Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Income Support) Bill 2021. This government is cutting the support for people who are doing it tough as we deal with the pandemic. This government is plunging people back into poverty—including hundreds of thousands of children around this country—and they are doing it deliberately, because this government punches down. No-one should be living in poverty in a wealthy country like ours. Instead, in a world where there are 12 people looking for every job that's available—12 people who don't have enough work or don't have a job at all—and where there are 60 people on unemployment payments for every entry-level job advertised, this government is saying, 'It's your fault, and we're going to make you live in poverty.'

Everyone understood, before the pandemic, that $40 a day, which was the level of JobSeeker then, was not enough to live on. Everyone understood that. And the government was forced to admit that, when the worst of the pandemic hit, because they increased JobSeeker—they doubled it. Now the government is saying, 'No, $40 a day is not enough to live on, but we reckon $44 is.' That's the level that this government is plunging people back down to.

We are here to debate a bill where the government is giving people a pitiful $3.57-a-day increase when they are struggling and living below the poverty line already. It speaks volumes about the approach of all governments that this is the first real permanent increase that we've seen in the JobSeeker payment since 1994. But, instead of being able to celebrate this moment, we are angry. We are angry at the government's decision to entrench poverty at the same time as it hands out billions of dollars in tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. Make no mistake: this is a choice that the government is making. The government is choosing to make people live in poverty, at the same time as it gives $100 billion a year in handouts to big corporations and the very wealthy.

When the JobSeeker payment was doubled last year, we made huge progress in tackling poverty in this country. The government were forced to admit that you could not live on the previous rate of Newstart or JobSeeker, so they lifted it to what they thought was appropriate, and it took it above the poverty line. All of a sudden, it was something that people could live on. People spoke of the transformational impact that this had on their lives. They were able to go to the dentist, buy fresh fruit and vegetables, get their car serviced, buy a family computer and afford essential medication—things that many of us in this place take for granted but that you couldn't do on $40 a day. We heard from people who could finally afford essentials like prescription glasses, a fridge, warm jumpers and school supplies for their children. There were enormous benefits at the community level as well when the rate of JobSeeker payment was increased. The number of people skipping meals dropped by over half, to 33 per cent, while the number of people struggling with medical costs dropped similarly, by over 40 per cent.

The poverty rate for households whose main source of income is allowances dropped to 26 per cent following the introduction of the coronavirus supplement. But researchers estimate that the poverty rate for these households will skyrocket back up to 85 per cent after this bill is passed. Before the pandemic, we had people having to skip essentials—medication, food and, in many instances, a roof over their head—because the rate of JobSeeker was so low. During the pandemic, we had a window into what it is like for these people to be able to live a normal life. All of a sudden, they were able to buy things like food and other essentials such as prescription glasses. But now the government is plunging them back into poverty.

That's why I move:

That the following words be added after "education services":

"; and

(d) increase the Jobseeker Payment to above the poverty line."

In a wealthy country like ours, where there are two million people who either don't have a job or don't have enough hours of work, and where there are 12 people either without a job or without enough work for every job that's available, and where there are 60 people on unemployment benefits for every one entry-level job that is available, no-one should be living in poverty. We should be able to keep people above the poverty line while they look for work and especially while this country recovers from the pandemic and we rebuild.

The jobs that the government says that people need to get just aren't there. They're just not there at the moment. That's especially the case in places like my electorate of Melbourne, where so many of the industries that employ people—like hospitality, events and tourism—are still not able to get back on their feet, because we're still dealing with a pandemic and they're subject to social-distancing restrictions. The government just does not seem to get that we are still dealing with the virus and with the economic consequences of it, and the jobs have not bounced back.

Of course, even before the pandemic hit, life was pretty tough for people, especially young people, in this country. Before the pandemic, about one in three young people in this country either didn't have a job or didn't have enough hours of work. That's not because they weren't taking up a massive surplus of jobs that was available. The jobs just aren't there. But what is the government doing? The government is punishing people for not finding jobs that aren't there. That's what this government is doing. The government is saying, 'Even though we've got enough money to give $100 billion in handouts to big corporations, even though we think that billionaires deserve a tax cut and will rip $300-odd billion out of the budget with the Labor Party's help to make sure that we can't fund schools and hospitals as well as we would like, despite all of that largesse that's available for big corporations and billionaires, I'm sorry, we can't lift you out of poverty in the middle of a pandemic.'

