Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I embark on a discussion on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017, I want to thank, congratulate and commend the member for Moreton on an incredibly powerful speech on the Parliamentary Joint Committee Report on Human Rights report on free speech. As always, he has given a very eloquent speech, a very moving speech. I worked on the 18C legislation when I first started my career in the Public Service, so it is something very near and dear to me. It was there at the beginning of my career.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hear that from many sources.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He knows all about that because the views that my husband has and that I have are quite different. It has been an abiding part of our relationship since 1992. That was when the public consultation was conducted on the 18C legislation, and we have always had disagreements on it. We have been together for a very, very long time, and 18C has been part of that relationship from way back. As people say, 'Only in Canberra'—but so true. Congratulations, member for Moreton, on that speech. It was very powerful. Thank you so much for the work that you did, with the member for Brand. Who else was on the committee? It was wonderful having the member for Cowan in here, as well as the member for Lingiari and the member for Isaacs, to hear that speech.

As I said, I have a very close and abiding connection with 18C. I was there in 1992, when I was working in the Attorney-General's Department and I was engaged in the public consultation that took place right throughout Australia, like the committee has done this time, on the 18C legislation. I was there in Alice Springs, hearing from Indigenous communities about the trauma and the heartache that they experienced as a result of racial discrimination and vilification. I was there in Darwin, hearing from migrant communities who experienced the same slights, abuse and about harm that it causes. I was there in Perth, talking to Indigenous communities, Italian communities and Greek communities about what that experience was like for them. I was there in Townsville, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, talking to Jewish communities. We also went down to Hobart. But the one that really sticks in my mind in terms of public consultation was the Adelaide event. I am a huge fan of Adelaide, and so this is certainly not a slight on that great city or on South Australians. What really struck me—and I am hoping it did not happen this time—was that we experienced white supremacists at the public consultation that evening. Neo-Nazis, skin heads, turned up—and we are talking 1992—and they were just filled with hate, and they had huge vicious dogs with them. We had to get the police to come in and basically break up the consultation, which was a real tragedy, because it was one of the best crowds that we had had. But there was the presence of the white supremacists there, and they were filled with so much hate. They were solely intent on shutting down that consultation, solely intent on shutting down that conversation, about people who do experience racial vilification, who do experience racial discrimination, who do experience hate speech and who do experience slights and nasty innuendos. We are talking here of a time before social media—this is years before the internet; 1992—but racial discrimination was alive and well then. The member for Moore said that a lot has changed—yes, a lot has changed since 1992—but, with all due respect, a lot has not changed. In fact, there are more opportunities now for people to engage in anonymous hate speech, anonymous ghastly trolling and anonymous vilification and discrimination towards people based on their race and ethnicity. So I say to the member for Moore: yes, things have changed, but a lot has not changed.

I think it is interesting that the recommendations in this review were basically focused on procedural issues, process issues and access issues. They do not change the substance of the 18C legislation, because it is not broken. Yes, there have been issues of process, there have been issues of access and there have been issues of procedure, and those have been addressed in this report. But the legislation and its original intent—I was there in the consultation, I was there when it went through the chambers and I was there in the Attorney-General's Department—is still workable. There is no need for substantial change; this review found that. So it is most telling and most interesting that the recommendations were only done on the procedural, access and process front.

So it was an honour to have been here, having had that very longstanding connection with 18C, going right back to the early days of my career, 1992, and the early days of my relationship with my now husband. As I said, it has been part of our relationship for all that time, and it was a real honour to be here for the report on this review as well as to hear the very powerful, moving and eloquent speech of my colleague, the member for Moreton.

I will now go to this omnibus bill. I have been in the chamber for a large part of the debate on this bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings & Child Care Reform) Bill 2017, and it has been just extraordinary to hear the stories of the impacts that the proposals in this bill will have on communities. The really strong message that I have got from the speeches that my colleagues have made is that this government has no qualms in pitting the most vulnerable people in the community against families. They are essentially saying that young unemployed, pensioners and others need to pay for these significant changes to child care—according to the Prime Minister, the most significant reform of child care. This is just outrageous. It is just pitting those who are vulnerable against families, those young unemployed people against families. It is quite extraordinary.

I thought 2014 was bad, with the outrageous budget that the then Abbott government introduced that ensured that young unemployed were potentially cast on the street because they could not access Newstart. I remember doing a doorknock around the streets of Canberra just after that budget was introduced. My community were in shock. They could not believe that a government could be so brutal to so many people in one fell swoop. They could not believe that a government could introduce these cuts that it said during the election that it would not introduce—cuts to the ABC, cuts to SBS, cuts to health and cuts to education. The government made a commitment when it was in opposition and just prior to the election that it would not make cuts to those areas. Yet we saw in the 2014 budget cuts to health, cuts to education, cuts to the ABC and cuts to SBS—it was endless. Not one sector of society was immune from those cuts.

As I said, I was out doorknocking in the community, and my community was in shock. Canberrans were in shock that this government could implement such a brutal budget. I remember speaking to single mothers who were in tears and absolutely petrified about how they were going to be able to educate their kids and put their children through university, given the fact that the government was looking at these $100,000 degrees. I spoke to young people who were fearful that they would become unemployed and worried about how they were going to survive. I spoke to parents whose children were working or at high school or at university. They were not unemployed but, there but for the grace of God, their child could be unemployed and they were worried about what the Newstart changes that the government proposed would mean.

So I thought that things were pretty bad in 2014—not just because of what the government did on health, education, SBS and the ABC but also in terms of what the government did to my community. Coalition governments have form when it comes to Canberra. In 1996, under the Howard government, we lost 15,000 Public Service jobs here in Canberra and 30,000 nationally. Then, under the Abbott government, we lost around another 10,000—I have heard larger figures. Again, we were subject to attack, as always, because coalition governments have complete and utter contempt for the nation's capital.

The nation's capital was built up by Sir Robert Menzies. He had a vision for this town as the nation's capital. He brought to Canberra government agencies that were scattered right through out Australia—mainly in Melbourne, though—because he wanted to create a great national capital. He invested money and effort in his vision to make this a great national capital. But, whenever we have coalition governments, all they do is basically bring the capital down. They cut the Public Service and they cut the national institutions—to the point where, with the national institutions, we are not cutting into fat or bone; we are now cutting into vital organs.

Like the 2014 budget, these cuts are cuts to our basic social framework, cuts to Australia's DNA. That is what this bill does. It is so reminiscent of 2014. There can only be one winner here, and the losers from this will be the most vulnerable people in our community—low-income earners, the young unemployed and pensioners. There can only be one winner, because this government is completely incapable of prioritising and getting an approach that ensures equity in this nation, that ensures that there is fairness in the way we go about our social and public policy and that ensures that there is equality. With this government, the losers are always low- and middle-income earners and those who are doing it tough already, like young unemployed people and pensioners. They are always attacked.

We saw the derision this government has displayed towards those people on Centrelink benefits. We on this side of House believe that we need to ensure that those who are getting benefits that are funded by the Australian taxpayer get the right benefit. We are not in any way advocating that those who do not deserve a particular benefit should get it. What we want is fairness. There have been 20,000 letters sent out each week and, of these, 4,000 have been found to be incorrect. So 4,000 people have been incorrectly targeted, with the suggestion that they are fraudsters. One can only imagine the stress they feel when they get this letter from Centrelink, from a government agency, suggesting that they have ripped off the Australian taxpayer, that they have ripped off the government, when they have done nothing of the sort. Great trauma has been caused by these letters, and for some reason the government will not accept any responsibility for it, which is just breathtaking. Particularly after the changes that you introduced to the way that these benefits are processed, the fact that you will not actually accept any responsibility is just outrageous.

I am nearly out of time, but, as I said, this bill pits families against the most vulnerable in our community. It is another showcase of this government's complete contempt for low- and middle-income earners, for those who are doing it tough and for the most vulnerable in our community. This bill robs Peter to pay Paul—that is the underlying philosophy of this. The fact that you could not be more creative about ways of saving money and you had to have one person or the other benefiting in our community is just outrageous and underscores the government's complete contempt for those who are doing it tough and those who are unemployed. The government is just interested in the big end of town. We have seen that with the outrageous $50 billion tax cut to some organisations, such as the Commonwealth Bank, which made a $5 billion profit in the last six months. These are the sorts of organisations that Australian taxpayers will be underwriting, or funding, in many ways. I ask all Australians how they feel about giving big business and banks $50 billion worth of tax cuts.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to be here but a very sad subject matter. I oppose the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017. This bill contains the same measures and the same provisions that were contained in the 2014 budget, which led to Tony Abbott, the member for Warringah, losing his prime ministership and brought the government to the very brink of losing the election in 2016. I oppose the bill. It is unfair. It must be defeated and the message that we have got from many members in the other place is that that is exactly what is going to happen. We can only wonder why it has been brought into this House, this week, in this form. Perhaps it is because the government do not have anything else for us to debate. Whilst they are off somewhere else debating their own internal troubles, they have put this in here for us to fill in time. It is an unfair bill which introduces a range of cuts which have already been rejected by members in this place and in the other place. It contains cuts to family payments, to pensions, to families, to new mothers and to young people. I will go through a whole range of the measures and how they impact on some of the areas throughout regional Australia—because I think this point needs to be brought home. Perhaps throughout the course of this debate, I will be able to change the opinions and perhaps the votes of some of those coalition members who represent regional electorates, because they really do need to be considering their position and how this bill is going to impact their electorates.

I have talked about the impacts on family payments. A whole heap of these measures are going to have a devastating effect on families and pensioners. There are some measures, if they were separated, that we could support. We are not bloody-minded. There is a provision in here, for example, which deals with automating the income stream review process. On its face, that is something that makes good sense. We have some reservations. You, I am sure, Mr Deputy Speaker, like every member in this House, have had your electorate office absolutely inundated with complaints from Centrelink clients saying that they have been sent a letter or had a contact from a debt collection agency for a debt that they do not owe, because the Minister for Human Services has absolutely mishandled the existing debt and data-matching services that are in place for Centrelink. So you can understand in these circumstances why we are very nervous about the competence of this minister and this government and about extending these provisions to other clients of Centrelink. We will look at that in the Senate and allow a Senate committee to examine it in some detail.

I want to go through some of the provisions and point out why any member in a regional electorate should not be supporting these measures. Let's look at the impact of the family tax benefit changes, which are going to leave people currently receiving family tax benefit A $200 a year, on average, worse off per child if they are affected by these changes. The member for Dawson has threatened all sorts of things over the last couple of weeks. He threatens almost on a daily basis to either resign his position, resign from the party or cross the floor. This is a bill and these are measures which he should be crossing the floor on. If he was thinking about the 9,653 people within his electorate who are currently in receipt of family tax benefit part A, he would be concerned about the impact of this bill on his constituents.

