Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Coronavirus and Other Measures) Bill 2020. It is one of the first bills that this House is looking at following the budget that we saw delivered just a few weeks ago. Usually after a budget in this place we are inundated with bills that do things and change things. Usually we go to our meetings, when we go through the bills, and we have a pile of them and it takes us hours. It has been quite different this time, in spite of all the talk by the government about unprecedented times and the COVID recession and with all of the chest beating and flag waving about how wonderfully they're managing it. But we've actually seen very little so far.

This bill does some really important things, some very small important things, and we absolutely support it, because it will provide some assistance. But, in many ways, this is the kind of bill that you see when the departments are cleaning up things that they didn't notice. This is, in many ways, like the tax law amendment bills that we see when small changes are made that fix up small things the government missed or were slightly wrong about in previous legislation. It's almost administrative in its approach, and that's not what we need at this point.

What we have at the moment is 1.6 million unemployed Australians. We have many, many more on JobKeeper, because they're holding their job at the moment with a wage subsidy from the government. We have incredibly tough times coming down the road, as we see more people join the unemployment queue—not less, but more—by the government's own figures. And yet what we have here is a small collection of measures that essentially have been called for by the opposition and people that represent and work with people who are on Centrelink-style benefits, sometimes for months. Through much of this crisis these very issues have been pointed out.

Finally, we see a bill for them. It's late and with very small measures—although some are important for the people who will receive these small benefits from them. There are essentially four measures in this. The first one is for the pensioners who were well and truly left behind when the government enacted it's really rather cruel pension freeze. Pensioners had been looking forward to their indexation on 20 March and 20 September for a long time—I think last time there wasn't an increase was way back in the 1930s—but there wasn't one in September. That's in spite of the fact that pensioners have had increased costs in their lives—for example, because they can't necessarily catch a bus and are getting their groceries delivered. There are all sorts of costs associated with keeping themselves safe in their homes through this pandemic, and yet they had a pension freeze on 20 September. The government knew about it from August and yet only now are we seeing any kind of compensation from the government, which is two $250 extra payments between now and the end of March. That's something. We're going to pass it—absolutely. We're going to support it. It's better than nothing, but, really, this government has an appalling record on pensions.

This government really has quite an appalling record on pensions. I just want to work through that. They've been obsessed with cutting the pension since they were first elected. In the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government, almost every year in every budget there was another attempt to cut the pension. In 2014, they tried to cut pension indexation. That cut would have meant pensioners would have been forced to live on about $80 a week less in about 10 years. In the same budget, they cut $1 billion from pensioner concessions. Those of us who were in this House will remember the state governments temporarily stepping in to assist pensioners who lost a whole range of concessions at that time. Those states, of course, stepped out again, so pensioners are worse off now because of those cuts.

In 2014 they also axed the $900 seniors supplement to self-funded retirees receiving the Commonwealth seniors health card. In 2014, they also tried to reset the deeming rate thresholds that would have seen half a million part pensioners made worse off. Then, in 2015, in giving up on making the cuts to full pensioners, they moved to part pensioners in a real way and did a deal with the Greens to cut the pension to around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the pension assets tests. In 2016, they 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 my community I have people that have come to Australia from all over the world. They'll have six weeks to go back and visit extended family. In many cases six weeks after they have saved up so that when they retire they can make their last trip back to Greece. They tend to go for a year. They might go for longer. They've saved up for years to make that trip and suddenly they find out that if they go their pension will be cut.

Then in 2016 they 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 563,000 Australians who are receiving a pension or allowance worse off. And over 10 years in excess of 1.5 million pensioners would be worse off. And, of course, they've spent five years trying to increase the retirement age to 70. This is a government with an extraordinary history of doing the wrong thing by pensioners. We are seeing in the House again today how long it has taken them to address this cruel freeze, which they knew about in August.

As I said, there are four aspects to this. The first one is the pensions adjusting for that cruel freeze. The second one—it's quite extraordinary that the government missed this for so long—is an adjustment to the work test to ensure parents who were impacted by the coronavirus recession who lost hours of work will not miss out on paid parental leave. In order to qualify for paid parental leave you have to work a certain number of hours. Those on JobKeeper were already covered, but those who lost their jobs through this unprecedented COVID-19 recession—as the government calls it—through no fault of their own would not be qualifying for paid parental leave, which is quite extraordinary. People, including the opposition, have been calling for months to fix that and finally they have. At the height of the pandemic the opposition was calling on the government to adjust the means testing for youth allowance so students wouldn't fall through the cracks, the third one is they're finally making that adjustment. The fourth one is adjusting support for families who lose a child to stillbirth or before their first birthday and, again, we really welcome those changes. They should have been there a long time ago but finally they are there.

Again, four elements: the pensions, paid parental leave for people who've lost their jobs, youth allowance adjustments so that students wouldn't fall through the cracks because of what's been going on in this recession and support for families who lose a child to stillbirth or before their first birthday. Again, we will support all of those things.

