Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today Labor is trying to use this parliament to put an obligation on the minister to better support pensioners. We are moving an amendment to the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Coronavirus and Other Measures) Bill 2020 to put an obligation on the minister to support the millions of people around Australia who rely on a pension to be able to survive. In Dunkley, almost one in five people in our community is on the age pension, the disability support pension or the carers pension. Close to 25,000 people rely on that pension. I am proud to be standing here today to support the amendment moved by the shadow minister to make this government do more to help those people as we go through one of the worst economic crises this government has seen a century and a global pandemic.

I've had local pensioners contact me to say they don't know how they're going to pay the electricity bill, they don't know how they're going to put petrol in their car, they can't keep their private health insurance and they don't know how they're going to put the next meal on their table. We are a rich country. We are a country that is supposedly built on 'the fair go', which to me and my community means concepts of support and equality, particularly for people who can't always, as the Prime Minister would say, have a go. The Prime Minister likes to say that, if you have a go, you get a go. There are so many in our community who have had a go over and over and over again and are now on an age pension—which isn't allowing them to have a go, let alone live in anything above poverty. There are other people in our community who, through no fault of their own, have a disability or an ailment which means they don't have the capacity to have a go in the same way somebody born into opportunity, wealth and structural advantage has. Those people need support; they deserve our support. That's what our country is about. There are people in my community who are carers, who dedicate their lives and their time to caring for other people—people who are sick, people who have a disability, people who are foster children. They are giving them a better start in life. Those people are having a go but, under this government, they're not getting a go—and more needs to be done.

I've had pensioners say to me that the $250 supplement before Christmas feels to them like an insult. Their pension indexation has been frozen, their meagre savings are going nowhere, the cost of living has risen—and this government hasn't done what it needs to do to help those people get through the crisis that we are going through. To the 25,000 residents of my electorate who rely on the age pension, the disability pension and the carers pension: I've heard you. I've heard your phone calls, your visits and your comments on Facebook. I've heard your cries for just a bit more help to be able to live in dignity. My colleagues and I are urging the government today to hear that too and do more for Australian pensioners.

Labor's amendments today, if they find the support of the House, will also require the minister to announce a permanent increase in the base rate of the JobSeeker payment. There are more people in this country than ever who don't have a job—not because they don't want one, not because they haven't worked hard to get the education and skills required to get one, not because they haven't spent most of their lives running their own small business and always looked after themselves, but because of circumstances outside of their control. Those people face the prospect of having to live on $40 a day in a broken job market where there aren't enough jobs—even when there are jobs, they are often for only a few hours a week—

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