If he is not moved by that, he might be moved by the impact of this bill on young jobseekers. If ever there was a measure that was going to create rigidity within the labour force and that has not been thought through when it comes to how it is going to impact on regional Australia, it is this provision. This provision is going to force young jobseekers who are under 25 to wait five weeks before claiming benefit. I am not sure what they are supposed to live on for five weeks. Presumably, everyone assumes that they have wealthy parents and are living at home, but I can tell you that is not the case. This is going to impact on a lot of people indeed. I said it is going to build rigidity into the labour market, Mr Deputy Speaker. You will recall that, a few months ago, we were gripped in debate over something called the backpacker tax. We were looking at ways that we could put in place taxation arrangements to encourage more overseas workers to come into the country to assist our farmers and horticulturists during picking season because they could not find the domestic labour force. In electorates and areas where there is very high unemployment, including youth unemployment, this measure is going to make that worse.

I have singled out the member for Dawson. In his electorate there is 8.6 per cent youth unemployment. That is not going to get any better because of these provisions. These provisions are going to make it harder for people trying to take on short-term work as a pathway to full-time work, particularly in the agricultural sector. Why would somebody pick up two weeks work picking fruit or working in agricultural industries only to lose an additional five weeks of benefit? Each and every time they have to reapply they are going to have their benefits cut for an additional five weeks.

The member for Gilmore has had a bit to say. She has not exactly covered herself in glory in this House in the last 24 hours. There is 20 per cent youth unemployment in her area. This measure, as well as the proposition to force young jobseekers aged between 22 and 24 onto the lesser youth allowance and off Newstart allowance, will impact on those people. It will cost those people $48 a week. As I said, there is 20 per cent youth unemployment in the electorate of Gilmore.

The electorate of Gilmore has some of the highest numbers of pensioners and people approaching retirement age in this country. The energy supplement in this bill will be removed for people who apply for a pension. That is to say that it is grandfathered but anybody applying for the pension after the implementation of this legislation will not get the energy supplement. It is about $14 a fortnight for single pensioners and about $21 a fortnight for a couple of pensioners. You would think that, if you represented an electorate where over the next few years there will be over 22,000 people approaching retirement age—you heard that right; over 22,000 people—you would think twice before you came in here and voted for this bill. There are over 22,000 people between the ages of 55 and 64 in the electorate of Gilmore who will lose access to this provision if the member for Gilmore comes into this House and votes for this bill. She is not alone; the member for Leichardt has over 20,000 people in his electorate who will also be impacted.

I was in Western Australia last week. I had the great pleasure of being in Kalgoorlie, amongst other places. I met with Labor's candidate for the seat of Kalgoorlie. He is going to give the conservatives a run for their money in that seat. The member for O'Connor will not be doing his party any favours in either the Western Australian election or the federal election if he votes for this bill. Over 10,000 people currently in receipt of family tax benefit part A are going to be impacted if he votes for this bill. There are over 8,000 people on family tax benefit part B. These are the people who are going to be affected by the abolition of the FTB part B end-of-year supplement. It is $354 per year. It might not be much to many people in this place but for the families who are relying on it—and there are over 8,000 of them in the electorate of O'Connor—it matters a lot.

If a member of this place were interested in representing the interests of their electorate, they would be very concerned about the changes to the jobseeker provisions, particularly for young people. I have in mind the electorate of Page where there is very high unemployment in general and very high youth unemployment. We need to be doing things to encourage employers to find jobs for these people. We need to be doing things to make it easier for these people to get into training and get into the workforce. In the seat of Page there is very high youth unemployment. There is over 8.6 per cent youth unemployment in the town of Grafton alone. I expect the member for Page to come in here and oppose this bill because of the impact it will have on them.

I see the member for Cowper is in the chamber at this time. There is over 8.6 per cent youth unemployment in the town of Coffs Harbour, which is in the member for Cowper's electorate. I expect him to stick up for these people.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Coffs Harbour's youth unemployment rate is less than the national average.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He has got a bit to say at the moment. Let us see how he votes on it. Let us see if he votes in the interests—

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What's your unemployment rate?

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member asks me what youth unemployment is in my electorate. Mr Deputy Speaker, I am very happy to take this as an intervention, as a question. It is atrocious. In some of the lakeside suburbs in my electorate, in Berkeley—

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What are you doing about it?

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He asks me what I am doing about it. I am ensuring that these people do not have their benefits cut. I am ensuring that we do everything within our power to ensure that they get a decent education and to ensure that you and your state colleagues do not gut the TAFE system, so that these guys get a decent chance in life. All you can do is cut their pensions and cut their benefits and make it harder and harder for them to get a decent go. I will not take a lecture from the member for Cowper, who will not stand up for the people in his electorate. At least there are some people on this side of the House who will stand up for people in their electorate who are struggling. He is worried. He makes a lot of noise. I know that he is worried. He can see other parties and Independents champing at the bit—

Mr Hartsuyker interjecting—

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Whitlam has the call.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

for the defeat of the people of the National Party who thought that they could take their electorates for granted. When political mortality flashes before their eyes, they jump up on all sorts of things. But they will not stand up for the people within their electorates who are struggling. They will not stand up for the people who are their heroes. There are absolute lions in their own electorates. I am sure the member for Cowper gives a fine speech on the stumps in Coffs Harbour about the importance of looking after people who are disadvantaged but, when he comes down here along with all of his other National Party colleagues, he falls in like a lamb behind Malcolm Turnbull and sticks up his hand for all of the cuts which are going to damage and hurt the interests of the lowest income people and the most disadvantaged people in his electorate.

He came close at the last election. He had a bit of a scare himself at the last election, if I recall correctly. There is a reason for that. It is because he and every other one of the National Party MPs are taking their electorates for granted, and their electorates are starting to wake up to them. We will ensure that every day that this parliament sits and every day between now and the next election we will hold them accountable for the fact that they are voting against the very interests of the people they are sent here to represent. I oppose the bill and I support the second reading amendment.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to join my colleagues in opposing this bill and supporting the very sensible amendment that has been moved by the member for Jagajaga. Once again this bill represents this government's twisted priorities and out-of-touch approach when it comes to not only policy development but reining in the budget deficit and ensuring that our fiscal position is sustainable into the future. This bill personifies the attack by this government on the most vulnerable and weak in our community.

We all know that we need to make savings in the budget. We also know that we need to increase revenue if we are going to continue to fund basic services such as Medicare, grow our education system, grow our healthcare system, invest in renewable energy and ensure that people have good vocational education and a pathway into a job. But it is about the way you do it. It is about the approach you take in doing that and the philosophy that you take to that approach.

The philosophy of the Abbott and Turnbull governments has been to attack the weakest and most vulnerable in our community, the lowest income people and women and to ask them to make savings and to make changes to make their difficult lives even more difficult so that more money can come into the budget but, at the same time, give the wealthiest Australians tax cuts. I am of course speaking of the $50 billion corporate tax cut the Turnbull government is proposing, the changes that have been made to superannuation and ensuring that the deficit levy on the highest income level Australians is removed. Those measures represent the government's twisted priorities. The fact is that this bill attacks the most vulnerable and weak, but the big end of town, the big corporations with turnovers of up to $1 billion, gets a tax cut. That is not fair.

It is also actually worse for our economy in the longer run because it is attacking the majority of the population. As the Reserve Bank governor pointed out before the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics last week, the big problem for the Australian economy moving forward is the level of household debt and the fact that it is affecting consumption in Australia. People are saving to fund their mortgages and their household debt and they are not spending. If we are going to have a healthy economy in the longer run, we need to encourage people to spend. This bill does the complete opposite of that, because it attacks the majority of the population and takes money out of their pockets. So does the recent decision of the Fair Work Commission with respect to penalty rates on a cut to the take-home pay of some of the most vulnerable and weakest in our community. This bill, again, represents the Turnbull government's warped approach to supporting Australian families.

In 2013 then Prime Minister Abbott played a very cruel prank on the Australian people when he declared that paid parental leave would be his signature policy. Mr Abbott promised that he would help families with the real costs of raising children. Then on Mother's Day, of all days, in 2015 the Abbott government announced that it wanted to cut paid parental leave to tens of thousands of new mums each year. Around the same time, Abbott government ministers labelled women who had received paid parental leave from their employers as 'rorters' and 'fraudsters' and employers who wanted to support their staff as 'scammers'—a real highlight of the government's mean-spirited campaign of cuts to Australian families. Of course, these reforms were taken on by Malcolm Turnbull when he became the Prime Minister. So this process of attacking working mothers has continued under the Turnbull prime ministership.

In contrast to this government, Labor do not take that approach when it comes to working women. We do not ridicule them. We do not chastise them. We will stand up for working women who have bargained for paid parental leave, often sacrificing wage increases. We will stand up for their employers, who have supported them by providing them with paid parental leave. These are good Australian employers who have done the right thing by their staff in providing them with those paid parental leave schemes. Asking women to choose which scheme was better was a wicked approach by this government that has done nothing to ensure that mothers get the support that they need in the early years when they are rearing children and so that ultimately they can come back into the workforce and maintain working mother status.

We will support and protect the scheme that we introduced and designed to allow mothers to combine government and employer schemes. It was designed to provide the World Health Organisation's recommended 26-weeks leave to as many mothers as possible. The time spent by new mothers with their babies in the early days and weeks of their lives is some of the most precious and valuable time imaginable. Labor will not apologise for doing whatever it takes to protect that from the government's attempt to reduce it to just 20 weeks.

With the introduction of this omnibus bill, the government is continuing its twisted attempts to rob Peter to pay Paul. The bill introduces $2.7 billion worth of cuts to family payments alone to pay for a $1.6 billion childcare package. In total, it rips $5.6 billion from household budgets of low-income Australians. The bill will take more than $3.30 off pensioners, families, new mums and young Australians for every $1 in proposed childcare assistance. Labor will not support this approach. We will not support the government's attacks on pensioners through the energy supplement, their attacks on the unemployed through changes to Newstart and their attacks on families through reductions to family payments.

The government even admits—they have admitted freely—that their cuts will affect 1.5 million Australian families and leave them worse off. Families losing their family tax benefit A supplements will be around $200 worse off per child and families receiving family tax benefit B will lose around about $350 each year. These cuts add up for families who are struggling to make ends meet. For example, a typical family with two children and a single income of $60,000 will lose around $750 a year. A couple with one child on $75,000 will lose over $1,000 per year. The worst hit will be single parents whose youngest child is 17 and over and has finished school. These families will lose over $3,000 a year in family tax benefits alone. Again, it represents this government's approach of attacking the most weak and vulnerable in our community. These are people who live from week to week, who struggle to make ends meet and for whom finding the money to afford one of their schoolkid's excursions is a challenge. They very rarely get opportunities to go out to the movies or to dinner, or stuff like that. Or, when the car breaks down, they struggle to find the money to have it repaired. They are, generally, renting and are struggling to make ends meet. But these are the people that this government is seeking to attack through this bill to pay for a reform that is going to end up leaving many more children and families worse off when it comes to the provision of child care.

