Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We'll be supporting the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Coronavirus and Other Measures) Bill 2020 but also speaking in support of the amendment that the member for Banks has put up. I think there was a missed opportunity by the government to permanently increase the JobSeeker payments. We know there are over 160,000 Australians expected to lose their jobs and 1.6 million Australians on JobSeeker, so we really feel the government has missed a huge opportunity to deliver a permanent increase to JobSeeker in this budget and deliver some certainty for Australians that are doing it tough.

With more jobseekers than each job vacancy—and you can see that, for every position that's advertised in the papers, on the net or wherever, there are hundreds that are vying for that position. There are simply not enough jobs to go around for everyone who needs one. That is the simple fact. It's even more difficult to find a job in the regions and outer suburbs. I suspect a lot of this also has to do with the issue of delivering a good, proper jobs program for our regions and our areas where there is high unemployment. In my electorate, the unemployment rate in the northern suburbs is way above the average rate, with youth unemployment close to 15 per cent, and for those people the prospect of actually finding any work is pretty low. To be cutting the JobSeeker payments at this time will do more damage to those people than anything that is being proposed in this bill. We know that Australians are doing it tough. It's an anxious, uncertain time that people are facing, especially those people on JobKeeper or who are unemployed.

People on social security will have less to spend on local and small businesses. Local and small businesses will have less to spend on wages and jobs. The reality is that, if we want our businesses to grow so they can employ people, we need to put money in people's pockets so they can actually spend it in the economy to be able to stimulate that economy. I've made this point on a number of occasions. If you give someone on JobSeeker a small increase or payment, that will go straight back into the economy because, with those extra few dollars that they will get, they will go out and buy the pair of shoes they've been putting off for six months because they can't afford them. They will go off and buy the shirt that they needed because their old shirt was getting so old but, because the payments were so low, they couldn't afford to buy another shirt. That money goes straight into the economy. That's why I think stopping the extra increase in JobSeeker in December is a big mistake by this government.

I'd like to know how many jobs will be lost when JobSeeker is cut in December. We've sought this information from the government. We've asked numerous questions, but the government either doesn't want to tell the opposition or doesn't know. One million jobseekers will be left out—especially older workers. The budget has left Australians on JobSeeker at an average age of 35 or over—almost one million Australians—out of the budget and ineligible for its wage-hire subsidy. Older Australians represent one of the largest cohorts of jobseekers. If you look at all the statistics on people over the age of 45 or 50 who have lost their jobs, the prospect of getting another job is very low. When GMH shut three years ago, most of the people who lost their jobs relocated to other jobs or upskilled, but the majority of workers aged 50-plus are still unemployed. It's difficult to find work because of structural barriers and the age discrimination that takes place.

The other area of concern is pensioners. The government were caught out by Labor on the pension freeze for 2.5 million pensioners, and that's the only reason they have acted on it. Pensioners were meant to get the indexation, and it was the first time in years that it wasn't passed down to them. Now the government is passing on some sort of increase, but the reality is that they missed out on that indexation. We argued against the government's pension freeze and raised it in here, and the Leader of the Opposition raised it. The reality is that pensioners plan for their twice-yearly indexation, which occurs on 20 March and 20 September. So the government were first caught out on the pension freeze in August, the freeze took effect in September, and they made pensioners wait for the October budget before announcing any kind of relief.

This government have a long track record of cutting or attempting to cut the pension. They still haven't adjusted deeming rates. This is a big issue. Many pensioners contact me about issues they have with deeming rates. Deeming rates remain significantly higher than interest rates. Deeming rates are used to look at how much pensioners earn from their secured financial assets—typically, in most cases, savings—and this is used for the purposes of determining eligibility under the income test for pensioners. The upper deeming rate is 2.25 per cent, and the lower deeming rate is 0.25. With the cash rate at nearly zero per cent, it's difficult to see how pensioners can reasonably earn 2.25 per cent on their savings. So, on the one hand, they didn't get their indexation. On the other hand, they're punished by being short-changed by the unreasonable and unrealistic pension deeming rate.

