Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for North Sydney for her interest in this bill and her passion for advocating for our most vulnerable Australians. I acknowledge her commitment to that, but the government won't be supporting these amendments. I'll walk through the reasons why the government won't be supporting these amendments.

Firstly, when it comes to committee members being remunerated, as is the case currently the committee members are appointed because of their expertise.

Often they have full-time work in an advisory capacity. It has not been, and never was, intended for them to be remunerated. However, the government does recognise that for the advisory committee to do its work that it does need resources to carry out its work and is providing $8.7 million in funding over the forward estimates to support the committee to execute its functions, including research, consultation and secretariat support.

The other amendments, being the measures of poverty—while I recognise the measures of poverty in the spirit that the member for North Sydney has put forward, poverty is a complex issue and the government has a very broad range of metrics to ensure different circumstances of people can be considered in assessing their wellbeing. The government has moved to measuring those different measures of wellbeing, including through our development of the Measuring What Matters framework. Our bill supports the committee to provide advice on a wide range of matters relevant to economic inclusion, including trends of inequality and poverty in Australia—as they have reported already in their first report—and to make international comparisons.

In terms of the timing of the committee's report, we do need the committee to provide advice with adequate time for government to consider it as part of its budget deliberations. A specific timeframe of at least 15 days ahead of a budget, as proposed by the member for North Sydney, would mean that the committee could deliver its advice potentially only three weeks ahead of the budget. This is just simply not time enough for government to have any serious consideration of the committee's advice.

In relation to the publication of the committee's advice, I note the government bill does require the Minister for Social Services to publicly publish the findings of the committee on the Department of Social Services' website. At the beginning of this process, the government has committed to do this at least 14 days ahead of the budget as we did with this year's report, and that commitment from the government has not changed, so we won't be supporting those amendments.

In terms of the characteristics of the committee, I would like to reassure the member for North Sydney that we recognise that the membership of the expert committee must reflect the diverse experiences and expertise necessary for considering the complex and multifaceted issues of economic inclusion and disadvantage. Our bill does require that in making appointments the minister responsible should have regard to reflecting the diversity of the general Australian community. It also specifies membership, including representatives and organisations which advocate for or consists of individuals with lived experience from the community sector.

Importantly, I would like to say that lived experience is critical to informing the committee, and that is why the government has provided funding for the committee to carry out its work to consult with those with lived experience, to consider and listen to the perspectives of what is a broad range of people who are experiencing economic exclusion and disadvantage and, importantly, to hear about their experiences in different parts of the country and what would help them.

While we won't be supporting the amendments from the member for North Sydney, I can reassure her that the government takes these issues very seriously. We won't be supporting these amendments but we will, of course, when it comes to appointments, think very carefully about the appointments to the permanent committee and ensure that they do represent the diversity of the Australian community.

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