Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

There are more than 1.1 million people receiving the JobSeeker payment, youth allowance and related payments in this country. I'd like to remind all those in this House that the JobSeeker stipend is only $50 a day. That's about two-thirds of the single rate of the age pension, which has fallen from about 90 per cent of that level in 1999. The youth allowance and Austudy are just $40 a day. We know that 80 per cent of those on JobSeeker will have to rely on that payment for at least 12 months. I challenge any member of this House to tell me how they could propose to live on $40 or $50 a day for 12 months or more. This legislation will provide a $2.85 increase in the support for 90 per cent of those individuals receiving those payments. The remaining 10 per cent of recipients will either be moved on to the parenting payment single, an extra $103 a week, or will receive an extra $46 a week because they're aged between 55 and 60 and have received JobSeeker payment for more than nine months.

We have to ask ourselves: are these changes sufficient? This is an area, as the member for Bass has said, of complex policy, but it's also an area and issue of gender equity. More than 60 per cent of those relying on the lowest income support payments—JobSeeker, student or parenting payments—are women, and 95 per cent of those on the single parenting payment are women. Across their lifetimes, women have lower incomes, less job security, lower superannuation balances and a higher likelihood of poverty. This bill addresses only two of the six urgent and targeted recommendations of the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce. Yes, it's a start, but, really, it's only a start.

The changes to the single parenting payment will mean an increase of about $176 a fortnight for 57,000 single parents. I remind the House that the Supporting Mother's Benefit was introduced by the Whitlam government in 1973. Coverage of children aged less than 16 was almost universal until 1987. It was means tested after that, and then decreased to the age of eight by Julia Gillard in 2012. We have to ask ourselves: what have we lost in the last 50 years? We are still, even today, behind where we were before. It's important to remember that we have not yet regained the ground lost when that threshold for expiration for the single parents' youngest child was 16 years.

As a country, have we become less generous? Do we value our children and our most vulnerable less? While every dollar counts and all of these increases should be passed, how could we, in any conscience, accept anything other than these support recipients deserve more. With the increased support to find in this bill, people receiving the JobSeeker and youth allowance will continue to struggle with the most basic of living costs.

The Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee found that lifting the JobSeeker and related payments to 90 per cent of the pension, by $129 a week, would help people return to the workforce because they would be able to pay for internet access, for sufficient food, for adequate clothing and to get to their job interviews. Not supporting people who want to return to the workforce to do so is a false economy. We have a long way to go before our income support system prevents deprivation and poverty.

The opposition has argued that increasing the JobSeeker rate might discourage workforce participation. It's important to note though, that if the rate of JobSeeker was increased to 90 per cent of the single rate of the age pension, just to $70 a day, as has been recommended by the EIAC, it would still only be just over half of the minimum wage. It's difficult to sustain an argument that an unemployment benefit at that level could possibly discourage workforce participation.

We know that the labour market is as close to full employment as it has been at any point in the last 50 years. The reality is that many of those people on JobSeeker should probably be on different stipends. They need to be offered more, not less, long-term help and support. We should not be condemning people to what Anne Summers called 'policy induced poverty'.

Similarly, the 15 per cent increase to the Commonwealth rental assistance does not come close to addressing the significant gap in payments and requirements. A single person paying at least $175 a week or more in rent will receive the maximum increase, but that's only $11 a week. Fewer than 40 per cent of people receiving JobSeeker receive rent assistance. Of those who do, the median rent paid is $230 a week. The vast majority of those people pay more than 30 per cent of their income in rent. That means that they are in housing stress. Fewer than five per cent of recipients will be moved out of housing stress as a result of this increase in Rent Assistance.

We know that rentals are becoming more expensive. Vacancies in some centres are as low as one per cent. With interest rates continuing to rise, further hikes in rental prices seem inevitable. At a time when we're all facing increasing cost-of-living stressors, how can we not do our best to alleviate these increased stressors on our most vulnerable? The ability to keep a roof over our heads is important.

As the member for Gippsland has said, all people in our community need assistance. The ability to keep a roof over our heads is absolutely critical for our mental as well as our physical health, and I'm glad that the member for Gippsland agrees. It is the absolute least that we owe to those most in need of support.

I urge the Albanese government to show the generosity that our most vulnerable people deserve and increase income support payments to at least $76 a day. Former secretary of the Department of the Treasury Ken Henry estimated that the cost of following the scientific recommendations of the economic advisory committee on JobSeeker, an amount that he described as 'a rounding in the margin' in the context of a $630 billion budget, was $14 billion. Of course, we need to tend our budget carefully. Of course, we need to find savings where we can. We need tax reform and we need a generational shift in our approach to community housing. But, most of all, we need to work out what matters most to us. Who matters most to us? And we need to prioritise our most vulnerable, for whom relatively minor increases in support would make an absolute world of difference. We should not hesitate to undertake a rounding in the margin for those who are at the margin. We should consider what it really costs to leave those people behind. I commend the bill to the House.

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