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

Newstart is too low. The thousands of people around this country who are on Newstart are living in poverty. We have had three reports telling us this. Most recently, there was the Senate inquiry that my colleague Senator Rachel Siewert was successful in establishing, which had the agreement of people including from the government benches telling us in its final report that Newstart is too low. We have got these very important reports telling us that it is too low and demonstrating how it is.

But even some simple mental arithmetic done by anyone who is listening could tell you that it is too low at $246 for the single rate. Once you have put a roof over your head it leaves you next to nothing for the week. I tried to do this mental arithmetic myself and live without a few weeks ago. During that week I spoke to someone who had been homeless and had gone to a homeless service that found him a single bedroom in a rooming house in my electorate of Melbourne—for $180 to $220 for that single room alone. I looked around and found that the cheapest place you could find, a one-bedroom apartment in the city of Melbourne, was $240. Once you have taken rent assistance into account, that is $180 out of your $246 gone, just from putting a roof over your head. If you then agree that you are going to feed yourself on the generous sum of $7 or $8 a day, you are down to $4 left for the rest of the week. That is before you have paid any bills for electricity, water or gas. It is before you have paid to have a phone to keep connected to the rest of the world, or your internet to perhaps go and look for a job. It is certainly before you have done anything so luxurious as going to get a haircut or perhaps going to get yourself some clothes for a new job interview. So it is no wonder that it is not just the Greens, but also the welfare sector and the head of the Business Council of Australia who are saying that it is now so low it is a barrier to people getting back into work, because you spend all your time just trying to survive and have no ability to improve yourself.

Most people would expect that Newstart would be a safety net that holds you while you get back onto your own feet, but it is now so low that it is strangling people. Great numbers of people have told me that you either go into debt, or you rely on others, or you just go without basics like food or like new clothes. If we want to be a more caring society, we have to look after those who fall on hard times. Anyone could, through no fault of their own, find themselves out of a job through restructuring, for example, and there are many people in the south-east of Australia in the manufacturing, tourism and education sectors who are finding themselves in that situation in part because the government has failed to act on the pressures of the mining boom.

You would hope that that person is then able to look after themselves and survive until they get back into the workforce. But this decision is pushing them further into debt and it is making it harder to get back into the workforce. There is a reason that we are here: Labor is not prepared to stand up to big business and raise the money we need to fund the services and the benefits that Australians expect from a civilised society.

Labor in fact pushed single parents onto the dole from 1 January this year. They get an extra $3 a day to look after their kids, which is fantastic and magnanimous. You now have parents saying, 'The cost of sending the kids back to school is so high that I'm going to put my computer, the tool of my trade, into hock or I'm going to go further into debt because it's impossible to make ends meet.' Labor says that it is about getting people back to work. The single parents, who are affected the most, were the ones who were previously working the longest hours because the parenting payment test was more generous than Newstart. They were allowed to work extra hours. Some people are losing up to $140 a week. And when you have a kid to look after that is an enormous slug.

In fact, as we found out last week, Labor are now taking more off single parents than they are going to raise from the mining tax. That is not right and those are not the values that people expect from a caring society. We need to acknowledge that Newstart is too low. We need to then say that we are going to have the courage to stand up to Gina Rinehart and make her pay her fair share. Then we will not need to slug single parents, we will not need to keep Newstart below the poverty line and we will not need to raise the taxes that other Australians have to pay.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In an extraordinarily unusual development in my very short political career, I tend to agree with the member for Melbourne on some points—it will not happen very often. However, I do not agree on most of the solutions. It will not shock you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to learn that. The motion before us reads:

That this House acknowledges that the current level of Newstart is too low.

It is an interesting debating point. But it has no detail, no costings about exactly where the member for Melbourne thinks it should go or how much it will cost. Maybe that is one of the Treasury costings that they have been asked about, that they are running a protection racket on—and it is being prevented from being released.

Mr Bandt interjecting—

Well, you released the costings. You go with Treasury—there are eight of them there. We just want to know what is in them. Maybe that is one of them.

Mr Bandt interjecting—

No, they are not. There are eight. You are hiding them, Adam. Just put them out there today and we will know what they are.

