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

There's something about this government that I struggle to understand. It's true that we all come from our own backgrounds and experiences. It's true that the families we were born into, the schools we attended and the institutions that we have worked for have or that have shaped our lives have all influenced not only the lives we've led but also the way that we view the world. It's inevitable, and it's fair enough. But what most people try to do, even if it's just occasionally, is to step outside of their own world and their life experience and try, just for a moment, to put themselves in the shoes of people who haven't led the same life they have. That's what I struggle to understand about a lot of members of the current government. If members of the government took a moment to stop and genuinely listen to the stories of the lives of people—people who weren't born into a family that could afford to send them to a private school; who weren't born into a family that had multiple investment properties from which they could live; who weren't born into a family where there were two parents at home; who weren't born into a family where there was any parent at home who had a job; or who weren't born into a family that thought nothing of being able to pay $40,000 a year to send them to an elite school so that they could make the right connections and have the right friends to be able to ascend to positions of power—then we wouldn't have to be standing in this parliament debating pieces of legislation like this.

Perhaps they should come to my electorate and meet some of the hardest-working people you will ever come across. They are scraping from pay cheque to pay cheque but, even worse than that, scraping from shift to shift, never knowing when the next shift is going to come; not knowing necessarily how much they're going to get paid for that shift, because it's for a different employer or a different labour hire company; never knowing whether or not they're going to be able to pay the rent, put food on the table or buy a netball top or a pair of footy boots for their kids; and absolutely vulnerable to predatory financial institutions because they're so desperate for a bit of extra money just to get by. That's who the Treasurer should spend some time speaking to, and then maybe he would understand why it is that members on this side of the chamber—even those of us who have never had to go to a payday lender or have been fortunate enough to always be able to tick all of the boxes to get a loan no matter how stringent the rules are—are standing here to say this sort of legislation causes harm.

Maybe we should step back for a moment and stop talking about the technicalities of what financial institutions can and can't do and about lending laws, and just focus for a moment on the health impacts of financial stress and living day to day in that precarious world. We have in Frankston in my electorate—just round the corner from my electorate office, in fact—one of the new mental health services that, to their credit, the current government has funded as a result of the increase in mental health stress during the pandemic. It's called a Head to Health site. It involves both being able to attend at a clinic—in this case, it's the Young Street medical clinic—or being able to access mental health assistance online. The Australian government's Head to Health website notes the following:

Mental health and financial safety are strongly linked. Experiencing a mental illness can add to financial stresses, and financial stresses can add to a mental illness.

The Senate inquiry looking at this legislation heard from organisations that represent everyday people who are in financial stress because they're in underpaid and low-paid jobs and have fallen prey to either predatory payday lenders or loans that they can't, and never were going to be able to, repay. The representatives of those hardworking, decent Australians told government and opposition members alike:

Should lending standards reduce as a result of the repeal of the RLOs this is likely to create greater overindebtedness. The impact of unaffordable debt on individuals, families and communities is immense. Community lawyers and financial counsellors speak to people every day who are struggling to pay their debts, while trying to juggle other expenses like energy bills and groceries. Over-indebtedness can result in significant longer-term impacts on individuals as it affects their capacity to provide for housing, health, education and retirement.

The submission to the Senate inquiry went on to say:

Debt can also have a harmful effect on relationships with family and friends, increase isolation and exacerbate mental health issues. Studies have found that people with unmet loan payments had suicidal ideation and suffered from depression more often than those without such financial problems.

I'm sure there are members of this chamber who have, at periods in their lives, had financial stress. There may well be people in this chamber who have had financial stress caused by a loan that they couldn't service. If there are, they should be calling on that experience and calling on their humanity to oppose this legislation. It's just almost inexplicable that the government would choose to call this bill 'supporting economic recovery'. Whose economic recovery is this legislation supposed to be supporting? The evidence to the Senate committee at the end of last year was that there was no lack of available credit. Whose economic recovery is being supported by going against the first recommendation of the royal commission into banks and the financial services sector? It was the first recommendation.

This government, under this Prime Minister, voted time and time and time again against establishing a royal commission into the banks and financial institutions. We know that they got dragged kicking and screaming, and this Prime Minister reluctantly announced such a royal commission. Then we heard over and over again words that sounded like commitment to the inquiry. When the final report was tabled, we heard words from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer that sounded a lot like commitment to the recommendations of the inquiry. But we haven't seen the action. The Treasurer's own implementation schedule for the recommendations of the royal commission isn't written on paper, because it's online, but it isn't worth the internet that it's written on. He hasn't come close to following it. The real truth—not the words but the real truth—of the government's commitment to making sure that Australians don't have their lives, their families and their physical and mental health ruined by the actions of the big banks is in their walking away from the first recommendation of the royal commission.

I almost can't work myself up to get angry, because it's just sad and disappointing. Today has been a day of disappointment. Today has been a day where women's rage and distress and hope have been dashed by a Prime Minister and a government that know the words but don't have the actions and that weren't brave enough to go and listen—really listen—to Australian women calling for gender equality and real systemic response to endemic domestic violence and sexual assault in this country. Today is a day when the Prime Minister, on indulgence at the start of question time, gave a speech which one can only imagine he thought would justify his pronouncement from on high that he couldn't be seen to go out to address a rally of thousands and thousands of Australian voters, most of whom happened to be women, but that three or four of them could come to his office and listen to what he had to say.

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