I said at the beginning that budget savings are all about priorities. This government has been shown to have the wrong priorities time and time again by attacking the most vulnerable over and over again. We have seen it with the Medicare co-payment, the freeze to the Medicare rebate and the $100,000 degrees. But, at the same time, they seek to let off the big end of town. They are not only letting them off but offering a $50 billion corporate tax cut over the next 10 years for corporations earning up to $1 billion in revenue. This massive tax cut, which includes Australia's hugely profitable big banks, comes whilst the government is pushing young job seekers to live on nothing for five weeks. That is why Labor is opposing this bill. We will stand up for pensioners where this government moves on the Pensioner Education Supplement and the Education Entry Payments—small payments that go some way to supporting people on income support who start studying. These changes will impact a large cross section of Australia, particularly those with not much to lose before they are pushed to the wall. These are the changes that are hurting regular Australians and are what the people in my community are interested in. These are things that people in the community that I come from are worried about. Yet, the government continues to focus on itself. We have seen that writ large over the course of this week.

In these last few weeks we have seen the government and this Prime Minister talk about themselves. We have seen the member for Warringah talk about cutting immigration numbers and reducing the renewable energy target. We have seen the current Prime Minister desperately attack others to retain his tenuous hold on the top job. Meanwhile, they introduce bills that seek to take more and more from everyday Australians. It is simply not on, and Labor will not stand for it. We will oppose reforms such as this. Labor supports additional investment in child care, but this government's attempts to link that with cuts to pensions, families, new mums and young Australians are beyond the pale and cannot be supported. We are not alone, with groups such as the Australian Childcare Alliance, Early Childhood Australia, Early Learning and Care Council of Australia, Family Day Care Australia and the Early Learning Association of Australia all supporting our opposition to this move.

Recent analysis by the ANU shows that these childcare changes will leave one in three families worse off; 330,000 families will be worse off and 126,000 will be no better off. That is almost half of all families. Under these reforms, 550,000 families will be worse off or no better off. The harsh activity test will leave children in 150,000 families worse off. Labor is particularly concerned for Indigenous children across the country who will feel the impact of cuts to 300 mostly Indigenous services that reach 20,000 children.

Once again—and I said at the beginning—government is all about priorities. This bill tells you everything that you need to know about the Abbott-Turnbull government's priorities and their approach to budget repair. Again, they are attacking the most vulnerable and weak in our community. In particular, those affected by these changes are women. Women, in case members of the government have not noticed, do it tough enough in Australian society. We are not reducing the gender pay gap, we are not making it easier for women to break through the glass ceiling, we are not making it easier for women to have children, continue in their careers and remain productive members of society with reforms such as these.

These reforms, and decisions like the Fair Work Commission decision last week on penalty rates, make it harder for women to participate in our community. That is why they must be condemned. These reforms make it tougher for pensioners. The member for Jagajaga and I met with a group of pensioners in our community last Thursday. Multicultural communities came together in our area to discuss these pension changes. They are horrified by the fact that they potentially will lose their education supplements, their energy supplements and their pension after a period of going overseas for six weeks.

These reforms attack the unemployed, some when they are at their most vulnerable—people like those who are going to lose their jobs as a result of the car industry shutting down. If they do not have decent redundancy schemes and they do not have the ability to access Newstart for five weeks then it can leave people in a precarious financial situation if they have just lost their job at one of the most vulnerable periods in their life in terms of their mental health. At the same time they offer tax cuts to big business. They make it easier for the richest in our community. It represents this government's twisted priorities, and that is why I and my Labor colleagues oppose this bill. I urge all members of the House to support the sensible amendment moved by the member for Jagajaga.

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

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017. This government does not seem to have learnt that the Australian people do not want the axe taken to people who have just lost their job and are trying to get onto their feet, while at the same time the government says that it needs to give a tax cut to the big banks. This government has not learnt that it is not their front man that is the problem—it is the policies. It is what they stand for. It is the fact that in this bill we are seeing, resurrected, many of the zombie measures that the Senate and the public so resoundingly stood up against and defeated when former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the member for Warringah, tried to introduce them.

This is not only a version of the Abbott budget that was defeated; it actually contains many of exactly the same measures. If you want to get a sense of what this government thinks is a fair way to balance the books and raise revenue, you only have to look at what we in this parliament are being asked to debate this week. On the one hand, this bill says, 'We're going to cut support to families; we're going to cut welfare for young unemployed people; we're going to force people to wait longer before getting assistance when they're trying to find a job; and we're going to cut paid parental leave'. The government comes in here and tells us that it is an absolute priority that we cut spending on those who need it most because they are looking for a job or for parents who are wanting to spend time with their young children. Yet on the other hand the government says, 'There is another bill that we want you to debate this week—a bill to give some of the biggest companies in Australia a tax cut. There's a bill that is going to cost $50 billion to the public purse over the next decade so big companies can pay a bit less tax; so that the banks, who are making world-leading record profits, can have about $7 billion extra in their coffers.' The government comes in here says, 'On the one hand we want to take $4 billion away from families, in terms of family tax benefit, and away from supports for people who are seeking work; on the other hand we want to give $7 billion at least to the big four banks, who are making world-leading record profits.'

That should tell you everything that you need to know about the priorities of this government. We in Australia are witnessing a growing gap between the very rich and everyone else. We are seeing unemployment, especially among young people, remain at persistent highs. What does the government do? Instead of saying, let's put in place the kind of nation-building programs that might allow young people to get a job; let's do something about the fact that in many country towns unemployment for young people is norther of 20 per cent; instead of saying let's create jobs the people, what do they do? They say, 'No—we are going to punish young people for not finding the jobs that are not there in the first place.'

So this bill, for example, seeks to reintroduce a waiting period of several weeks before you are able to get unemployment assistance if you find yourself unemployed. The landlord does not care that the reason you have no money is that the government has taken it away. The landlord just wants you to pay the rent. The electricity company just wants you to pay the bill to keep the lights on. They do not care that you are trying to find another job, a job that may not be there because you are in an area of very high unemployment. That is why, in this country up till now, up till this government, up till this bill, we said, 'If you find yourself doing it tough in Australia we will look after you.'

At the moment I can say—I do not think government members appreciate this—that living on unemployment benefits is no easy ride. It is so far below that poverty line that it is actually a barrier to people getting into work. The unemployment benefit at the moment is so low that you do not have that extra money to get a haircut to get ready for the job interview or to buy some nice clothes or to put yourself through a training course. That is why people have been screaming, right across the spectrum from the Greens and welfare organisations right across to business groups, saying that we have to lift the level of unemployment benefit because it is becoming a poverty trap that people might get stuck in and never be able to get out of and get a job because the helping hand is not there. What does the government do? The government says, let's take that hole in the safety net and rip it open even further by making people wait a month to get unemployment benefits in the first place. What are people meant to do during that time? Turn to crime? Do things that are unsavoury in order to pay the rent and pay those electricity bills? That is what this government is asking.

Then it comes along and says, 'We want to add that. We want to take away a big chunk of family tax benefits that are paid to people. Even though it's going to hurt those on the lowest incomes the most, frankly we don't care because we've got to find a way to fund the tax cuts for the big banks. So we're going to do it by taking away money from single parents and other families.' You could not dream this stuff up! When the government did dream this stuff up in 2014, the Senate and the Australian people resoundingly said no.

Many of us hoped when the government got rid of the former Prime Minister and put in a new one that they had heard what the Australian people were saying. But it seems this government has a completely tin ear. If this government thinks the problem is just the front man rather than the policies, then it should come as no surprise why every poll at the moment says this government is on a hiding to nothing. So a bit of free advice for the government: if you want to turn around your appalling standing amongst the Australian people, do not come to parliament and ask us to cut money that is going to families and do not come and ask us to cut money to people who are doing it tough as they try to find a new job so that you can fund a tax cut for the big banks. The Australian people have seen through you. It is why you lost your first Prime Minister. And if you think that repeating the same thing over and over again is going to get you a different result, that is pretty much the clinical definition of insanity.

You need to go back to the drawing board, government, and come up with a fairer way, a way that involves saying to young families, 'You've just had a baby and we know that the best thing that can happen for families is to have as much time as possible at home with their new babies—ideally six months.' What you do not do is what this government has done. There is a small scheme that is in place at moment that allows you to take 18 weeks, and in some workplaces they have been able to negotiate something on top of that—because that scheme was always meant to be a floor not a ceiling—and the government has come along and said, 'If you're in one of those workplaces where you've negotiated the right to spend more than 18 weeks at home with your newborn child, we're going to take money off you'. This is the party that talks about family values. It has the temerity to come in here and attack members from across the political spectrum and say that the kind of progressive Australia that we are advocating for is somehow opposed to traditional values, and yet they say, 'In order to fund a tax cut for Gina Rinehart, would you please—new mum, new dad—pay for it yourself by having less time at home with your kids?' What an outrageous proposition!

The Australian public is rejecting it in droves. The Greens are rejecting it as well, because we know that there are fairer ways to raise money than by taking the axe to the young and the old and the sick and the poor, as this government does day after day after day. And if money is tight in the budget, as the government says, well do not spend $50 billion on a tax cut for big business, do not hand out $7 billion to the banks. It is not going to result in any extra jobs being created; it is just going to result in money going straight into shareholders' pockets. Straight into the pockets of the one per cent.

If we want to raise the money to pay for the services that Australians rightly expect, if we want to make sure in this country that there is child care available that is affordable for everyone who needs it when they need it, if we want to make sure that new parents can spend six months at home with their kids as is the case in many other countries—six months where you get a decent supplement to look after yourself while you are doing that—if we want to make sure there is enough money available so that everyone can go and see the doctor when they get sick without having to fork out a co-payment, or a co-payment by stealth that the government is proposing, out of their own pocket, then let us have a bit of guts and say that perhaps there is money at the moment going to those who quite frankly do not need it and who could look after themselves. Why, for example, does the taxpayer spend about $2 billion every year so that the likes of Gina Rinehart and her associates can get subsidised fuel to put into their trucks on mining sites? Everyone else pays above 38c a litre in tax when they go to the bowser to fill up, but when the likes of Gina Rinehart do it they pay the tax and then they get it back courtesy of the taxpayer. They get to have cheap diesel fuel. No-one else gets that kind of cheap subsidy, certainly not the general population in Australia. Farmers get it. They deserve it. Keep it for farmers. But the likes of Gina Rinehart clearly do not need it. Wind back on that tax break and there is a couple of billion dollars, which means you do not have to take the axe to people who have just had a baby and are wanting to spend time at home with their new baby.

