Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to be able to speak to some of the matters in the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020. Obviously there are some things that we support and things we would like to see done differently, and I will talk to some of those points. Essentially, this bill is a missed opportunity, as so many bills have been during the response to COVID.

It's a missed opportunity to deliver a permanent increase to the base rate of the unemployment benefit. I don't think anyone in this chamber seriously believes that it is possible to do anything other than, possibly, subsist for a short time on the paltry $40 a day that is the current permanent base rate. I think we all recognise that there is terrible hardship amongst those who experience unemployment, especially those who experience it in the long-term. For people who live outside Sydney, in regions like mine on the edge of Sydney, that entire base rate amount could go on your transport cost to get to a single job interview. Those sorts of costs mean that you can't afford to get employed. You can't afford to stay unemployed, but you can't afford to get employed. We're creating terrible mental health and economic consequences for people, and this bill is a missed opportunity to address some of those things.

The other concern that I want to address in a bit more detail is the plan to take away so many of the other supports that were put in place, which the minister was given the power to do to respond and react to COVID. Taking away the minister's ability to pay the coronavirus supplement after 31 March means that there will be millions of families still carrying the scars of the economic impact of the pandemic who will have no hope of getting back on their feet.

The timing of this, around Christmas, is curious. This is a time when we want to encourage a boost in retail spending. We want to encourage people to pump money into their local shops. Yet the time frame that the government's put on this means it's a real dampener on what we might otherwise see. I know that my local shops, from the top of the mountains down to the bottom of the mountains, across to Windsor and Richmond and into the smaller villages, are hoping to see people feeling confident enough to spend money over Christmas and through January. Keep in mind that 12 months ago our local economy stopped because of bushfires in November. By November and early December last year, we'd lost houses, the place was covered in smoke and international visitors had stopped coming. So we're 12 months into an economic catastrophe for many businesses. Of course, the wage subsidy that we pushed for, JobKeeper, has helped maintain the viability of some businesses through this period, but they were coming off a very low base. If their community, which relies on JobSeeker, has less money to spend, that's going to directly show up in their daily tallies, in their daily turnover, and they'll feel that.

At the start of the pandemic, the government introduced the coronavirus supplement, that additional payment of $550 a fortnight to those who were receiving the unemployment support, as well as to single parents and students. People told me that made an enormous difference. People were able to pay not only their rent but also their electricity bills. They were able in some cases to get ahead on some of their bills. We've already had 40-degree days in Western Sydney and Greater Western Sydney, so people know their bills are going to be higher because they need to use their air-conditioning, if they have it, or fans or other things to cool down. They know it pays to get ahead in their bills. People did that, and people are really proud of the fact that they've been able to do some planning ahead in some cases.

I also had parents tell me they were able to buy new shoes for their kids. That always comes up as being one of the fundamental things that you want to be able to do as a parent—to give your kids the shoes they need as their feet grow and grow and grow. I remember, from when my kids were little and I was just starting a business, the pressure to try and keep those kids' feet in shoes. How people do that on unemployment benefit or the payments that they receive is anyone's guess. The fact is that they haven't been able to.

The coronavirus supplement really made a difference and gave people a sense of hope. I know that, for one young woman, the supplement meant she was able to cease being homeless. She was able to get a small place of accommodation that she could afford in the Hawkesbury. It's a notoriously expensive area in which to live, especially across the river, but she was able to find something. But, through one of the agencies supporting her, we now hear that, as the supplement reduces, she is recognising she won't be able to maintain that home. She will, in her mind, just have to go back to being homeless. That is an absolute travesty—that someone has had a taste of what it's like to get their life back together by having a roof over their head and this government seems to have no qualms in taking that away from people.

It's clear that the impact of the pandemic is going to persist for many years. Some people will probably have snapped back; some may have done what the government envisaged was going to be the economic strategy early on. But for every snapback we know that there are some who may never make it back. The message I keep hearing from the groups supporting vulnerable people is that those who they see as traditionally vulnerable have become even more vulnerable throughout this period. If we look at the number of people relying on unemployment support, we know that is still going to be elevated in four years time. There are not enough jobs. This government has not got a plan in place to help stimulate job creation or create jobs directly. So we know there will not be enough jobs for people. Right now there are eight people for every available job. Yet we're saying: 'If you're one of the seven who can't find work, that's just too bad. The tap is being turned off.' It's unnecessary and it's cruel.

