Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020. Reducing the coronavirus supplement from $250 a fortnight to $150 a fortnight is the wrong thing to do, quite simply because people won't be able to live on it. It's that simple. In fact, the unemployed are already at rock bottom on the original coronavirus supplement amount of $250 a fortnight. How on earth are they going to live on $150 a fortnight? It's just not enough. Sure, at $150 a fortnight, it means the unemployed will be getting about $50 a day, and, sure, that's a darn sight better than $40 a day, but it's not enough. It's not enough to pay for your housing. It's not enough to pay for your food; your medical expenses; your transport; your clothing, so that you look good for a job interview; and your ICT, so you've got a phone and the internet to be able to even apply for jobs. It's just not enough.

Crucially, it's way below the poverty line. Why do we even have a thing called the poverty line if we're going to ignore it? The poverty line is exactly that; it's the figure at which you are in abject poverty and you can't live a decent life. In fact, the poverty line is about $65 a day, so about $50 a day is way below the poverty line. So this decision by the government will be completely and utterly unacceptable, and it will be entirely out of step with the views of the community and welfare groups and business groups—all sorts of people, including former Prime Minister John Howard. He is well known to be on the record arguing against $40 a day, and I suspect he won't be all that impressed with $50 a day either, on a coronavirus supplement of $150 a fortnight.

To make the point about how small an amount of money this is, I draw the attention of honourable members to a printout off the web just yesterday about rental prices in Hobart, because Hobart now is one of the most expensive places in Australia to rent a house. I'll just flick through some of these places to rent: an ordinary-looking house is $830 per week; another house with three bedrooms is $600 per week; a one-bedroom apartment in a high-rise—well, low-rise—is $300 per week; a three-bedroom house is $600 per week; a three-bedroom apartment is $800 a week; a slightly bigger house is $650 a week; a house is $850 a week; a room in a boarding house is $260 a week; another townhouse is $850 a week; a house is $725 a week; a two-bedroom cottage in Bathurst Street in Hobart is $495 a week; and another boarding house is $250 for a single room.

I could go on, but I'm sure my colleagues understand the point I'm getting at: when you are on JobSeeker and your coronavirus supplement is only $150 per fortnight, or $75 a week, you can't afford to rent any of those places. Even the single room in a boarding house at $260 a week is unaffordable. All this poverty by design will ensure is that we will have more homeless, more couch surfers and more people living in a tin shed out in the backyard. We can do better than this. We can do so much better than this.

The government claims that unemployment benefits are really just a stopgap of course, that they're just something for maybe a few months while someone goes and gets a job—in fact, it should be a bit tough so they're encouraged even more to go and get a job. But the fact is almost all the unemployed want a job and they are doing everything they can do to get a job. This urban myth in some quarters that they're all dole bludgers is a terrible misrepresentation of the fact. And when you've got a situation like we now have in my electorate, where over 10,000 people are relying on JobSeeker and there are 21 people on JobSeeker for each job, the fact is most of those people who are currently unemployed stand a very real risk of being long-term unemployed, so it's no good to just give them a stopgap. They need a living income, because they stand to be unemployed for many, many months, so they're going to have rent, a car to run, food, medical expenses, ICT, grooming expenses. Many of these people are not young, single people; many of these people are people with families to support. So the idea we can have a stopgap for unemployment benefits misses the point that we're going to have a lot of long-term unemployed—and we're always going to have a small number of people who are simply unemployable. Even if you are lucky enough to get a job in only a few months, you've still got the sorts of rents that I referred to before and you're probably still paying $300, $400 or $500 a week in rent, on your mortgage payments or whatever.

I suggest we need a whole new approach to so-called welfare payments in this country, because, if we can bring ourselves to accept that people have expenses and they need to pay those expenses, then surely we can accept that everyone in the country whether you are unemployed or you are disabled or you are a carer or you are aged should get enough in income support from our government so that they can live and live a dignified life.

I frankly don't even understand why Newstart or JobSeeker is at a different rate to, say, the age pension or the disability pension or carers payments or other payments. Surely they should all be the same amount. I think this global pandemic gives the government, and the opposition, an opportunity for a fresh look at the way we pay welfare in this country—or income support would be a better way to term it—and say, 'Okay, we've evolved for all sorts of reasons, some of them lost in history to where we are now, but it's time to have a root-and-branch review of the way we provide income support and to be prepared to redesign it from the ground up.' I'm very attracted to the idea of a living income for all Australians. So, no matter what your circumstances are, if you need income support from the federal government, you will get an amount of money that you can live on, and it will be consistent for all people who need income support. That's the view of ACOSS and others. Logically, that amount of money would be above the poverty line, because as soon as a government, maybe with the support of the opposition, agree that people should be paid an amount of money below the poverty line then you've got poverty by design. Surely we can do a lot better than having poverty by design in this country, but that's what you've got with the old Newstart rate. That's what we're probably barely avoiding with the old coronavirus supplement, but that's what you'll get with the new coronavirus supplement.

