Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Coronavirus and Other Measures) Bill 2020 and the amendment moved by the member for Barton. This bill implements several measures from the budget—the very disappointing budget—including a further two economic support payments of $250 to pension recipients; concessions to the paid work test for people seeking to demonstrate independence for youth allowance and Abstudy purposes, allowing parents whose employment has been impacted by the coronavirus Morrison recession to more easily access paid parental leave; improved stillborn baby payments and infant death payments; and temporary incentives to encourage young people to undertake seasonal agricultural work during the upcoming harvest season, among other things.

These are important measures. Labor will not delay support flowing to those who need it. But the story of this bill is the story of this government: it announces big, delivers little. No doubt, as we move into a post-COVID world and must deal with the effects of the Morrison recession, this type of support is needed more than ever. With another 160,000 Australians expected to lose their jobs by Christmas and 1.6 million Australians on JobSeeker, the government missed a huge opportunity in the budget to deliver certainty for Australians doing it tough by delivering a permanent increase to JobSeeker. With more jobseekers than there are job vacancies, there simply aren't enough jobs for everyone who needs one—it's simple maths.

It is even more difficult to find a job in our regions, the result of the government's failure to deliver a jobs program for the regions. In Tasmania there are 21 jobseekers for every available job. There aren't jobs available for them, yet this government seeks to punish those people. ABS figures released last week show that more than 50,000 Tasmanians either are looking for a job or can't get the hours they need to make ends meet. The number of jobs in Tasmania has fallen by 2,200 since August. Our unemployment rate is now at 7.4 per cent, up a full percentage point from last month—it's going the wrong way. We are all hopeful that the reopening of borders will improve the desperate job situation in Tasmania, but hope doesn't pay the bills. Hope doesn't pay the rent. It doesn't put food on the table. It doesn't put clothes on the kids. A jobs plan is needed, not a wing and a prayer.

In Tasmania the jobs crisis is also a wages crisis. Tasmanians have experienced a fall in wages of 4.9 per cent, when the average fall nationwide has been 3.3 per cent, and it's important to note that that drop comes off an already lower average wage in Tasmania. Tasmanian average wages have fallen $71 a week, from $1,448 to $1,377, while national wages have fallen $56 a week, from $1,714 to $1,657. What used to be a $266-a-week wages gap is now a $280 wages gap. A $71-a-week drop is no small thing for a Tasmanian wage earner on average wages. Little wonder that food charities such as Loaves and Fishes have seen demand for their services skyrocket by 70 per cent over recent months.

And it's not just unemployed people and students who are seeking food charity. It's a whole new cohort of what the Americans call the working poor: a class of people that we had hoped never to see in this country. They are people whose wages are so low that they do not meet the cost of living. These charities are depending on farmers, on supermarkets and on individuals to donate food to give to people. That's not the sort of society that we should be. I take my hat off to all those people involved in those charities. They are wonderful people. But we should do better as a nation and as a parliament so that this isn't the way people need to make ends meet.

This is the first recession in three decades, and people are hurting. The failure to deliver a permanent increase to JobSeeker means that Australians on social security will have less to spend on local and small businesses. Millions of dollars are being sucked out of local economies because of the cuts being made to JobSeeker and with JobKeeper coming off in March. Millions upon millions of dollars will be sucked out of local shops, out of local economies, causing a jobs spiral in local economies when these payments are cut off. Local and small businesses will have less to spend on wages and jobs. It will be a vicious cycle and vicious spin.

I know that many social services organisations in Tasmania share these concerns. TasCOSS's chief executive officer, Adrienne Picone, has said that the Morrison government failed to rise to the occasion in refusing a permanent increase to JobSeeker. She says of the budget:

It had the potential to provide much needed security and confidence to the more than 39,000 Tasmanian job seekers and 120,000 of our friends, family and neighbours surviving day-to-day on inadequate incomes, but the Morrison Government has failed to rise to the occasion.

This budget fails to build the resilience of Tasmanians and the Tasmanian economy to withstand future crises, and will increase inequities in health, education and access to essential services in our state.

Anglicare Australia Executive Director Kasy Chambers shared similar sentiment, saying the 'budget has left people on the lowest incomes high and dry.' She said:

1.6 million Australians are out of work. With this downturn due to last for years and so many Australians losing their jobs, record numbers of people are at risk of poverty and homelessness.

There were simple solutions to these problems: raise the rate of JobSeeker for good, and invest in social housing. One-off payments to people on the age and disability pensioners will provide some relief, but they don't go far enough.

I am particularly concerned about the impacts on older workers and those looking for work. This budget left Australians on JobSeeker aged over 35—almost one million Australians—out of the budget and ineligible for wage-hire subsidies. Older Australians represent the largest cohort on JobSeeker. In Tasmania in the month of September, of the 35,000 JobSeeker recipients, more than 22,000 were over 35. The majority of the 7,588 JobSeeker recipients in my electorate fall into this older cohort, who are locked out of the wage-hire subsidy. They will be competing for jobs directly with younger people who do qualify for the subsidy.