I thought the member for Melbourne's efforts of showmanship, a couple of weeks ago, claiming that he was living on Newstart reduced this debate—and what should be a serious debate—to a pathetic level. The point on which I agree with him is that it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that we get the safety net right. One of the great strengths of our society is that we have a safety net for people. There is a legitimate argument about the level of a safety net and about whether there is an inconsistency in different payments in the system at this point which creates a disadvantage. I think they are reasonable points. But the member for Melbourne displayed a bit of political showmanship, claiming he was living on a certain amount of money when, quite obviously, each week in this position we as members of parliament are entitled to quite a generous taxpayer-funded salary and to benefits, such as membership of the Qantas Chairman's Club, which many people do not. I know the member for Melbourne attends that regularly as well, as he is entitled to. But to claim that you can somehow live on Newstart is, frankly, a joke and reduces what is an important debate that we should be having about the level of Newstart payments, which this motion seeks to raise, to a pathetic level.

There is of course a reason that this allowance is called Newstart. It is designed to assist people who have, for whatever reason, fallen out of work and who are seeking to get back into the workforce for a period. We do not want people to be on Newstart for a long period. The member for Melbourne makes a good point that the allowance needs to ensure that people can survive and that they can use that allowance, in addition to other assistance they get such as training, and that people who need this money to help them reskill and get back into the workforce are able to. How that money is allocated, I think, needs to be reconsidered.

But it is a two-way street. You cannot just expect that those who create jobs in society will pay more and more tax for those who are unwilling to go to their own extent to get themselves back into the workforce. There are issues in the economy at the moment as we go through a structural change where there are parts of the economy and parts of Australia where there are more jobs than there are in other parts of the economy. That requires, I think, job seekers, particularly younger people, to look at ways that they can better access employment in certain circumstances. So this is a two-way street.

That is what we expect people to do, and that is why our plan that we will put to the Australian people before the 14 September election—of creating an economic environment where the private sector can create two million more jobs—will be an important aspect of this debate also, because we need an economic pie that is growing to ensure that people can get access to work and that we assist the economy to adapt to the structural change that is going on within it, which means that people who had presumed work in a certain industry some years ago which is not there now are able to change their skills, update their opportunities, get themselves back into the workforce and not be stuck on Newstart for a long period of time. That is because, no matter how much you increase Newstart—and it is an expensive thing to do as far as the government goes—you will never be able to put it to a level, and you never want it to be at a level, where people are living comfortably, because indeed the whole idea of it is to push people and encourage people back into the workforce. We on the coalition side want people to be in work which satisfies them and means that they are contributing to a strong and prosperous economy for the future.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When the Curtin government introduced benefits for unemployed people and sick people and other special benefits in 1943, it did so against the backdrop of the Great Depression, where hundreds of thousands of people were thrown out of jobs for many, many months—in some instances years. The poverty and social dislocation and the hardship to families that resulted from that ensured that, when proposals came before the Curtin government in 1943, they received a very favourable reception. Of course, we were not the only country in the world to be introducing such schemes. In the 1920s the United Kingdom had introduced such a scheme, and in the 1930s a scheme had been introduced in the United States as well. What tied them all together was the common view that the No. 1 priority for governments should be to try and provide meaningful work for their citizens and that the benefits should be sufficient to provide a decent standard of dignity while somebody was looking for work and looking after their family in the same instances.

That remains our priority today, and in Australia we are fortunate that there are now some 830,000 fewer people who are unemployed today than would have been had we not been elected to government in 2007—that is to say, we have created 830,000 new jobs in the Australian economy over that period. That should be our priority. In this country we have avoided the ravages of unemployment that have beset Europe, the United States and other similar economies around the world, because the government has done the right thing. We have spent where we have needed to spend to stimulate the economy, at the same time as looking after people who are in need.

We have not ignored the problems of those people on Newstart, as the member for Melbourne would like to suggest. Indeed, at one point recently a $1 billion income support bonus scheme was introduced, providing $210 extra per year for eligible singles and $350 per year for most couples to assist them to meet increasing costs of living. That said, job creation and job protection will always be our higher priority. For example, on this side of the House we do not think you do anything to aid job security by making it easier to sack someone. We believe the best form of job security is providing decent industrial relations laws and a strong economy to ensure that businesses continue to protect people.