Why don't we ask why it is that the tax system in this country gives billions of dollars in handouts to people who already own their first house to then go and buy their second, third or fourth house? Why are we subsidising people who have already got a house to buy more than one house at the same time as young people are finding it impossible to break into the housing market? Let us get rid of negative gearing and the capital gains tax concessions that say: 'If you're wealthy enough to make you money through shares or property, we'll give you a 50 per cent discount. But if you're a poor sucker who makes their money through working and paying wages on a pay-as-you-go basis and paying your tax like that, you have to pay the full rate.' Let us get rid of that and we free up tens of billions of dollars that can go to education, that can go to paid parental leave, that can go to build renewable energy to make sure that power bills go down. The Australian Industry Group today has said bringing more renewable energy into the system is going to drive down power bills. Let us build some more renewable energy so that we drive down power bills.

If we have the guts to stand up to the very powerful in this country we can find the money we need to pay for the services Australians expect without having to take the axe to the young, the old, the sick and the poor. But it takes guts to do that, while this government has shown nothing but cowardice. This government has shown nothing but a willingness to deliver for the big businesses that fund their campaigns and put them in parliament.

Well, you know what? People in this country have had enough. They can see that this parliament is being run in the interests of a powerful few rather than being run for the good of the many and they have had enough. They have had an absolute gutful. It is astounding and outrageous but probably not surprising that the government still persists with these cuts. What makes it even more reprehensible is that they are trying to hold the parliament hostage by saying: if you do not pass these cuts then we might not put more money into child care and it might affect the National Disability Insurance Scheme. What an outrageous way to behave.

This parliament is not to be held hostage by a government that is itself just doing the bidding of big business. This parliament is here to give voice to the will of the people. And we know that there is a better way of finding the money to fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme or to fund increases to child care. The Greens refuse to be held hostage by this government and the Greens refuse to join in the attack on people who cannot afford to pay while so many people are getting by with so much money courtesy of the government. If the government wants to go away and rethink its approach to raising money for the services of Australians expect, I think it will get a pleasant surprise. I think it would do well in the polls. But, as long as it does not rethink its approach, the Greens will stand up and block these measures in full in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. This bill should be opposed.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Governing is of course about choices, about the choices we make. This debate shows how profound the choices are that face Australia at the moment and how desperately out of touch this government is. On the Labor side of this House, we have made some clear choices. We stand with Australians. We stand with young Australians looking for work, with Australian families, with new mums and expectant mums, with everyone in receipt of family payments to make ends meet. We stand with the kids who will benefit from quality early years education and with their families, with the mums and dads looking to make sure they can fully participate in the workforce. We stand for the Australian compact that the Labor Party has carved out over so many years, but this government is turning its back on this.

This government in this bill is standing for a much smaller Australia and a divided Australia at that. This bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 is the government really writ small. It shows the poverty of the vision of this Prime Minister, a pale imitation of the vision of his predecessor, as we see with so much of this bill seeking to bring back to life elements of that 2014 budget and its contempt for so many Australians who are struggling to get by. So I am very pleased to join my Labor colleagues to rise in opposition the bill that is before the House and in support of the amendments moved by the shadow minister, the member for Jagger Jagger.

This debate that we are having today does not take place in a vacuum. It takes place at a time when inequality in Australia is at a post Great Depression high and the trend is getting worse, sadly. This trend is of course being exacerbated by decisions this government is taking, including the measures that are proposed and contained in the legislation before us now. Again, it comes down to choices. We can choose to take strong action as Labor has done to reverse this trend to inequality or we can continue down this path to exacerbate the gap between the haves and the have-nots in Australian society, recognising, as we do on this side of the House, that this is not just a question of morality; it is also a question of efficiency, knowing as we know now that more unequal societies have much lesser prospects of sustaining economic growth, the sort of economic growth to sustain all of our living standards.

Today, as we continue to debate in this parliament the wages of 700,000 of Australia's lowest paid workers, this side of the House is standing up for them. On the other side of the House, the Prime Minister talks about Labor instead of standing up for 700,000 Australians who are struggling to get by, who deserve a parliament on their side. We are seeing that in a wider context too. I read in TheSydney Morning Herald today an article by Eryk Bagshaw that points out company profits soar as wages fall. We are again seeing a big gap opening up between those Australians who are doing very well—corporate interests and individuals—and too many Australians who are being left behind, left behind in an economy that is not working for them, an economy that is not being managed effectively by this government in their interests or in all of our interests. We see, when we look at the vision of this government for many Australians—the millions of Australians who depend from time to time on payments—in the words of the minister in his second reading speech when he talks about his vision, weasel words.

The Government wants a welfare system that supports the most vulnerable, encourages those capable of work or study to do so, reduces intergenerational welfare dependency, and is sustainable for the future.

These aspirations are not in evidence in the bill before us or in the attitude of the government generally.

I talked about choices at the outset and the choice Labor has made to stand up for Australia's social compact, to stand up for Australians in need at times of need. The government has chosen at this time of record inequality to cut, to rip away valued supports, to cut family tax benefits, to cut paid parental leave, to cruelly attack young people and to cruelly attack migrant pensioners—many of whom I am very proud to represent in this place—and, as the member for Jagajaga said, to take $2.7 billion out of the pockets of Australian families. But of course that is not all. There is more.

We see the linking of the savage cuts to a promise, which is illusory at best, of so-called reform to what the government persists in calling child care. There are a few things which need to be said about this. The first is of course that early education is just that; it is not only child care. The government should recognise this, and that is important for a couple of reasons. As a matter of principle, we on this side of the House recognise that encouraging the employment participation of parents, of mothers and fathers, is a critical goal in the interests of their sense of choice and their fulfilment from participating in the formal workforce, and in the interests of the wider Australian economy. But there are also extraordinary benefits to be gained from quality early education, benefits that we on this side of the House recognise. Perhaps one of the cruellest aspects of this deeply cruel and divisive piece of legislation is the imposition of a very harsh so-called activity test which will remove the opportunity for quality early education from some of the very kids who would benefit from it the most. The government is again turning its back on evidence for its own ideological fixations—a government that is prepared to introduce, in effect, what would be a life sentence of reduced opportunities for young kids.

There are also these questions of process that my colleagues have touched on in this debate so far. The manner in which the provisions in this bill have been put before the parliament is so much worse than just unsatisfactory. It is no way to make laws. It is no way to advance the serious public policy issues that go to debate around child care and early education, on the one hand, and supporting a sustainable but just and generous safety net of payments and programs, on the other. The attempt to effectively blackmail members of this place by linking these changes must be rejected, and it is clearly rejected by Labor members. It is extraordinary that any government would seek to link what they claim to be significant improvements—at the very least, ending uncertainty when it comes to child care and early education support—to cuts to the NDIS and cuts to family payments.

So I call on members opposite to think about the legislation that is before us and to have regard to the amendment moved by the member for Jagajaga. I call on members opposite to end this support for cruel, unnecessary cuts that will deepen inequality in Australia, cuts that will hurt individuals and families, cuts that will damage our social fabric and, indeed, our economic prospects more generally. I also call on them to end this short-sighted view of child care and early learning—in particular, to enable Indigenous kids, such as those who attend Bubup Wilam, the Aboriginal children and family centre in my electorate of Scullin, and other vulnerable kids in regional Australia the opportunity to access the early learning that is so important as a foundation for their further education and their life prospects more generally.

There is so much in this bill that needs to be talked about in this place and in the community. Time, unfortunately, does not allow me or any other member to go through the full litany of horrors it contains, but there are a few matters that I drew on earlier that need to be expanded on a little bit further.

I would like to start with young people, because in this bill the government is saying that it expects young Australians who are looking for work to live on nothing for five weeks. The logic of the Commission of Audit lives on, even though its formal report has been dismissed. And it is a cruel logic, no matter how long the waiting period is, to expect people to live on fresh air.

But the government's cruelty to young Australians does not end there. There will be a cut of $48 a week for 22- to 24-year-old jobseekers, who are being pulled off Newstart and onto youth allowance, a saving for its own sake that is heedless of the impact on these young people's lives. If we step back and look at the wider context, youth unemployment is at unacceptable levels, particularly in some regional communities and in areas of our major cities, including some suburbs in Melbourne's north, but this is a government that has no plan to invest in these young people's skills and no plan for jobs—no plan for jobs. Indeed, we have had much discussion about the government's casual and contemptuous attitude to the wage rates of many young people, in the retail sector in particular.

I mentioned earlier that I am very proud to represent a culturally and linguistically diverse area, including many pensioners who were born overseas and who came to Australia, worked hard all their lives and have made an incredible contribution to Australian life and who are confused, bemused, hurt and horrified by the proposal that, after only six weeks away from Australia—they may be visiting friends or relatives, perhaps for the last time, to say goodbye—they will have their pension rate reduced. That is after only six weeks. These are people who are often quite old, travelling quite some distance. We on this side of the House say that these pensioners are not second-class citizens. We on the Labor side of this House will stand up for them, as we would for anyone else. We recognise their contribution and we will not stand for this form of cruel discrimination, particularly when it sits, again, in a wider context of further cuts to small but important payments to pensioners. There is also the cut to the energy supplement, a big issue for the pensioners I represent as well as for Newstart recipients.

The previous speaker, the member for Melbourne, touched on paid parental leave. What a sad journey this government has had in its treatment of working families and, in particular, working mothers. The government, which called working mothers 'double dippers', amongst other unfair epithets, is continuing down its path of attacking rights at work and attacking the capacity of mums and dads to spend critical time with their children. In doing so, they are undermining the bargaining that many people have undertaken in good faith, in which they made trade-offs to prioritise time with young children. This proposition before us will put in place perverse incentives for employers as well.

The family payment cuts in this bill deserve serious attention as well. But let me say this: we are talking about proposals that would affect 1½ million families—1½ million families would be worse off should the provisions in this bill be adopted. Perhaps the worst aspect of this rotten legislation goes to its treatment of early years. Linking these provisions to unfair and unrelated cuts is bad in both process and in substance. Let me be very clear about this: in the Labor Party we do not regard investment in child care and early learning as something which should be contingent on these sorts of savings. We reject the logic—if it can be called logic—that is advanced in support of this bill. It is a curious way, to put the matter most generously, to seek to exhume those zombie measures from the 2014 budget and to add some new nasties. It is so deeply cynical.

What sort of government would link funds for child care and for early years with family payment cuts? What sort government would seek to impose such adverse consequences on vulnerable young people—Aboriginal children and other children who have not started life with the advantages that many others do? What sort of government would exclude those people who, the evidence tells us, will benefit most from quality early years from those opportunities? We have before us an audacious attempt to further damage Australia's social compact, to rip up the ties that seek to unite Australians—those ties which recognise our shared interest and our shared concerns in holding one another together. Labor will always stand against these cruel cuts and stand up for the Australians who depend on having a government on their side.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the omnibus saving bill and to support the amendment moved by the member for Jagajaga. When the history of the Abbott and Turnbull governments is written, their record will be one of unceasing attacks on those Australians who have the lowest incomes. Whenever this government feels that it is losing control of the agenda, it makes a show of targeting people on welfare. It operates on the motto, 'When in trouble, attacked the poor'. Consider the Centrelink debacle, the refusal to stand up for penalty rates, the pension changes that took place in January and the mothership of cruelty under this government—the 2014 budget. The bill before us is the latest example. It is an attempt to sneak through many of the unfair changes from the 2014 budget, changes that were not only rejected by Australians overwhelmingly but changes that cost Tony Abbott the prime ministership.