It is incredibly cruel, and that's why I'm moving the amendment to increase the JobSeeker payment to above the poverty line. We can do it. We did it during the worst of the pandemic, and we can do it now as we recover from the pandemic and into the future. What the government don't understand is that, when you are living on so low an amount as the $44 a day that they are proposing, you not only go without many of the essentials, you not only have to skip meals, you not only have to have those difficult conversations with your kids about why they can't go on excursions or do the things that other kids are doing; it's actually a barrier to finding work, because it means you don't have the money to go on that extra training course, you don't have the money to go and buy some nice new clothes, you don't have the money to get a haircut. Being on $44 a day means you spend all your time just struggling to survive. It's not a living; it is just barely surviving.

Then, to make matters worse, the government comes along and says, 'We're going to introduce a hotline, a "DobSeeker" hotline, where you're going to be able to dob people in.' As you're struggling just to survive and as you're looking for jobs that aren't there, you now have the added weight hanging over you of an employment service provider—who makes money out of this whole industry; this privatisation should be completely unwound, and we should go back to having a public centred approach to employment service provision—now potentially having the ability to put a black mark against someone's name and say, 'They didn't take a job that we reckon they were suitable for.'

And employers can do it too. Employers are able to dob people in, according to this new government hotline. So if you're a young woman who goes for a job at a place and comes out of it feeling, 'I don't trust that man who's going to employ me. He's creepy and he's sleazy, and I don't want to be working under him. I'm not going to accept that job,' you can get a black mark put against your name and potentially have your payment suspended. This is not slavery, in this country, but that is the direction the government is taking us in. Now you won't have the freedom to say no to working for someone that you might think could be completely inappropriate to work for; you're going to be forced to do it under this government. This government is now embarking on a process of virtually forced labour by saying you don't even have the right to say no to working for someone who's inappropriate. People should have the right, after they've met their employer face to face, to say: 'No. Actually this job isn't going to work out for me, and I've got some very good reasons why.' But no—this government's punishing them for even doing that.

The mutual obligation requirements that are being imposed in this bill as well are going to mean that, from July, people will be forced to apply for up to 20 jobs a month, in the middle of a recession, and they're going to be required to resume face-to-face appointments with jobactive providers, even while social-distancing restrictions are in place in many places around this country. Again, this speaks volumes about the government's approach, and the government's approach is to punch down and to blame people for not finding jobs that aren't there.

But there's a different way. If we make the billionaires and the big corporations pay their fair share of tax, then we can afford to ensure that no-one is living in poverty in this country and that we invest in the kinds of job-creating nation-building projects that will set us up for the future, deliver something of lasting benefit to Australia and get us back to full employment. Instead of handing out $1 billion a year to big corporations, including its donors, the government could invest some of that money in projects like getting Australia running on 100 per cent renewables, restoring our environment and expanding free education. That would create jobs. The government could actually do things right now, through its investment, that would create jobs. Instead, the government has a trickle-down approach to the recovery that says: we'll force people to live in poverty, but we'll give $100 billion a year to big corporations and the very wealthy and hope that they choose to use some of it to employ people.

High unemployment is a choice this government is making. This government is choosing to keep people out of work. What it could do with that $100 billion, instead, is invest it in projects that would deliver lasting benefit for the whole of Australia for decades to come and would give people meaningful work—a meaningful job for everyone who wants it. We could get back to full employment in this country if we wanted to. That's what they did in the US after the Great Depression. They invested, and as a result they've got a national parks system which is still used to this day and transportation networks that are still used to this day. They built amazing buildings and created incredible works of culture. Instead of giving money to the same people that helped cause the crisis, they put money into direct job creation, and that's what the government needs to do here. That is how you create the jobs for people. That is how you could go to every person in this country and say, 'We can guarantee you a job working on one of these nation-building, planet-saving projects.'

Look at our natural environment. Look at how devastated it is, especially after last year's bushfires. Look at how much work needs to be done in rural and regional areas to restore our environment and get it back to good health. That is work that could create jobs. Look at our aged-care sector and the scandals that we've seen there. The No. 1 recommendation of the royal commission was to invest in and lift the workforce. We could invest in our aged-care sector so that there are more nurses, attendants and other staff working in our aged-care sector, and that would create jobs. This idea from the government that, instead, we're going to just keep giving more to the billionaires and big corporations and hope things get better is a trickle-down fantasy. For as long as the government is refusing to offer people decent jobs, it has no right to complain about the unemployment rates. What we should do in this country is all agree on a single principle that, in a wealthy country like Australia, no-one should be living in poverty. We lifted people out of poverty during the worst of the pandemic and we can do it again. I commend my second reading amendment to the House.

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