Mr Briggs interjecting—

Very good, thank you. However, we also know that the level of Newstart has fallen behind the level of other benefit payments. We have recently seen evidence and a report from a Senate committee which has inquired into the adequacy of government benefit payments, pensions, and the comparison rate between pensions and the Newstart allowance. We have had a number of expert witnesses provide evidence to the committee. The Salvation Army, for instance, told the Senate inquiry that the current system does not provide recipients with adequate income. Mission Australia provided similar evidence, pointing out that Newstart is less than half the Australian minimum wage. Anglicare said they believe this has become a barrier to assisting the long-term unemployed in the workforce, a sentiment echoed by organisations as diverse as ACOSS and the Business Council of Australia. What they are saying—and I think this is something that policy setters need to be very mindful of—is that it actually costs money to look for work. If you are unable to pay for your basic utilities, a new suit or a new outfit, getting yourself prepared for interviews and travelling to job interviews, then the level of Newstart can be a barrier to those seeking work.

That is why I think in the upcoming budget we should have a plan to address some of these issues. As I said, we have not been standing still, but we should have a plan to address these issues. Of course, it has to be funded, and it will not be achieved by cheap stunts like trying to live on a cheese sandwich for a couple of weeks. It will be done because we have got a positive plan to deal with the overall economy.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to make a contribution on the Newstart discussion, and it is a matter of public record that it is something I have been speaking about for quite some time. My belief is that Newstart needs to be raised, and one of the things that I have to do as a member of a large party and as a member of government is persuade my colleagues to that view. Coming up to the budget this year, as I have said, this is something we should look at. When the single parent changes came in first of all under the Howard government and flowed on under Prime Minister Gillard, I said I did not have a problem with the policy per se. But what I do have a problem with is that Newstart, for anybody going onto it, is too low to live on. I have also said I would like to see Newstart change in other ways, particularly in helping people back into the workforce, and take account of local issues—transport, child care and all the different factors in different areas and regions. And I have got some particular ones in the seat of Page that I am very mindful of.

I have also made statements on Newstart. On 29 August 2012—and this has not really changed—I said that, according to a report published in March 2012 by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social research, the poverty line for a single person, including housing, is $341.80. Newstart falls $136 short of this—that is, for somebody who is on the absolute basic payment and not getting any other benefits. In 1997 Newstart was almost at parity with the age pension. While the age pension has experienced incremental increases and a historic increase under the federal Labor government—and its last increase was $33 per week in the 2012-13 budget—Newstart has fallen to only 65 per cent of the pension in just 15 years, with the gap between the two having widened to $106 per week. The age pension with supplements is at parity level with the poverty line, but Newstart falls well below the standard. Newstart is currently only 18 per cent of the average wage which, according to the OECD, makes it the second lowest unemployment benefit in the developed world. Living on $35 per day or $245 per week, as pointed out by Minister Shorten, is an incredibly difficult ask; that was on Sky News Agenda on 29 July 2012. Yet this is what is expected of Newstart recipients; this amount must stretch to cover all essential items. Those who have advocated reform include but are not limited to ACOSS, the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Australia Institute, UnitingCare, the Salvation Army, the St Vincent de Paul Society, the Australian Youth Affairs Coalition, COTA, Anglicare Australia and many people in this place, including some of my backbencher colleagues.

The Newstart allowance is part of a broader package of support which includes a basic allowance, supplementary payments, Commonwealth rent assistance, concessions employment servicing and access to training, family tax benefits for those with children and assistance with child care. In the 2012-13 budget, the federal government announced additional measures to further help those in receipt of allowances, including investment to improve childcare assistance to help unemployed parents receive training and skills needed to enter the workforce, and a new supplementary allowance to help manage the unexpected cost-of-living expenses. This provides up to $210 for singles and $175 each for couples, and that is welcome, but we need the Newstart to be more.

Other initiatives which supplement the allowance include the tripling of the tax-free threshold, intensive support for mature age job seekers et cetera. In my electorate of Page, I am talking to people who are on Newstart, and some people who are on the parenting pension who have gone onto Newstart, and I am trying to assist them there. I know that an increase in Newstart would go a long way to assisting those people.

Debate adjourned.