The impact of the cuts and punitive measures in this bill would be felt right across the country, including in my electorate of Grayndler. Young people, new parents, low- and middle-income families, pensioners and elderly migrants—these are the people who will pay the price for the government's economic policies. Those opposite know that there is a human cost to these cuts, but it is a cost they wilfully ignore. They would rather give big businesses a $50 billion tax cut than help single mothers keep food on the table. They would rather withhold financial support for unemployed young people than crack down on big corporate tax evaders. And if anyone has the courage to complain, as has happened to people in my electorate of Grayndler, then government vilifies them and attacks them. No wonder this government is in such trouble. No wonder the member for Warringah is stalking the Prime Minister.

Labor will never turn our backs on vulnerable people. For us, it is a fundamental principle that it is the role of government to maintain a fair social safety net. You judge a society not by how it looks after its billionaires, but by how it looks after its battlers. We also believe as an article of faith that the government owes basic respect to all of our citizens, wherever they live, however they vote and whatever their bank balance.

This bill targets families. It contains cuts to family tax benefits—cuts that will leave a typical family on $60,000 around $750 a year worse off. One and a half million families will be worse off through the loss off their end-of-year supplements. That is $726 a year per child each year for Family Tax Benefits Part A and $354 per family each for Family Tax Benefit Part B. On top of that, single-parent families will lose their Family Tax Benefit Part B entirely when their youngest child turns 16. A single-parent family on $60,000 with a 17-year-old child in high school will be around $3,300 a year worse off. Just think about that: a family on $60,000 a year being $3,300 worse off. Overall the cuts in this measure would affect at least 4000 families in my electorate of Grayndler.

This bill targets parents. It has in it cuts to paid parental leave. Some 70,000 new mums with a median income of $62,000 would be $5,600 worse off on average. As an example, a retail worker who gets eight weeks' paid leave from her employer will only have access to 12 weeks from the government instead of 18 weeks. This new mother would have 20 weeks of paid leave at home instead of 26 weeks, a loss of some $4,030 in support.

This bill targets pensioners, scrapping the energy supplement—a billion-dollar cut to pensioners, people with disability, carers and Newstart recipients. Scrapping the energy supplement to new pensioners will be a cut of $14.10 per fortnight to single pensioners, or some $365 a year. Pensioner couples will be $21.20 a fortnight worse off, or around $550 a year worse off. This bill also targets young people, with a five-week wait for Newstart, forcing young people under 25 to live off absolutely nothing for five weeks before they can access income support. How are these people supposed to afford food? How are they supposed to afford shelter? How are they supposed to survive during that period? The government does not have an answer to that. These are draconian measures put up by a government that simply does not understand that not everyone has a rich mum and dad to look after them. A lot of people in those circumstances are out there surviving by themselves and to cut them off from all income is just extraordinary.

There are cuts to young people between the ages of 22 and 24 by pushing them onto a lower youth allowance—a cut of around $48 a week, or almost 2½ thousand dollars a year. How are they supposed to travel to search for work or a job interview with no income? Those opposite have no answers. If the government were serious about the welfare of young unemployed people, it would invest in them—invest in their education and invest in their training to make them job-ready. It would embrace its responsibility to act in a positive manner to help people find their way into work so they can become productive members of the community. This would be good not just for the individuals but for the economy because the earlier you intervene to provide that support the sooner people will be earning income, contributing tax and boosting the national economy, but, instead, the government has a punitive approach, a narrow-minded approach, a short-sighted approach and an ineffective approach. Those opposite say that people can just survive by getting money off their parents. They just do not get it. This is the nation of the fair go and we must simply not allow the accidental circumstances of a young person's birth to prevent them from achieving their potential.

The bill also targets migrant pensioners. It cuts the pensions of around 190,000 migrant pensioners by limiting the amount of time they can spend overseas and still get their full pension, from 26 weeks to six weeks. Across my electorate in places like Marrickville, where I live, there are a lot of Greeks who came here post the Second World War, have worked their whole life and go back to see relatives. In Leichhardt and Haberfield, you have the Italian community. In Petersham you have the Portuguese community. In Ashfield is the Chinese community. In all of those areas there are substantial numbers of pensioners from migrant backgrounds. They are proud Australian citizens, but they still honour the heritage of their birth. They help care for loved ones, visit relatives and maintain cultural ties.

The government's lack of care for low-income earners is made worse by its disturbing response to criticism. Earlier this year, I did a press conference in my electorate. I stood up with two people who were impacted by the government's Centrelink debacle, where they sent out robo-letters to people threatening them with action unless they paid money back. In many cases it was just wrong. There were people like Tony Barbar in my electorate who was diagnosed with cancer in 2010. He went on sick leave from his employment while he was receiving chemotherapy. He survived, and in January 2011 he went back to work. He is an honest young man in his twenties who contracted cancer and dealt with it, and as soon as he could he went back to work because that is the ethic in his family. In the lead-up to Christmas he received a debt letter from Centrelink informing him that he owed over 4½ thousand dollars. After these issues were raised publicly, the truth is that the government reduced his debt to just $400 from the 4½ thousand dollars.

Another constituent of mine is Curtis Dickson from Leichhardt. He received Austudy while he was at university from 2007 to 2012. In the lead-up to Christmas, Curtis received notice that Centrelink believed he had been incorrectly reporting his earnings during the period and he needed to repay $750. That is simply not true. Now his debt has been reduced to zero. He had no debt whatsoever, and yet the response of the government was for the staff of Minister Christian Porter to go up to the gallery here and brief out wrongly that Curtis had voluntarily contacted Centrelink and that he did not receive a debt letter or a notice. They just lied about it. They lied about his personal details. They broke common decency, if not the law—and perhaps the law—by releasing those details. They released a photo to The Australian newspaper, an old Facebook photo, of him next to a Labor candidate in a state election, thereby suggesting somehow that he was unworthy because, at one stage, he may have handed out material, apparently, for a Labor candidate in a state election. They attacked his character in the most vicious way. They bullied and victimised people because they had the courage to stand up over the injustice that this government was seeking to repair.

The fact is that the opposition does believe there is a need for budget repair. Under this government the debt, in terms of the budget deficit, has tripled. Net debt has climbed substantially. That is why the opposition has put forward alternative savings measures: changes to the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing, and a genuine crackdown on tax evasion. We are prepared to be constructive—we have shown that with previous legislation. What we are not prepared to do is to simply sit back and be silent while these changes that target vulnerable people go through. What we are not prepared to do is to walk away from the principle that a nation is only as good as the way in which it treats its most vulnerable citizens.

We must do better. We can do better than this mean-spirited legislation which shows that they did not get the lessons of 2014. That is why they are being rejected by the Australian people. The penalty rates changes are only the latest in the attack on people that we see represented by this legislation. The bill is flawed and should be rejected.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to say I get a sense of deja vu debating this bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017, because we have seen all of this before. In 2014, despite the then Abbott government going to the election and clearly saying: 'We're not going to do anything drastic; we're not going to hurt families; we're not going to attack vulnerable people,' we then got the 2014 budget. It was aimed squarely at hurting middle Australia, hurting families, hurting young workers—indeed, at trying to destroy our Medicare system.

At that time, it took strong opposition from the Labor opposition to stop those cuts. We were successful in communicating to the Australian people and indeed to the parliament why these cuts were so unfair, why these cuts were ripping the fabric of our society apart and why these cuts would hurt ordinary Australians right around this country. We had a significant fight on our hands then, but we won that fight. Yet now, instead of the government accepting that these unpopular measures were not palatable and not fair and not right for this country, we are here again debating these unfair measures. And there are so many unfair measures. I am not sure if the government thought, 'If we package it all up in one bill it will not seem as bad,' but of course our job as the opposition will be to pick apart the many unfair measures in this bill and fight against them.

I have to say: what did not happen in 2014 but is happening now is even more disgraceful, and that is that the government is saying: 'We're not going to do any childcare reform unless you vote for cuts to family payments. We're not going to assist families with the cost of child care unless you cut paid parental leave.' This is a ransom demand—there is no other way to describe it. But it gets worse. The government not only said, 'We won't assist families with child care unless this parliament votes for unfair reforms,' they then threatened the NDIS.

I was flabbergasted when I saw the Minister for Social Services and the Treasurer get up and say: 'If the parliament will not vote for these changes, the NDIS will get necked.' That was outrageous. And it tore up the bipartisan agreement on the NDIS. I was here during the creation of the NDIS and I have to say that the LNP was not overly enthusiastic about it—there were often comments about why it would not work—but they were dragged to it, kicking and screaming, and they said it was bipartisan. Now the Treasurer has put fear into so many families with a disability—families that have been waiting patiently for the rollout of the NDIS to come to their communities—by saying: 'If the parliament does not pass these unfair measures then we can't guarantee the NDIS.' That was an outrageous, unfair and really, really disgraceful act by this Treasurer. It shows that perhaps he does not have the temperament to negotiate on and deliver good policy through on-the-ground consultation and by working with this parliament. But that is where we now find ourselves. And, as I said, some of the very unfair measures in this bill date back to 2014.

We all remember, though, on Mother's Day in 2015, when the then Treasurer got up and said, 'By the way, those that are taking two lots of paid parental leave—the employer paid parental leave and also the workplace parental leave—are ripping off the system. They are double dippers.' That was the most insulting thing that Treasurer Hockey could have said to these mothers. I happened to be sitting with my mothers group three days after that outrageous statement was made, and those mothers were concerned and disappointed at—indeed, insulted by—that comment. Those mothers had been cobbling together their employer paid parental leave with the government's paid parental leave so that they could have some quality time with their young children. And this government said they were double dippers—that they were somehow gypping the system. Well, that was absolutely outrageous. The government paid parental leave was always designed either to be a safety net for those who did not receive paid parental leave or to complement the employer-paid parental leave, to extend that time a mother or a father could have with their child.

In my role as shadow minister for defence personnel we now have this measure back in front of us. Of course, some of those so-called double-dippers that the coalition likes to label are those women and men serving in our Defence Force. Serving in the Defence Force is not an ordinary job. There are long periods away from home, and having time off to have a child is even more difficult. Only 15.4 per cent of our Defence Force is made up of women, and the government is now saying, 'Those paid parental leave conditions that you may set your heart on and worked around to ensure that there were fewer barriers for you to have a child have now been ripped away.' Our Defence Force women, our policewomen and women in non-traditional areas of work which have not necessarily been women's work will feel the brunt of this cut and it will make things more difficult for them.