If it is the government's intention—and I fear it is, come March or April—to get rid of the coronavirus supplement altogether and go back to $40 a day then I make the point again: it's poverty by design, which means we have a very cruel government. I'm delighted that the opposition is now talking in stronger terms about increasing unemployment benefits should they become the next government, but I do fear that the current government is ultimately heading for $40 a day, and that's a very, very cruel policy.

I note that the ACOSS position is to have a living income, as I described; to make it in the order of $472 a week, which is basically the current age pension or disability pension; and then to acknowledge that different people have different extra needs, so there'll be supplements. Perhaps someone with a disability needs a particular supplement. Someone who's renting and paying the sort of rent I referred to earlier would continue to get Commonwealth rent assistance but hopefully at a realistic amount, because when you've got housing unaffordability like you have in many parts of Australia—especially in Hobart, which is the most unaffordable city, believe it or not, of all the capital cities in the country—we obviously need to look afresh at Commonwealth rent assistance. Can we afford this? Of course we can.

I apologise if I sound like a broken record, but I'm going to have to say this another thousand times, I reckon, before honourable members start to listen to me and pay attention. The fact that we are such a rich country means there is no reason in the world to have poverty by design, unless you're a cruel government. I remind honourable members of the figures. In Australia, our median wealth per adult is No. 1 in the world. We are the richest people in the world, out of about 200 countries, as measured by median wealth per adult—richer than even the Swiss. When we look at our average wealth per adult, we're No. 2 to the Swiss. These are mind-boggling figures. We're the 14th biggest economy as measured by GDP. We are a fabulously wealthy, fortunate and lucky country, I would add, with our resources, our social capital and all our other advantages.

I suppose it's all about priorities. What do we think is important? I propose that what's important is for a government to look after the most disadvantaged members of our community and to look after them as well as we humanly can. Surely, by that standard, we can't tolerate a coronavirus supplement of $150 a fortnight, resulting in a gross amount of about $50 a day, which is $15 a day below the poverty line. It's poverty by design.

Before I close, I'd like to take this opportunity to give a plug to JobKeeper. I know we're here talking about JobSeeker, but I do want to make the point again to the government that the job isn't done here with JobKeeper. It was always fundamentally flawed because of the exclusions to eligibility, and it's not too late for the government to look afresh at this and to provide JobKeeper assistance, for example, to local government, to the tertiary sector and to other sectors that currently miss out. It would also give the community more certainty about the future of JobKeeper. We're going a few months at a time here, but that's no good to one business in my electorate that provides conference and event management. They've got no bookings for the rest of this year. They've got five events booked for September 2021 and more for 2022 and 2023, but are they going to last that long? They've got 17 staff at the moment on JobKeeper, but there's a real risk that they will fold and Hobart will lose a wonderful company and that expertise because JobKeeper won't be there for as long as it is required.

The international travel sector: I know the government's announced a little bit of assistance for international travel agents recently, but it's not enough. Remember that travel agents make most of their money from international bookings; they make almost nothing from domestic bookings. So that's another sector that's going to need not only long-term support but some certainty now to encourage them and to allow them to keep those businesses afloat for as long as is needed, because some of these businesses aren't going to get any sort of decent income for another 12 months. We know that now, so why can't we say to them that we will continue JobKeeper in particular sectors for as long as is needed? I'm thinking of constituents who own a number of travel agencies. They could go to bed at night knowing, 'Okay, we won't fold the business. We'll keep it afloat a bit longer, because we'll have a bit of support for a bit longer.' They'd be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel—maybe the end of next year—when they can resume some sort of normal operations.

In closing, back to JobSeeker, I don't agree with reducing the coronavirus supplement to $150 a week. Frankly, it's at rock bottom already at $250 a week and that actually puts it roughly equivalent to, or a little bit less than, the age pension and the disability pension. However, it puts it roughly around the poverty line and it roughly achieves that alternative model, which I've spoken about, which is a living income for all people who rely on federal government income support. We should keep the $250, and the government should say they're going to keep the $250 and stop teasing people with three months here, three months there. No wonder a lot of us think the next three months at $150 will be the last three months and we're going to go back to $40 a day. We're going to go back to poverty by design and to betraying the most disadvantaged members of the community. We're going to go back to ignoring the fact that we're one of the richest countries in the world and we can afford to do so much better.

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