I want to talk about some of these areas in more depth. The first one I want to talk about is the thing the government has clearly and totally missed on this, which is the opportunity to permanently increase JobSeeker. In my electorate of Parramatta there are 12,053 people relying on JobSeeker or youth allowance. Before the pandemic that was 4,900 so it's a 245 per cent increase in people on JobSeeker. For all the government's talk about how if you make JobSeeker too high people won't apply for work, for all of that sort of stick approach, it's as if they don't understand what has happened in this economy. They don't understand what has happened to these 12,053 people, and because they don't understand they've left those people believing that the JobSeeker payment would be cut to $40 a day at the end of this year. That's where we are at the moment. That's what is in the budget. It's back to the old dole or Newstart—whatever you called it in the past. It's back to $40 a day.

I find it hard to understand why a government would look at the Australian people, and look at these 12,053 people in my electorate, who've lost the jobs because of COVID and see the worst aspects of them and see people who might continue to not work because JobSeeker is too high. I can tell you that many of these people that I talk to have been working all their lives. They have got mortgages. They pay rent. They've got long-term leases. They've got car payments to make. They've got kids in school—sometimes kids in private school. They have got child care to pay. They're not going to hang around in the unemployment queue, even with JobSeeker as it is now, if they can get back into paid work. That's what they want to do. Reducing JobSeeker down to $40 a day has the opposite effect to inspiring or stimulating people to go back to work. The lack of certainty at this point is a disaster. Lack of certainty for people on JobSeeker, who don't know at this stage what the rate will be after 31 December, is even more destructive than uncertainty for business, because the two are related. Let's consider what happens if, at the moment, you don't know what your rate of JobSeeker will be after 31 December.

Say there are two people and one partner has lost their job. They don't know whether they can afford to keep paying the mortgage. They don't know whether they will be able to or not after 31 December, because they don't know what the rate will be. They don't think they can keep the childcare spot open any longer. They can't afford to pay for a childcare spot if they're not working. They know that, if they give up the childcare spot and then get a job, they won't be able to get the spot back again. They don't know if they have to go and live with their parents. If they go and live with their parents, their children will be in a different school zone and they will have to drive them to school, but they've got car payments and they don't know if they'll be able to make them.

So, just for a moment, can I ask the government to look at the people in my electorate that are on JobSeeker, and at that 245 per cent increase in particular, with many who were already on JobSeeker. Look at them as people who are trying to get their lives in order and do the right things for themselves, their families and the rest of us, and consider what it is they need to manage what, for many of them, is the worst crisis they have ever encountered, an unexpected crisis. They didn't expect this. They thought they had secure jobs and they made arrangements with their lives based on that assumption, and COVID, like a giant freight train, came and knocked everything they thought away. Look at those people and see the good people that I see. Look at those people and see people who want to do the right thing, who want to go back to work and do what they need to do.

It is crazy for a government to set its regulations and its rules for the worst characteristics of a small number of people and, in doing so, make it harder for the great majority of great people. And it makes no sense anyway, because rule breakers break rules. It doesn't matter what rules you introduce; the rule breakers are still going to break them. So can we have an approach to governing which is actually about people trying to do the right thing? That would be much more sensible.

There are also a few interesting things in this legislation for young people. Young people are doing it tough. They perhaps are being hit harder than any other group in our society at the moment. Youth unemployment in the Parramatta region is now 15.7 per cent. It is incredibly difficult for people in the Parramatta region. That's not counting all the international students that aren't included in the figures because they're not receiving JobSeeker, and all the skilled migrants that aren't included in the figures. So there are many, many more than that. The government is making changes that we've called for and that many advocates for young people have called for, in that the concessions to the paid work test for people seeking to demonstrate independence for youth allowance and Abstudy purposes are going to be changed. This is quite complex language and, when you read it, you think, 'Huh?' But I will read it: 'The six-month period between 25 March 2020 and 24 September 2020 will be automatically recognised as contributing 30 hours per week towards the independence through work test, regardless of the hours worked. The independence through work test requires a person under 22 to work an average of 30 hours a week for 18 months out of a two-year period in order to be considered independent. In line with changes to the general independence through work test, young people from regional and remote areas applying for youth allowance under the concessional workforce independence criteria will be taken to have met the required criteria between 25 March and 24 September 2020. A person claiming youth allowance as a student will be deemed independent if they earn $15,000 through employment in the agricultural industry between 30 November this year and 31 December 2021.'

That is really quite complex, particularly for a young person who has just been getting by studying. They have done their paperwork and they think things are fine. My question for this government is always: How are you letting people know? Where's the big fanfare announcement for this? How are you telling young people that there are options for them which will make them more independent and help them out? How are you telling them? I can tell you, you're not. You really need to do better.

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