Those on the other side of the House should listen to the evidence that was presented during the Senate inquiries on this topic. The distress being caused to so many by having this paid parental leave ripped away from them, meaning that they will spent less time with their children, is an absolute disgrace. Under these changes, around 70,000 mums with a median income of $62,000 will be $5,600 worse off. But it is not that dollar figure; it is about the time spent with a newborn baby, that time to bond, that time to not have to worry about the bills or to worry about going back to work—the ability to actually spend that quality time. But this government has said, 'No; you are not going to have that.' It really is quite bizarre, considering that this policy that the government have decided to go with is in stark contrast to the policy they took to the 2013 election with. The policy they took to the 2013 election was, 'We'll give six months full pay,' and now they turn around and say, 'Actually, we're going to rip away what you already have.' This shows that this government are not serious about supporting new mums.

But, of course, it is not just new mums that this government is not serious about supporting; it is families as well. As I said at the beginning, the government has said, 'We will not give you any relief with your childcare arrangements if you don't take a cut to family payments.' In this bill, we will see families losing their FTBA supplements. They will be $200 worse off per child. And families receiving FTBB will lose $350 a year. These are significant cuts. It may be difficult for the government to fathom that these family cuts make a difference. They add up for families that are struggling to make ends meet. A typical family with two children on a single income of $60,000 will lose about $750 a year. The cuts that this government has already made, including the schoolkids bonus, are hurting families, and these cuts will only make it worse.

But, of course, it is not just families that are in the sights of this government; young people are also being affected. I would particularly like to draw people's attention to the government making young people live on nothing for five weeks. This is a very, very harsh measure for those jobseekers who will not get assistance and will be made to wait for five weeks. But what do we hear from those opposite? Often we hear that young people should just go and get a good job. That is also the government's solution to getting into the housing market.

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Get rich parents.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, get some rich parents and go find a good job. Of course, it is not that easy for many young people. Many parents and young people have come to me asking, 'But where are the jobs? Where does my young son or daughter go to get a job?' What we have seen from this government is reckless abandonment when it comes to job creation in this country and when it comes to the training of young people. Indeed, all the government wants to do is cut, cut, cut. Well, my message to this government is: there are a lot of people out there who are working hard who do not have rich parents and cannot just go and get a better job, and it is incumbent on us to support them.

Jobseekers often find it very difficult to get into the job market. One of the precursors to getting into the job market is training, but there are also things like having stable accommodation and actually having clothes that you can go to an interview in. These are some of the precursors to be able to get a job. By saying, 'We will cut you off for five weeks and you will not have an income,' could potentially start that young person on a spiral. They might not be able to afford rent, they might not be able to afford some clothes to wear to an interview and they might not be able to pay for the petrol or the bus ticket to get to that interview for a job. This government is ignoring all the research that talks about prevention and putting the building blocks in place to support young people to get a job. Instead, it is ripping that support out.

But it is not just young people, it is not just families and it is not just new mums; it is pensioners as well. In the 2014 budget we saw the most grievous attack on pensioners. I actually thought pensioners may be one group that the Liberal-National government would not touch. But no, no, no, no—they decided that they would go after pensioners as well. Firstly, we saw the potential cut of $80 a week. The Labor Party stood up against that cut and we were able to defeat it. Of course, they then brought in the unfair assets test. That is reverberating through my electorate. I have been inundated with people who have contacted me saying that they are finding it really difficult with these cuts and that they are left with a lot less disposable income. Pensioners are struggling out there, but, instead of recognising that, this government has included more cuts to the pension in this bill. Indeed, included in the cuts is a measure where a pensioner born overseas will have their rate of pension reduced if they are overseas for more than six weeks. This is unfairly punishing pensioners who choose to spend a period of time overseas to visit family or people they are connected to. In addition to that, the government wants to remove the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payments. These are small payments that go some way to supporting people on income support to start studying.

The government really are focused on attacking hardworking middle-income Australians, families and vulnerable Australians. At the same time as saying, 'The budget cannot afford these payments,' they are planning massive tax cuts to big business in this country. If we can afford $50 billion worth of tax cuts in this country, surely we can afford to support our most vulnerable but also to support middle-income families, who are finding it more and more difficult to make ends meet. Surely we can find it in ourselves to support new mums and dads to have extra time off work instead of demonising them and labelling them as double dippers and rorters. Surely we can find it in our hearts to support young people trying to find a job. This is what a decent country does. It supports its middle-income and vulnerable citizens to make ends meet and have a go. The bill before us is a reheated version of the 2014 budget, which was squarely rejected by the Australian people.

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017. I strongly oppose the bill on behalf of the residents that I represent in this place and strongly support the second reading amendment moved by the shadow minister and member for Jagajaga. If there was ever a definition of what separates the current government from the Labor opposition, this bill is it. We know this government is ideologically obsessed with attacking and undermining the national social safety net, and this bill demonstrates that again and again with its long list of cuts.

Today, in my address to the parliament, I will be focusing on a number of critical measures that this government deems acceptable to reduce the benefits of people who need and support child care, who require paid parental leave and who receive family tax benefit, as well as focusing on the attacks on pensioners and young people. We know that many Australians are struggling to make ends meet, and this bill will make it harder for everyday Australians to make ends meet because it rips money out of the pockets of some of our most vulnerable. The sheer contempt that is being shown to Australian families, soon-to-be parents, pensioners, people living with a disability, jobseekers and young people makes for quite a long rap sheet.

It is interesting that the government has ceased even debating this bill. The government is refusing to put up speakers. Looking at the speakers list yesterday, I noted it was very thin but also very thin when it came to marginal seat holders, who did not want to get up and defend these cuts. Anyone who represents middle Australia or who represents working people in this parliament—and there are people on that side, particularly in the National Party, who represent working people—is going to have a very hard sell with some of these most draconian measures, which previous speakers on this side of the parliament have listed in the debate today.

I want to be crystal clear about what this bill is about and what it will mean for families in my electorate of Oxley. It contains cuts to families by removing family tax benefits, cuts to paid parental leave for parents, cuts to pensioners, people with a disability, carers and Newstart recipients, cuts in support to jobseekers, cuts to young people by pushing them onto the lower youth allowance, cuts to the pensioner education supplement and education entry payment, and, sadly, cuts to the pension for migrant pensioners who travel overseas. In my electorate of Oxley, I have a wonderful multicultural mix of families who call the south-west of Brisbane home—families from right across the globe who reside and live in the suburbs in the seat of Oxley. Many of them come from Vietnam and I have met with a number of pensioners who regularly travel home to see family and to support family. These measures will have a serious impact on many of my residents.

But the saddest thing, when the parliament was sitting last week, was to consider that this government thinks it is okay to pit vulnerable Australians against each other—'You can have support for the NDIS or you can have support for child care. You can support family tax cuts or you can support vulnerable people.' This logic is not the Australian way.

I conducted a mobile office in my electorate on the weekend before last, at the shopping centre at Forest Lake, and a sole parent came to me with a long list of issues. She asked me why the parliament continually focuses on cuts to the people who can least afford it. Just once, I would like this parliament to have a conversation about multinational companies not paying their fair share of tax. Just once, I would like a proper discussion about those at the top end of the scale perhaps paying a little more. Just once, I would like a discussion about how we can make large corporations become better corporate citizens. But, since I have served in this parliament, all we have heard is toxic rhetoric about lifters and leaners and double dippers—and on it goes. I was elected in 2016, but who can forget that fantastic image of then Treasurer Hockey and the finance minister, Senator Cormann, chomping down cigars, proud of their efforts. Then on budget night the Treasurer was dancing to the Best Night of My Lifewhen he walked into this parliament to deliver a cruel budget. We later found out that that had a very devastating political impact on the government. There is a reason why so many government members of parliament lost their seats at the last election. The results have spoken for themselves in communities right across Australia. The Australian way is not to cut the safety net out from those who need it; the Australian way is to give a helping hand to those who need it.

We know from reading this legislation that the government's proposed childcare changes will leave one in three families worse off—not better off but worse off. Some 330,000 families will be worse off and a further 126,000 will be no better off, so almost half a million families will be worse off or no better off. What do we get from it? We get cuts to Australian families. We get a whole lot of fresh news from this government. In addition to these savings or cuts—and the government pretends that they are not cuts—we are seeing 700,000 Australians facing cuts to their wages. It is interesting to note that when the decision came down last week the government did not focus on those people. They were of course focusing on themselves. The warfare inside the Liberal Party led to the front page of The Daily Telegraph saying 'Divided Liberals are losing faith as senior MPs prepare for opposition'.

We know that these cuts will mean 700,000 Australians will lose up to $77 per week. That might not be a lot for the Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services, who is sitting at the table, or the member for Canning, who is in the chamber today, but it means a lot to residents in my community. It means a lot to those people. Some may say it is deplorable, but I would say it is beyond the pale. We on this side understand that we should not be cutting wages and conditions and, more importantly, we should not be cutting family payments.

We heard debate in the chamber today about childcare changes. When these reforms were brought into line in 2016 John Cherry, the CEO of the largest childcare provider, Goodstart Early Learning, said that that decision alone would hurt families. He said:

We're extremely disappointed that our families will need to wait another year for the Government to deliver on its promise to make child care more affordable.

They have sat on their hands for four years. They have sat on their hands. They have brought a package into this parliament and expect up to one million families will be worse off. Jo Briskey from The Parenthood summed it up when she said that working families had been let down by the government. She said:

This budget is an absolute disappointment for families who can't afford to wait any longer for the Government to take action on child care affordability and accessibility.

We know that there are a whole range of families that are going to miss out. When it comes to paid parental leave we know that, if the government were to have its way, around 70,000 new mums with a median income of $62,000 would be $5,600 worse off. And on it goes. In my electorate of Oxley 14,334 families receive family tax benefit A. Many of them will be worse off as a result of these changes this parliament is debating today. This is in addition to the 11,477 families who will need $354 as a result of the abolition of family tax benefit part B end-of-year supplement.

There have been all of these cuts and changes and a massive horror start to the year. We know that when it comes to social security payments this government cannot be trusted. Look at the robo-debt debacle. Yesterday I was in touch with a resident from Durack in my electorate. A woman called Maree began her horror nightmare on 21 November last year. This woman is on a disability support pension. She has not worked since 2006. She suffers from Parkinson's. She was given a debt of thousands of dollars. She is a wonderful model citizen. She was horrified at this but realised that there had been a terrible mistake. She then contacted Centrelink and demanded a review. The review said that she still owed the money. She knew that she did not owe any money. She knew that so she demanded a second review. Finally, yesterday she was advised that in fact she owed nothing—nothing at all.

What about the trauma, suffering and difficulty she went through? Has anyone from the government—a minister; the senior minister, who has run a million miles; or the Prime Minister, who is in a witness protection scheme at the moment—stood up and said sorry? Absolutely not. Time and time again we see this victim blame culture inside the government. It is not, 'We're here to help you. We'll look after you,' but, 'Prove your innocence.' That is not the Australian way.

