Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

To Australians who are listening to parliament, Labor has nominated as a matter of public importance today a discussion, an overdue discussion, about the Morrison government's failure to provide for Australia's most vulnerable. Rarely has there been a time in this nation's history where we've had a greater need for a strong and generous safety net to help Australians when they're doing it tough. Yet Australia's vulnerable are the Morrison government's forgotten people.

Things were hard for a lot of Australians before the COVID-19 pandemic. There were more than three million of our fellow Australians living in poverty—that is, having less than $457 per week as an individual to live on. That is one in eight Australians. There were 774,000 kids, those under 15, living under this definition of poverty, this reality of poverty. That is one in six Australian children. I know it's not considered polite in some circles to talk about it, but there's been a polarising effect of wealth in this nation for the last 20 years. Earnings have risen three times faster for the top 10 per cent of income earners than the bottom 10 per cent of income earners. We praise the idea of aspiration in Australia, but I think Australians would be disturbed to discover that social mobility is a far more realistic prospect in many European nations than it is in what we call the Lucky Country. If you are a child in Australia today, your parents' income is more likely to determine your income as an adult than it has for a very long time.

COVID-19, though, has made things worse. This doesn't take away from the generous increases to JobKeeper and the increases to JobSeeker, but it should be noted that COVID-19 has had unequal effects across Australia. If you have a big bundle of shares, the prices are going okay. If you are lucky enough to own your own house or more than one house, your property values are generally on the up. But the real rate for unemployment and underemployment is far closer to 20 per cent. When the pandemic hit, if you earned more than $1,600 a week, three in every five of you were able to do telework, but, if you earned less than $800 a week, only one in five could do telework. So the shutdowns have been tough for poorer people in this country. They have been tough not just for individuals without assets or wealth who are income-dependent but for small businesses. These phonies in the government say they are the friends of small business. But they are not if you're a partnership, not if you're a sole trader, not if you're a trust running a travel agency. Their loss carry-back mechanism only looks after registered companies.

The coalition government is limping along in its eighth year, slightly surprised that it's here. But, although its leaders may change, the fundamental neglect of Australians needing a fair go has been a consistent element. 'Neglect' may be putting it kindly. I actually think that contempt is the attitude of this government towards those quiet Australians who are in need of a little assistance, a little mercy. What else could it be but contempt when you put the member for Fadden in charge of the NDIS? His advice today in question time, as waiting lists increase for people visiting Centrelink, is: 'Buy a computer; use the internet.' Not everyone gets $40,000 of internet costs paid per year. How do you spend that? I acknowledge that my opposite number is interested in techno-digi stuff. But the rest of it—I'd call him a time server in this portfolio, but that's not really fair, is it? He thinks he's slumming it in this portfolio and he can't wait till he's elevated somewhere else.

NDIS and government services—these are caring portfolios. They exist in an area where the social contract has meaning for millions of Australians. The failure to serve the public, to honour the social contract, results in real tragedy. These portfolios should be about a world-class safety net. There is nothing wrong with being the best in the world at looking after the least well-off in our country—providing a safety net for veterans, a safety net for those who can't find work, a safety net for people who genuinely, because there are just not enough jobs out there, need this safety net. A safety net is a path to independence.

But, time and time again, the government—the Morrison government, the Turnbull government, the Abbott government—have treated these portfolios as a quarry, as an ATM to plunder, to serve their other forms of economic incompetence. Has there ever been an Australian cabinet that presents so differently to the Australian public than their real selves? They are the vanilla men from central casting. As my friend the member for Sydney has pointed out, they beat up on arts students, even though they've all got arts degrees, and of course, on disability, in the NDIS—taking $4.6 billion from people with profound and severe disability. This has real-world consequences. There have been terrible deaths by neglect of NDIS participants in lonely homes: Ann-Marie Smith; David Harris. And they've been caught out on these issues.

People with disability have to go to lawyers to access their NDIS packages. In Australia, you should not need a lawyer to access the safety net. But the figures don't lie. NDIS appeals to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal have spiked at more than 700 per cent since 2016. I wonder if they ever look in the mirror and wonder whether they've got the balance right? No. As with any good culture war, beloved of the conservatives, they unleash legal warfare on Australia's most vulnerable. In the last financial year, this government spent $29 million to oppose participants' appeals to get NDIS funding—to get a wheelchair, an occupational therapist, ramps in their house. The stories are heartbreaking. Even worse, they're true.

A robodebt action is due to hit court on Monday: 400,000 people who were illegally served letters of demand by their government and paid, and another 70,000 people who haven't paid but received these illegal letters. The bill for this illegality by this government will top out at $1 billion, and all we get is a smirk from the other side. It is not good enough—not good enough at all. Then of course there are the Centrelink queues. Only the member for Fadden could be surprised that Centrelink demand would go up during a pandemic. This constant sense of amazement by this government at how the world works is frustrating, because it denies the millions of people who deserve support the support they should actually be getting.

It's a serious issue, and the question really is: is looking after the vulnerable in Australia just pity politics? Is it just looking after people who don't really deserve a generous safety net? Or does it actually matter? This government is patting itself on the back today for extending JobSeeker by three months at the higher rate. The problem is, though, that people won't stop breathing after 31 March next year. I think there are lessons from this pandemic that all of us need to adopt—and Labor also needs to take this advice, as well as the coalition. When we treat the most vulnerable as important, the benefits go to all of us in this country. I think it's time to recognise that fairness is an economic growth plan. It's time to recognise that a fair go for the disadvantaged is an economic growth plan. It's time for government to take new responsibilities and make new investments, required to give every Australian a fighting chance. It's time to stop looking the other way. It's time to see that an injury to any is an injury to all. It's time to recognise that, where there is long-term, persistent, stubborn unfairness in any postcode, that applies to all postcodes.

A great country is a caring country. No country can be great if it does not take the concern of the least well-off to be a most important proposition. Every citizen in our country has value and meaning. Every child deserves an education. Every person deserves the opportunity to learn. Every person deserves to find fulfilling, meaningful work. The lesson of the coronavirus is not to leave the most disadvantaged behind. They've been too invisible for too long. There is a deficit of effort in the Morrison government to look after the most disadvantaged. People are disillusioned, disempowered and disengaged. We have no time to waste. Newstart should not go back to what it was. Sole parents' funding should be properly restored. The youth allowance is too low. The housing market is too hard. Casualised work is too insecure. The loss of dreams and the loss of hope is a price too high to pay. (Time expired)

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