Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We're in the House today debating legislation, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Income Support) Bill 2021, that would see an increase in the JobSeeker allowance for Australians, on the eve of a cut to the COVID supplement of the JobSeeker allowance due on the 31st.

It brings home absolutely this government's complete lack of understanding about what is happening in the suburbs and the country towns around our country. My Labor colleagues and I won't stand in the way of this piece of legislation. We are not the government. The government controls the Treasury, and we will support this increase at this stage. But my disappointment in the government couldn't be more profound. We're in the middle of a pandemic. Yes, we're all hopeful that 2021 is going to be a much better year and that the impact of the pandemic will reduce quite quickly from here. That is the hope, but it is not guaranteed, and, as a Victorian, I completely understand that there are no guarantees with this pandemic. The government are here saying that they're going to be generous and they're going to increase JobSeeker and that pretty much those around the country should be applauding them for this action, while, at the same time, they're going to cut the COVID supplement. So, in fact, in real terms, families in my electorate and people in my electorate who are reliant on this allowance will face a real cut from this government.

We're cooperating with the government today to ensure that this increase can be legislated in this sitting week of parliament, in the short time that we're together before the budget. On this side of the House, we're keeping our comments as brief as possible, so I'm going to cut to the chase. My problem with the government's attitude in this today is that they want to talk about disincentives, they want to talk about compliance and they want to talk about JobSeeker being an allowance to help people find work, but what they're bringing into the parliament is a very narrow view of the structures around these things. And there are a couple of things that the government need to know.

They need to know the growing number of people over 55 that are currently on JobSeeker. They need to know that, before the pandemic struck, I was talking to people over 55 in my electorate who had lost their work and who were looking seriously at this being their income going forward until retirement age. The government need to understand those growing numbers. They need to understand that over a million people are currently unemployed. They need also to understand that, when someone gets their JobSeeker number, they are sent to a jobactive, so they need to balance what we're spending on this jobactive program. The jobactive program is supposedly there to ensure people find a pathway to work and to support people while they're looking for work. But the government are also bringing in new compliance measures that include a hotline to dob in somebody who didn't show up for an interview, when we're spending billions of dollars on a system that's supposedly already set up to do those things. They need some clarity around jobactive. They need some clarity around the billions of dollars we're spending there as to whether it's a compliance regime—and, therefore, is actually a cost that should be attached for compliance—or whether it's there to support people, because at the moment, in my electorate, what they'll hear from the community is that it is failing miserably, and we are spending billions of dollars on it.

On the weekend, I attended a Tradeswomen Australia function. They're running a pilot in my electorate where 70 women will be assisted and put through a program to get them to look at the trades as an option, and to support them in entering an apprenticeship in trades. This is a place where the government might want to make a commitment to spending some money—rather than leaving this important work to the philanthropic centre—and it could have been a part of what they're announcing today. I also want them to hear this statistic: as we stand here today ,40 per cent of people in Australia under 35 have never had a permanent full-time job. I want them to understand that, because when they talk about a jobseeker being above the poverty line or that being dignified is a disincentive to work, they've got a job to do. We have people working in this country who are not being paid the minimum wage. While that's occurring, of course it's creating this notion of a disincentive. If 40 per cent of people under 35 have never had a full-time permanent job, then that insecurity is growing that disincentive, and you can't use one argument and then balance it against the other. So the government has work to do. The government has work to do in job creation, and I don't mean their JobMaker program. I don't mean a program that's going to see one person thrown out of a job, potentially, for somebody else to be put into it. I mean job creation.

This government doesn't have a plan for job creation in the electorate of Lalor in the outer western suburbs of Melbourne. They do not want to bring in an increase that would support the people in my electorate who, during the pandemic, have joined the numbers of the unemployed. This government needs to think very clearly about people who are working for less than the minimum wage when they see this prism. They need to address the housing crisis across this country, they need to address homelessness, they need to get an understanding of what it's like to live in poverty and they need to take action. They need to commit themselves to creating a society where all can live with dignity—those working, those looking for work and those unable to work.

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