We know that pensioners and young people are also in the government's firing line. While the government has been predominantly worried about the family payments, it is scrapping the energy supplement—a $1 billion cut to pensioners, people with disability, carers and Newstart recipients. We just heard from the member for Kingston about the impact a five-week wait for Newstart will have. The government is forcing people to live on nothing for five weeks before they access income support. I challenge members of the government to come with me to suburbs in my electorate and look people in the face and describe the impact that this is going to have on them. I have heard horror stories from my local residents, who are fearful. They want to work.

We hear a lot of talk about jobs and growth. We hear a lot of talk and slogans from the government. But we know budget measures are all about priorities. Today in The Sydney Morning Herald we saw, 'Company profits soar as wages fall'. Company profits have surged to record highs at the same time as wages have suffered their sharpest decline in eight years. We are seeing income inequality at a 75-year high, with wages growth at a historic low and underemployment at record highs. This is not the Australian way. It is certainly not the fair go that our country has been built on.

I understand the government's priority is to look after those who can look after themselves—corporations. We have heard stories about investments in multinational companies. That is its No. 1 priority. The Prime Minister today confirmed that he of course supports the cut of $77 to the wages of 10,500 retail, accommodation and hospitality workers in the electorate of Oxley. This government thinks it is okay to rip their weekly salary apart. I do not support that. This opposition under Bill Shorten will never support a reduction in working people's wages. But, more importantly, we cannot and will not support these amendments and changes being put forward by a government that is completely out of touch and that has lost its way. We know that the Australian community deserve much, much better than they are getting from this current government.

Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017. This bill is a callous attack on ordinary Australians. It attacks families, pensioners, jobseekers, people with disability and new mothers, and it demonstrates so very clearly how out of touch the government are with the day-to-day lives and concerns of Australians. Even more insidious is the disgusting game the government are playing with the NDIS. It is a clear measure of how ruthless this government are when they say to the parliament, 'Pass these cruel cuts or we can't fund the NDIS.' It is disgusting that the government are using the NDIS as a political pawn. They have disgraced themselves, and people with disability and the community are rightly outraged that they are threatening the NDIS.

Since their very first budget the coalition have tried to impose cruel cuts on Australian families, motivated by a warped conservative world view. It is ironic that the coalition always claim they are the party of family values. But this claim is a blatant mistruth as over the last 3½ years they have tried to rip away family support and make life much harder for families. It is the height of hypocrisy to attach yourself to 'family values' when you are blatantly attempting to make the day-to-day lives of families harder.

This bill contains massive cuts across the board. They include: cuts to family tax benefits; cuts to paid parental leave; scrapping the energy supplement; introducing a five-week wait for Newstart; and cutting the rate of support for young people between the ages of 22 and 24. This bill introduces $2.7 billion worth of cuts to family payments to pay for a $1.6 billion childcare package. Overall, the bill cuts a massive $5½ billion from the household budgets of low-income Australians. So, at the same time it is giving a gigantic $50 billion tax cut to big business, the Turnbull government is cutting support for hardworking families.

I particularly want to examine the impacts these cuts will have on family payments. The government has admitted that the cuts to family payments will leave 1.5 million Australian families worse off. Let's just consider that for a moment. The government is freely admitting that it is going to make life harder for 1½ million families. Let's also consider the practical impacts of the cuts. An average family with two children and a single income of $60,000 will lose around $750 a year. A couple on $75,000 a year with one child will lose over $1,000 per year. These are very significant amounts of money for working families. The cuts will put enormous pressure on already stretched household budgets in an economic environment of very low wage growth and rising unemployment. Australian families are already doing it tough, and these cuts to vital family support are wrong.

There may not be many constituents of the Prime Minister in Wentworth who access these family payments, but families in the Hunter and Central Coast regions which I represent certainly do. Many families in the member for Robertson's electorate to my south and the member for Lyne's electorate to my north who access these payments will be much worse off. The government are happy to make life harder for families at the same time as making life much easier for their corporate mates. That is the great difference between the Labor Party and the Liberals and Nationals. We want to make life fairer and better for people; they seem to want to make it much harder.

The changes in this bill to Labor's paid parental leave scheme also constitute an attack on working families, and 70,000 new mothers will be worse off each year. The women affected are our teachers, nurses, police, retail workers and hospitality workers. These are not double dippers or fraudsters as the government arrogantly claims. They are the women who make our economy and society function. The irony of cutting entitlements that many members of the government have accessed is not lost on many. The whole point of Labor's scheme was for women who already had access to employer funded leave to also be able to access the government scheme. This is in line with the World Health Organization's advice that new mothers should have 26 weeks off work to bond with their newborn, breastfeed and recover from the birth. This was in fact a recommendation of the Productivity Commission, and the explanatory memorandum that accompanied Labor's paid parental leave scheme made it very clear that it was intending to work in conjunction with employer funded schemes.

The debate around this aspect of the bill by the government has been appalling for two reasons. Firstly, they have tried to say that only high-paid public servants in Canberra would lose entitlements, yet again attacking the public servants of this nation. Secondly, they have failed to recognise that the employer related benefits have been won at a cost to ordinary working mums and dads. It has usually been a pay rise that they have given up. It has usually been a condition that they have given away or an extension of the working day that has led to a trade-off for this paid parental leave scheme. So what they are doing here is saying to the mums who work at Coles and Woolies at Cardiff or at Lake Munmorah, 'We're going to take away an entitlement that you sacrificed a wage raise for.' It is disgusting. It attacks nurses, retail workers and emergency service personnel in my electorate. I oppose it completely.

This bill also attacks pensioners by cutting the energy supplement for new pension recipients. This measure will cut $365 from a single pensioner and $550 from a pensioner couple. The government is, in fact, creating a two-tiered pension system. This is incredibly ill-thought-out and mischievous. It says to the people who will access the pension from September this year that they are not worthy of the current rate. It creates a second class of pensioners, and we should not forget that the annual pension rate is already very modest. It again demonstrates the warped priorities of this conservative government.

Some of the savings from this bill, if it is successful, will be directed to the government's childcare package. Being the father of two kids who are in childcare, childcare is an issue that I am passionate about. I know how important access to quality childcare is. And, of course, the Labor Party supports additional investment in childcare. However, we have serious concerns about the government's proposals. Detailed analysis by the ANU has identified that one in three families will be worse off and over 71,000 families with an income below $65,000 will be worse off. Let me repeat that, because the government has attempted to portray its childcare reforms as somehow taking childcare assistance off wealthy families and providing it to low-income families. Yet, 71,000 Australian families with an income below $65,000 will be worse off.

The government is also trying to implement a complicated new activity test that will leave 150,000 families worse off. These changes include removing the current entitlement children have to access two days subsidised early education per week. It halves access to early education from 24 to 12 hours per week and it will result in many children being pushed out of early education altogether if they have a parent that is not working and a family income over $65,000.

Early education is of fundamental importance to a child's development. Studies have shown that the first five years of a child's life are the most critical to their overall welfare and development. If this government was serious about enhancing and improving childcare, it would not be making these changes. I am in awe of the work that early education childcare workers do every day. It is a great profession. They do great work under very gruelling circumstances for low pay—pay that, in my personal view, should be increased, and deserves to be increased. For that profession and for that service to be attacked by this government is appalling.

This bill also attacks young Australians. The government will make young Australians wait five weeks before accessing Centrelink payments if they are unemployed. Let's be clear what this means: these young people will have absolutely nothing to live on for five weeks. We are not America. Australia is not a country with a philosophy of 'you're on your own', but this is exactly what the government want. They are saying to young people: 'If you happen to have the misfortune of losing your job, you have to wait five weeks for any government assistance.' This, yet again, demonstrates that the government are completely out of touch. That might be okay if you can rely on the bank of mum and dad, which seems to be the government's policy prescription for every problem confronting this country. If you cannot afford a house, rely on the bank of mum and dad. If you find yourself out of work, rely on the bank of mum and dad. That is fine if you happen to be lucky enough to have been born to a wealthy family. Most families have enough trouble making ends meet for themselves let alone trying to support an unemployed young person. So this, yet again, shows the cruel and callous nature of the government.

This is amplified when you look at the cut that they want to impose on 22- to 24-year-olds by moving them from Newstart on to youth allowance. This involves a $48 weekly cut. For some Liberals, $48 a week might not seem much, but for a young person in Gateshead, Swansea, San Remo or Windale on an already small, fixed income, it is a huge amount. Often, it is the difference between eating and not eating. It is the difference between paying the electricity bill and having the lights turn off. It is a cruel cut. It is unnecessary when you look at the warped priorities of the government. It will stain their soul forever. Labor will stand up for young Australians against these draconian and severe proposals.

Finally, I want to address the shameful conduct of the government in linking cuts from this bill to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This is probably the worst aspect of this entire debate. For the Treasurer and the Minister for Social Services to excitedly and proudly announce that the cuts of the omnibus bill will help fund the NDIS is appalling. This is gutter politics at its worst, pitting pensioners and job seekers against people with a disability. And it has been called out as such by disability advocates. Champion Paralympian Kurt Fearnley proudly hails from the Hunter region. Kurt is an inspiration and has been a dedicated campaigner for people with disability and for the NDIS for many years. In fact, I first met Kurt in 2013 when he attended the launch of the NDIS pilot project in the Hunter Valley. It was one of the first pilot projects for the great NDIS scheme. For him to call out the naked political cynicism of the government demonstrates how low they have sunk. I really hope that the Treasurer and the minister heard his response to their sick stunt. Kurt said the government should stop using the NDIS as a political football and he wished they would fight for the NDIS as much as they fight for the $50 billion company tax cut. I urge the ministers to meet with Kurt and discuss this.

Funding for the NDIS is not dependent on these obscene cuts to our social security system. Myself, my colleagues and all decent people are rightly opposed to the obscenity this government is trying to perpetuate through this bill. Politics is willing. Politics is, by its nature, a battle over ideas. But for the Treasurer, a punitive contender for the leadership of the Liberal Party when the current Prime Minister is turfed out by his own party room, to use disabled Australians as some sort of human shield—saying, 'Pass my cuts or disabled Australians get it in the neck'—shows what an appalling creature the Treasurer is. This is a man content to bring a lump of coal into this place as a stunt, doing a gross disservice to coal workers in my electorate and in other electorates, cheapening a very significant energy debate into a game of stunts. For him to then hold disabled Australians hostage through this political tactic demonstrates the character of this individual—a man who, it should be said, tried to prevent the family of a dead asylum seeker from attending a funeral. This is the calibre of the Treasurer of this country.

In conclusion, the omnibus savings bill represents an attack on the living standards of millions of Australians. With devastating clarity it reveals the radical right-wing agenda that the government is pursuing. This government is proudly cutting payments to low- and middle-income families, pensioners, job seekers and young Australians at the same time as prosecuting a $50 billion handout to the big end of town—a $50 billion handout where, I might add, the main recipients will be overseas investors and the US government, which will receive $8 billion of the $48 billion.

