. I make the point that the government is choosing to do this. The government could choose two per cent unemployment and could choose expanding the Public Service to get us back to full employment and to provide the services that people need, but instead it is choosing high unemployment and choosing cuts to Centrelink.

But it's not just cuts to the services. It ultimately results in the government spending just as much, if not more money, because they contract out Centrelink services to consultants. That is part of the privatisation and neoliberal myth. The neoliberal myself tells us you cut back on government services and it is somehow better for the government. No; you end up spending the same amount of money, but you give it to the private sector. The problem with that is that, when it comes to essential public services that don't need to be run at a profit, because they're being run for the public good, the private sector comes along and says, 'Yeah, we'll take some of that money, but we want to take some of it as profit.'

Helping people get back to work should not be something that you make a profit out of. It certainly shouldn't be something that you become a millionaire doing. But that is what this government facilitates. The Greens have estimated that when you add up not only Centrelink but all those other areas of government services where the government helps big corporations make a massive profit off the back of public subsidies, we're talking about the equivalent of about $10 billion a year. That's $10 billion a year that should be going into jobs instead of going to profit. Especially in the middle of a recession, it should be going into jobs.

Nowhere is that more needed than in Centrelink, because the demands are high and the number of staff should be increasing in the middle of a recession. It should not be an excuse for people in the job service or call centre industry to turn a quick buck out of people's misery. Note: we should be investing in and expanding our public services at this time. That is why the Greens are pushing for a Senate inquiry into privatisation, into the last four decades of the failure of Labor and Liberal neoliberal policy, which has seen everything being privatised, deregulated and contracted out. It has failed the Australian people. It is time to unwind it. Name changes such as those being talked about in this bill aren't going to cut it. We need a mindset change. We need to say public services should be run for the public good and shouldn't be an excuse for big corporations to make a profit out of. I just want to make this point: I'm not talking about big corporations that have made their own way in the private sector; I'm talking about big corporations that make their money off the back of public subsidies. In the middle of a recession, with a million people still unemployed—and the government forecasting, banking on and being very happy with two million people either not having a job or not having enough work for the next couple of years—that $10 billion should be going into jobs and services, it shouldn't be going into profits for big corporations.

This all comes at a time when the government says we can find $99 billion in subsidies for big Corporations and the very wealthy in this budget, and we can find money for tax cuts for millionaires that Liberal and Labor both vote for. They say they can find that, but they can't find enough money to lift JobSeeker. That's not only going to put stress on Centrelink staff, which we are talking about and this bill; with a million people still unemployed, and the prospects of unemployment remaining very high for a long time because the government is baking that in, we need to keep JobSeeker at $1,100. We cannot cut it. It should stay there. We need to keep people who haven't got a job at the moment, in the middle of a recession, out of poverty. We need to make sure people can live above the poverty line.

The government's move to cut JobSeeker at a time when it is most needed will plunge thousands of Victorian families into poverty. An analysis of government data by The Guardian estimates that about 420,000 people now living in Melbourne under lockdown are going to be impacted by those cuts. My community in Melbourne will be the frontline of people impacted by these government cuts. The government brings a bill in here and says, 'Let's talk about improving Centrelink because it's about improving people's lives.' Well, one good way of improving people's lives is by not cutting JobSeeker when we are still in the middle of a lockdown.

My office has heard from constituents who are at present only just managing to cover their rent and are extremely worried about the prospect of losing their house or going further into debt now that the coronavirus supplement has been slashed. My office has heard from young people who are currently employed but have been told their employment is likely to come to an end as the government winds back various supports and the social distancing restrictions here remain. What's next for those people if they lose their job now, in the middle of a pandemic, when joblessness is high? After the recent changes they might have to wait up to 13 weeks before they can receive support from JobSeeker. If you've just lost your job in the middle of the pandemic, the government—as if nothing has changed in Victoria, as if, all of a sudden, all the jobs are available again—is now going to make people wait up to 13 weeks before they can receive support from JobSeeker. My office has also heard from another couple, both jobseekers, who have had to spend their savings just to make ends meet during the pandemic but may have their payments affected now that the assets tests are being reintroduced. That's one thing the government hasn't thought about. Some people, because of the uncertainty we are in at the moment, have done what they can to amass savings. And now the government is going to penalise them for that by reintroducing the assets test, so they will get even less money because they have taken steps to look after themselves.

We have moved in the Senate to keep the coronavirus supplement at $550 a fortnight. We will introduce a bill into the Senate to make that happen, and we hope that it gets support. In the Senate, the Greens also tried to stop the reintroduction of that liquid asset waiting period and that assets test that is going to impact millions of Australians, but, unfortunately, it was blocked by the government.

So, when the government comes in here and says, 'We want to improve services to Australians,' forgive us for being sceptical. In the middle of a pandemic, you are cutting the level of social security payments to people. When we've got 12 people applying for every job—and the figures in Victoria are worse than the national average—and when so many businesses are struggling to get back on their feet, because the social-distancing restrictions that come from tackling the coronavirus remain in place and are likely to remain in place for some time, don't come in here with mealy-mouthed bills about name changes and suggestions for doing things that might help. Don't cut JobSeeker, keep JobKeeper going for as long as it's needed in Victoria and invest in public services that are going to grow jobs and meet the needs that people have. Let's build more public housing. Let's have free education. Let's have free child care. Let's do that instead of giving tax cuts to millionaires. That is the way that we're going to get to full employment and deliver some legacy for young people, who stand to be a lost generation if the government continues going down this path.

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