On this side of the chamber we have no argument with any measure that will support the hiring of young people, but you don't do it at the expense of older people who've got families to support. You don't lock them out, not now. Structural barriers and potential discrimination often mean that older workers will have difficulty finding work. Don't get me started on Restart, which is for over-50s. It's a dismal failure, with a 95 per cent fail rate in terms of projections. If you want to talk about Restart, maybe turn it off and turn it on again. My office has been contacted by many people in their 30s, 40s and 50s who are increasingly despairing over the difficulties they face finding work. They rely on the JobSeeker payment like they never have before to support their families, to put food on the tables, to go to the doctors and to send their kids to school. For many, this is the first time they've had to rely on any type of government support. With the way the budget has been structured for older workers, I fear that, for many, it will be the last time they'll ever work in their lives. We are talking about people in their 40s who will be competing directly with younger people for a job, and I do fear very much that willing and able people wanting to work will simply not have the opportunity to find work again.

Take Narelle, for example. Narelle is a hairdresser from Perth, in the north of my electorate. She contacted my office back in March as the effects of the coronavirus really started to hit Tasmania. She'd had to close her hairdressing business and was at a loss as to where to go for support. She had never before found herself in the situation of needing to engage with Centrelink or seek government support. She had supported herself her entire working life. My office was able to help Narelle with navigating the myriad social security systems, and ultimately she got access to the JobSeeker payment and, with it, some sense of financial stability in a time of great uncertainty.

You can imagine the feelings of anxiety that such a situation must have caused Narelle and the millions of Australians like her who have found themselves unemployed, just like that, as a result of the pandemic. This is why Labor is calling on the government to extend the $250 per fortnight coronavirus supplement until March, in line with JobKeeper. We know it can't last forever. There's not a bottomless pit of money. We understand that. But we are in the midst of the first recession in 29 years. Now is the wrong time to be taking money out of the economy, and it's certainly the wrong time to be taking money off people who are in desperate straits.

In her second reading amendment, the shadow minister, the member for Barton, made the point that it is cruel for the government to deny JobSeeker recipients some clarity around their financial future. It is completely unreasonable to make people wait until mid-December before there is a decision announced on the JobSeeker payment. Australians who receive JobSeeker deserve to be able to make financial decisions—to plan their household budgets, to plan what they can scrape together for the kids for Christmas, to have some certainty about what is coming in and what is going out. They deserve to be able to live their lives.

We know that the Prime Minister has some sort of plan for JobSeeker. He told us as much in question time yesterday. He just doesn't respect people who receive JobSeeker enough to tell them what it is. He's more than happy for those people to wait until it's in his political best interest, in terms of the media cycle, to announce a rise in JobSeeker rather than do what is right for Australian families who need this money and this certainty now. He's looking after his own interests, not the interests of the Australian people.

The amendment moved by Labor today requires the minister to announce a permanent increase to the base rate of the JobSeeker payment, something that we have consistently advocated for. It is clear that we cannot go back to forcing Australians to live on $40 a day. Yet that is the prospect that 1.6 million Australians face, come 31 December, if things don't change. It took a global pandemic for this government to even consider raising the rate, and Australians on JobSeeker have been lifted out of hardship as a result, many living above the poverty line for the first time in a long time. By failing to deliver a permanent increase to JobSeeker in the budget, the government missed the economic and social opportunity to deliver lasting structural change for vulnerable Australians while boosting local business and local jobs.

I want to come briefly to the issue of pensioners, who have been almost completely ignored by this government, apart from a couple of one-off payments. Deeming rates are used to determine how much pensioners earn from their secured financial assets, typically savings. The upper deeming rate is 2.25 per cent and the lower deeming rate is 0.25 per cent. Deputy Speaker Wallace, if you can find a bank that has accounts available for pensioners that is paying two or 2½ per cent interest on savings, let me know who they are and I will send my pensioners all the way to them. If they're in Queensland or New South Wales or South Australia or anywhere else, you tell me where those banks are and I'll send my pensioners there. It is absolutely reprehensible—it is unconscionable —that this government is telling pensioners that they're earning 2.25 per cent on their savings, and they are robbing them of a decent pension as a result. They are short-changed by the government's unreasonable, unrealistic, reprehensible and unconscionable pension deeming rates.

Pensioners won't forget this government's record on cutting the pension. This government is obsessed with cutting the pension. The government has attempted to cut the pension in every budget every year. In 2014, the government tried to cut pension indexation. In 2014, the government cut $1 billion from pensioner concessions. In 2014, the government axed the $900 seniors supplement. 2014, the government tried to reset deeming rates thresholds. In 2015, this government did a deal with the Greens to cut the pension to around 370,000 pensioners. In 2016, the government tried to cut the pension to around 190,000 pensioners, as part of the plan to limit overseas travel. In 2016, this government tried to cut the pension for another 1.5 million Australians by scrapping the energy supplement for new pensioners. The government's own figures show that this would have left 563,000 Australians who are currently receiving a pension or an allowance worse off. Over 10 years, more than 1.5 million pensioners would be worse off.

This government has spent five years trying to increase the pension age to 70. It will be OK for you and I, Deputy Speaker, to work until we're 70, but not for somebody who's on the tools in a factory, or in a shop on their feet all day, or in an aged-care home pushing a cleaner. It's not OK for them to work until they're 70. Pensioners have paid their taxes and contributed their entire lives. They deserve our respect and they certainly deserve this government's respect, and they're not getting it. (Time expired)

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