Pensioners also won't forget this government's record on cutting the pension. The government are obsessed with cutting the pension, attempting to cut it in every single budget every year. In 2014, they tried to cut the pension indexation, a cut that would have meant that pensioners would have been forced to live on $80 a week less within 10 years. In 2014 they cut a billion dollars from pensioner concessions that were designed to help pensioners with the cost of living. Also in 2014, they axed the $900 seniors supplement for self-funded retirees receiving the Commonwealth seniors health card. Again in 2014 they tried to reset the deeming rate thresholds, a cut that would have seen half a million part-pensioners made worse off. In 2015 they did a deal with the Green to cut the pension to around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the pension asset tests. The assets test threshold has usually gone up over the years. This time they cut it and they dropped it, taking thousands of pensioners by surprise, as they had done their budgets for every year, with many losing as much as $12,000 a year through that particular change. In 2016, the government tried to cut the pension to around 190,000 pensioners as part of a plan to limit overseas travel for pensioners to six weeks. In 2016 the government tried to cut the pension for over 1.5 million Australians by scrapping the energy supplement for new pensioners. The government's own figures show this would have left over 563 Australians who are currently receiving a pension payment or allowance worse off. Over 10 years, in excess of 1.5 million pensioners would have been worse off. They spent five years trying to increase the pension age to 70. Pensioners have paid their taxes and have contributed their entire lives, and they deserve our respect in this place. As I said, pensioners deserve better than that.

This bill is adjusting how someone qualifies for paid parental leave. To be eligible a person has to satisfy the work test. The existing work test requires a person to have worked 10 of the 13 months prior to the birth or adoption of a child and at least 330 hours in that 10-month period. The concern during the pandemic was that families would miss out on the paid parental leave payment because of job losses and of having their hours or days of work reduced, which would have made them ineligible, leaving a lot of people up to $15,000 worse off.

Labor, on this side of the House, called for the government to temporarily suspend the work test as early as April this year so that families would not miss out. Then in June we moved amendments in the Senate for the work test to be suspended, but this government voted it down. Families need certainty, just like pensioners need certainty when they're doing their budgets. People who are unemployed need to be able to afford to actually look for work. Families need certainty about their access to paid parental leave during what is one of the most challenging times in the history of our nation. It's disappointing that it's taken the government this long to make this adjustment. It's been an excruciating wait for so many families.

This bill will also temporarily amend the circumstances in which a person may be regarded as independent for youth allowance. In May, once again, the opposition, Labor, called on the government to provide case by case exemptions to the youth allowance and parental income test. We were concerned that tertiary students would miss out on the youth allowance and would be unable to afford to continue their studies. These aren't ordinary times and we don't want to see students discontinuing tertiary studies because they cannot afford them. It's disappointing that the government's taken this long to take on this issue as well. It has been, again, a long and anxious period for our students.

This is the worst time for the government to be cutting support for people who have lost their jobs or are unemployed. Unemployment is still going up and predictions are astronomical between now and Christmas. It's time the government does the right thing and increases the base rate of the JobSeeker payment—in other words, the amount that they were on before coronavirus and are about to go back on. It's about $40 a day, which means that they cannot afford to look for work. Just while I was sitting there I thought I would look up the bus fares in South Australia. It can be anything up to $5 for a bus fare. When there is a requirement upon you to have a certain amount of interviews per week and per month, which can work out to about 10, that's $50. If you're going to ten appointments a week and you need to catch a bus, that's $50. On top of that you'd need a mobile phone to be able to get your text messages, if you're being asked to go to an interview, and to be able to get emails. Just to buy a phone it will cost you around $1,000. One of the most minimum cards you can get is around $30 a month, which gives you limited access to internet and email. What we're doing is basically making it harder for people to look for work, even though there is a requirement on them to look for work. This is not a time to be doing that. This is a time when we should be offering all our support and help and be thinking and planning job creation.

Job creation is about creating work so that these people can actually work. There's no better welfare than actually having a job—we all know that—but we need to be able to stimulate the economy and create work. At this point, from what I have seen, there's no job plan. There is nothing that is stimulating the economy. If you look back to the economic crisis that we had in 2009, the Labor government then actually injected money into the economy. Whether it was one-off payments or school halls, it got people working. It ensured that we were the envy of the world when it came to the economic crisis. And we kept the economy going. In this case, all we are seeing is subsidies for big business. A lot of that money won't get spent. As I said, if you give a millionaire $100 it will sit in their bank account. If you give $100 to an unemployed person it will go straight back into the economy. It will be spent on vital things that they need for everyday life. If you give $100 to a family on a very low income they'll use that money immediately for things they've been putting off for weeks and months on end because they can't afford to buy them.

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