James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the amendment to the amendment to the amendment to the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Strengthening the Safety Net) Bill 2023—which I suppose gives me an enormous amount of latitude—having read through the three amendments, let alone the great breadth of the bill itself. We are addressing issues of appropriate Commonwealth support, and we all support having in place a safety net that looks after vulnerable Australians—those who might be in temporary difficult circumstances or, from a more permanent point of view, who, appropriately, need support from government. I'd like to particularly touch on the amendment moved by my good friend the member for Deakin. He contributed to the debate on this bill and moved an amendment that reflects some important points that we in the coalition wish to make. We're not standing in the way of changes the government are seeking to put in place from their budget.

Regrettably, we've heard only in the past few hours that year-on-year inflation is now ticking up again—6.8 per cent is the annualised rate for the month of April. We were told that by Christmas inflation would have peaked and that we were now coming off that. The term 'transitory' was used, particularly early on, in this inflationary challenge period. That's now been dropped by the economists and others. We were then told that inflation was peaking. Well, certainly and regrettably, data from the ABS as of today is not suggesting that inflation has peaked and is tracking down; it ticked up in the month of April, annualised, compared with the month of March.

Other speakers have commented particularly on the challenges around the rental crisis that we now have in this nation, and unfortunately other data released just this week around housing commencements reinforces that there is an enormous squeeze going on in the rental market. I mention that in speaking on this bill because the people who will be supported by the changes in this bill are those who are in some of the most vulnerable circumstances and indeed those who are struggling with housing challenges at the moment. The member for Indi, whose comments I was able to listen to, made these points about those challenges in the rental market, and members whose contributions I haven't been able to keep abreast of no doubt made these points as well.

And of course today's inflation news confirms that rents are driving that, amongst other pressures, and also underscores that what was announced in the budget is probably already out of date. So many Australians are finding it even tougher than what was predicted in the budget, and things were pretty tough in the budget as it was—predictions around power prices going up, around the impact on a whole range of household goods. If you've got a mortgage, your mortgage repayments have gone up dramatically. Rents are going up. We've now seen in the ABS data that fuel costs are again driving a serious increase in inflation. These all affect household budgets, and people who can least afford these sorts of movements are feeling them with the most difficulty.

This is also an environment of very low unemployment. That's why, as the member for Deakin foreshadowed in his contribution and as his second reading amendment points out, we in the coalition believe there's never been a more important time to incentivise those who are on unemployment benefits to do all they can to participate in the workforce. That's why we commend the opposition leader, who made this central to his budget reply speech. We indeed believe that the time is opportune, more than ever, to encourage people by increasing to $300 a fortnight the amount of money that can be earned before it impacts on people's unemployment benefits.

I speak to businesses, as all local members do, on a regular basis. The challenges of getting staff at the moment are acute, and they are enduring. This has been a problem for years now. It is not going away, regrettably, because there are businesses that are in a perverse circumstance. The member for Deakin outlined the good example of a cafe and the business owners of that cafe, who he knows well. They relayed the fact that, because of their staff challenges, they have to work such long, taxing hours that, whilst they are enduring that for now, they've got a sustainability question around whether or not they can continue to operate their business with that kind of enormous burden on them personally from having to work such long hours because they simply can't get staff.

The measure that we're talking about in our amendment is an excellent example of encouraging people to work a little more without penalty. Whilst everyone's unique out there, we're very convinced that there is indeed a cohort of people who receive unemployment benefits that will not be jeopardised by triggering that threshold. If we were to double the threshold to $300 a week then there would absolutely be a cohort of people in a position to take on some extra work but who currently don't want to, frankly, because of the impact it would have on their unemployment benefits. They could, therefore, undertake that extra work in a fortnight and not impact their unemployment benefits and other entitlements they receive. This is an opportunity to both acquaint them more comprehensively with the value of work rather than living on entitlements and, equally, provide that additional labour to businesses that need it so badly. We think this is a very obvious opportunity that will address the challenges of getting long-term unemployed into work, because it would be a very unique person that wants a job right now in our economy that can't get any job whatsoever. That would be a very small cohort of people that are unemployed, and, equally, we know that there are more job vacancies than the total number of unemployed at the moment anyway. So anything we can do to increase the amount of hours worked by people is better.

Other speakers have talked about the economic inclusion unit report, about which in the couple minutes I've got left I'd like to briefly make two points. The first is that it's quite remarkable that the government commissioned this report, which came back with recommendations which would see in this bill a much more comprehensive increase to support than what the government have provided for in the budget. That's something that we really need to note, highlight and reflect on, because they have actively chosen to commission a report and completely ignore it.

Now, they were required or they negotiated to commission that report in exchange, as I understand it, for support on certain legislation in the Senate by a crossbench senator, and that crossbench senator can undertake the action that they choose to around whether or not the government honoured their commitment to that senator by ignoring a report that they committed to that senator to undertake. Why you would undertake a report and not consider any of its recommendations is interesting, but that's not for me to explain; that's for the Treasurer and others to explain.

Of course, when the now government were in opposition, their tune was a very different one to the one that they play now. From the now Prime Minister down, it was absolutely the case that they had a very different position on increases to support for those on government assistance, well beyond the CPI increases that we see in legislation like this, and that now is not occurring, which we can see through this bill.

The second thing I'd like to say, particularly to all the pensioners in my electorate and, frankly, pensioners across the nation, is that I completely reject the suggestion that unemployment benefits should be linked to the pension. That is an absolute insult to pensioners. The pension is a vastly different Commonwealth payment to unemployment benefits. Pension is something that has been earned and is deserved by hardworking Australians to support their retirement. Unemployment benefits are a completely different policy objective, and the suggestion that there should be some link between the pension and unemployment benefits I wholeheartedly reject. I think that is insulting to pensioners. The pension that they are paid is something that they are entitled to for the contribution they've made to this nation, to our society and to our economy. While supporting other Australians in need in difficult times is important, there is no correlation between the two.

With those comments, noting the time, I conclude my contribution on the bill.

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