I think we in this place have to recognise that the increase has done a couple of things. It has helped people financially, it has helped them within themselves and it has helped them with their own mental health in being able to feel a sense of hope and a sense of purpose. They are three really good things. In fact, I'm happy to congratulate the government on recognising the need for a supplement. But I am so disappointed that the government's goodwill in doing that doesn't extend to going forward into the future.

On the timing of the pulling away of this support: in Labor senators' additional comments in the report of the Senate inquiry into this bill, I particularly noted the comments by Anglicare Australia. Anglicare said to that inquiry:

… officials from the Department of Social Services talk about the kinds of numbers that they were expecting to see unemployed in April—

These are the comments of Ms Chambers, from Anglicare—

They were predicting an increase from what we're seeing today. So, as to pulling these benefits back, we are arguing—I do need to be clear about this—for a permanent increase—

in the JobSeeker payment—

In the meantime, it is clearly not the time to be pulling this back. And not only that, but, as to the timing and the actual date that we're looking at this decrease coming in, we know, from decades of data, that, in emergency relief and in financial counselling services, January is always the peak for those services. It is an expensive time of year for families. There's preparation for the school year. There are increased costs in cooling their dwellings, especially in the last couple of summers we've had. There are Christmas peaks. There are all those kinds of things. So, even down to the month and the day, it is not the right time.

Why won't the government listen to the data from reputable organisations? Every month of the year, they're out there helping people. They don't just turn up at Christmas; they are there the whole time. And they're saying that this is the worst possible time to be pulling these supports away.

I spoke with the CEO of Foodbank in the last week or so. They have identified so many problems with the current situation and the government's plan for reducing relief. Foodbank says, 'Demand for food relief is up, and we believe we have not yet seen peak hunger in the COVID-19 crisis.' While charities are seeing the need for food relief become erratic and unpredictable, the overall demand to the end of September was up by an average of 47 per cent from pre-COVID days. Charities are reporting a further jump of 25 per cent since JobSeeker and JobKeeper were reduced at the end of September. The latest dashboard figures I received, for November, say that charities are anticipating a 45 per cent increase in people seeking food relief this Christmas versus the same time last year. To meet the Christmas demand they expect they will need 41 per cent more food. So yet more evidence that this is a time of year when people really need support, yet this is the very time of year the government has chosen to pull away these supports.

Within my community, the organisations that are going to feel this most are not just the people who provide Christmas Day meals—those groups like Belong Blue Mountains and all the different people who even in COVID times have found a way to deliver a Christmas meal—but those people who are constantly out there with food parcels. HCOS, Hawkesbury's Helping Hands, Hawkesbury Community Kitchen and The Living Room are all seeing increases—everyone from Gateway Family Services at the bottom of the mountains to Junction 142 at the top. These are the organisations that will pay the price, in fact, for the government's decisions here. So I really urge the government to think about the timing.

The other gap in this legislation is that it still provides nothing for older workers who have essentially been left out, overlooked by the government, workers like Marco who I spoke about in question time a few weeks ago who's just a little over 35—in fact maybe a decade or two over 35. He's not old enough for older worker support but he's too old for the additional support the government's providing for young jobseekers. It's unfathomable that you would rule out an entire category of people, one million of them, who just aren't going to get any additional assistance when they actually represent the largest cohort of jobseekers. They have the most difficult time finding work because of structural barriers and age discrimination. And that's not new; that's something older workers have come and spoken to me about since I've been a member of parliament. In the last 18 years the proportion of people who are over 55 on unemployment payments has gone from 8.8 per cent to 26.6 per cent—so it's more than tripled. Currently there are more than 307,000 people who are over 50 on unemployment support and they're having the most trouble getting off the payment—a missed opportunity.

The big gap is clearly that, alongside pulling back the supports, there's no corresponding focus on jobs and training. What we could be seeing from this government is a real drive for jobs in the renewable energy sector. We could be seeing jobs being created with a social housing program to upgrade and build new social housing, so that people like the woman who I fear is going to become homeless as the supplement supports are pulled away have somewhere safe that they can go. We could be funding people to help the environment recover from the devastating bushfires we had. There has been so little on-the-ground assistance flowthrough from this government for bushfire recovery in World Heritage areas. The volunteers are out there; they're working their guts out. They need support from this government. That's the missed opportunity.

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