If you ask my constituents whether they think the government should be supporting families and funding the NDIS or giving a tax cut to the big four banks, I know what the answer will be. That is why Labor is opposing this bill. We can improve child care in this country without attacking families, pensioners, unemployed young people and the disabled. This bill is fundamentally unfair, and I am proud to join my Labor colleagues in opposing it and in doing so standing up for the millions of ordinary, decent Australians in this country.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017. It is noticeable how few government members of parliament have come into the chamber to debate this bill. Indeed, none of them came in today and only a handful came yesterday. This bill should be opposed, as my colleagues have quite rightly pointed out. Government members have not come into the chamber to debate the bill because they know that it is indefensible. They know that when they go back out to their communities and tell the people they represent that this legislation went through the parliament with their support, the people they represent will be very unhappy with them—and rightly so. As many of my colleagues have pointed out, this bill hurts and hits some of Australia's most vulnerable people very, very hard. Nothing better contrasts the stark difference in values between the Turnbull government and the Labor opposition than this legislation does. This legislation makes very clear whom the Turnbull government represents, whom it sides with and whom it seeks to protect and it does all of that at the expense of our country's poorest and most vulnerable people. It also highlights how out of touch this Turnbull government is, and particularly how out of touch this Prime Minister is.

This legislation seeks to cut payments to families, whether they are working or not working, by around $3.7 billion in total, while simultaneously the Turnbull government refuses to change the very generous negative gearing rules and capital gains tax laws. As the statistics will show, those rules already benefit mainly people who are very well off. Even more insulting, the Turnbull government now wants to cut $3.7 billion from those who need it most, while simultaneously saying to the Australian people that they will proceed with tax cuts of $50 billion which, as my colleagues have highlighted, will go to big companies, many of whom are based overseas. It will also go to the four big banks, which for several years now have been making near-record profits.

Given the level of tax avoidance that big business has been associated with in recent years, as exposed by the Tax Justice Network and others, I fail to be convinced how reducing corporate tax from 30 to 25 per cent for those entities will make any difference, given that they already use tax avoidance measures to minimise their tax. Indeed, some of them pay very, very little tax. So what difference cutting it to 25 per cent will make to the Australian economy is beyond me. It is no wonder that the gap between rich and poor is widening. If trickle-down economics really worked, the gap would be closing, not widening.

When I look at this legislation I am at a complete loss to understand how members in this place who represent rural electorates can support it. Some of the lowest socioeconomic status families live in country electorates that members opposite represent. These are people that are already doing it tough, and their own members will come into the chamber and say that. Yet these are the people that the Turnbull government wants to balance its budget on. It wants to do it on their back, making them live life even tougher than what they already are, while simultaneously giving generous tax breaks to the very rich. Only today The Sydney Morning Herald, in a story by Eryk Bagshaw, reports that company profits have surged to record highs. At the same time wages suffered their sharpest decline in eight years. Those statistics are not being pushed by the Labor Party but are reported in the daily paper. So when the cuts to family payments proposed in this bill are combined with stagnant wages, it is clear that this legislation will hit families even harder than many of them believe they have been hit by the previous cuts that this government has pushed through the parliament following their 2014 budget.

Australians will not be fooled. They can see exactly what is happening and they can see that their MPs on the government benches are failing them. Not surprisingly, we see that in the electorates of many of the government MPs their voters are deserting them and looking to other parties. The most recent polling is clear evidence of that.

If the cuts in this legislation were in isolation, then the government might be able to find it easier to argue the case. But the reality is that these cuts come when families across the country are facing additional financial pressures. They are being proposed at a time when real wages growth has been minimal for the past two or three years. Working hours for many families have been cut. Indeed, many families are now not even working a full 38-hour week. When cost-of-living expenses—including utilities, government taxes and medical costs—continue to rise, again that directly hits families' abilities to make ends meet. On top of that, the government says that these cuts are fair and appropriate. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The legislation makes several changes to areas of family assistance. I do not have time to go through the legislation in detail, but I want to talk about some of the matters that are contained within this legislation. The first matter I refer to is the proposal to change paid parental leave. In particular, I refer to the proposal to limit paid parental leave to 20 weeks, and where an employer provides some paid parental leave the government will only provide the difference if the employer-provided paid parental leave is less than 20 weeks. This, as been highlighted by so many speakers from this side of the House, this will negatively affect 70,000 new mums across Australia.

Where a person receives paid parental leave from an employer, it is very likely that the leave will form part of a salary package agreement. It is part of a negotiation. It is probably something that the employee has traded off in order to get. And yet the government now says, 'We will effectively take that away from you.' It would seem to me that unless the employer is prepared to renegotiate that agreement with the new mum, then the new mum will be worse off. It also seems to me, and it is very likely going to be the case, that no employer will continue to pay paid parental leave just to save the government money. The first thing they will do is try to work out an arrangement or renegotiate with their employee to ensure that that component of the salary package is going to be paid in full by the government in the future. I would be most surprised if that does not happen. So the government's own attempt to change the rules, in my view, will backfire on them in the long term.

The second matter is the transfer of young people from Newstart or sickness allowance to youth allowance, which will mean a cut of $48 per week in support payments. Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas, I am sure in your electorate you have dealt with issues similar to what I have in mine. In recent weeks I have dealt with many young people who are struggling to find work. They have completed their studies, so they do not want to be doing more study and be on youth allowance. They have completed their studies, but they simply cannot find work in the very profession that they might have studied for. In many cases they are young people who have actually come to Adelaide from a country area. They have relocated to the city because that is where they were hoping that they might be able to find a job in the area that they studied. For them to have their income cut by $48 a week means a lot; it means the difference between them being able to perhaps survive and keep going or not. And for the government to think that it does not matter that it is only $48 a week, then can I suggest to government members, and to the minister in particular, that they have a good hard look at what this will mean. Ultimately, this will lead to other welfare problems which inevitably have to be funded by governments—whether they are federal or state.

But to then also say to them, 'Look, you have to wait five weeks before you will get any payment', just adds to the cruelty of this government. Again, not every young person has the backup or the money to be able to carry them through that five-week period. Indeed, many young people actually do find a job, but due to things beyond their control they lose the job—perhaps because where they were working closed down or they retrenched some of the people they employed and so on. So that then means they have to wait another five weeks without work. I have dealt with young people who are struggling because of that. We know that we have a lot of young people who are homeless. This will simply add to it and make their lives tougher. I believe it is one of the measures that no-one in the community who wants the government to act fairly could possibly support.

It seems to me that when it comes to young people, in the mind of this government they can be easily sacrificed. If we look at what the government proposes to do with university fees—again, hitting young people; pushing up degrees perhaps to the tune of $100,000 a degree—and if we look at what has just happened with the Fair Work Commission and the penalty rates, which many young people rely on and which this government clearly supports, then we can see that this government has no empathy whatsoever for young people.

I want to now go briefly to the energy supplement, because this is going to affect any pensioner who comes onstream in the future. It means a cut of $14.10 a fortnight for a single pensioner and $21.20 a fortnight for couple pensioners. The thing that is wrong with this, firstly, is that it creates two classes of pensioners. Secondly, it will mean that in the future, when we are trying to ascertain what the pension rate should be, it will be a jumbled mess of payments that have to be carefully sorted through. Every time we differentiate in our laws between people it has to be rectified at some stage in the future, and it is left to future governments to do that. Whether a person comes onto the pension now or was previously on it, they face the same cost. If the energy supplement was intended to assist pensioners with meeting their energy bills, then can I tell government members, who come into this place every day and actually crow about this and make criticisms of the Labor Party, that energy prices have gone up around Australia. They have not gone down. The so-called relief that pensioners were supposed to get from taking away the carbon tax did not last very long at all. In fact, as they took away the carbon tax, it gave the operators and the resellers of electricity the opportunity to jack up their prices and they did, and the statistics will bear that out. So, again, these very pensioners that are being denied the energy supplement are themselves also facing the very increases in energy costs that others are being compensated for but they are not. Quite frankly, it is discrimination.

The last matter I want to briefly touch on is the pensioners who have come to this country from overseas and who have resided in Australia for less than 35 years. I have spoken about this on another occasion. The truth of the matter is that many of these pensioners have worked and toiled as hard as they possibly can in the time that they have been here. Their goal was to, when they retire, perhaps go and spend some time with family members that they left nearly 35 years ago. For many of them, it is the only holiday that they might ever get in their life, and yet we are now saying to them: if you are away for more than six weeks and you have lived in this country for less than 35 years, it will affect your pension. It is wrong and, quite frankly, it is a shameful treatment of people who have come and put their heart and soul into this country.

Australians will see through this legislation and they will see through it even more when they see the odious attempt of this government to try to link it to the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which my colleagues have touched on. To try and suggest to the Australian people that this is necessary in order to pay for the National Disability Insurance Scheme is nothing but dishonest spin. Australians will see through it. This legislation is an example of how low the Turnbull government is prepared to sink. (Time expired)

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was listening to the member for Makin, my colleague and neighbour, and I thought, 'This cannot all be right.' This Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 is an extraordinary bill, just in its breadth. Most of the time, this government attacks one group at a time but this omnibus horror bill is unique. The minister should be proud of it because he has managed to assemble all of the government's targets in one bill. It is not often you can come to the dispatch box and say that this bill attacks families, pensioners and students. It is an extraordinary effort on the government's part.

It used to be that governments would sort of try this sort of thing on; get all the tough stuff out of the way in the first budget hoping to have an election budget later on. But for this government, what an extraordinary effort. Given how much trouble they are in, you would have thought that maybe discretion might have been seen to be the better part of valour in this case, but no. I was actually stunned by some of the things that the member for Makin was revealing to the House. I was struck by what he said about young people and he is dead right—I have had young people in my electorate tell me.

I went down to a housing trust place in Elizabeth West, where Jimmy Barnes used to live. They were upgrading an old trust place for future use. They had Boys Town or one of those organisations training young people. These young blokes were very keen. You know when you see young men, 16 or so, getting into construction? They are hard workers and very keen. I think it is a terrible slight on young people to say they are not hard workers because I think these kids really were. But one of those young men had slept at a bus station in my electorate the night before because he had been kicked out of home, kicked out of his girlfriend's home in fact.

I think too often in this place, those opposite think that everybody resides with a happy safety net provided by their family but that is just not the case for many young people. They live on the thin red edge of the money they receive from the government or the money they get from work. They do not often get the opportunities that many people in the community are given. It is a terrible thing to do, to make people wait five weeks and basically face very tough circumstances before they can get unemployment benefits. It will not teach a single person any sort of lesson about a work ethic; it will just impoverish them and prevent them from finding work.

It is truly an extraordinary thing to put in this omnibus horror bill, this pea and thimble trick where they hack away from families in order to, on one side, put a bit of money into child care. The public will not be convinced by it, will not be fooled by it, will not be hoodwinked by it. They will know it for what it is. I have been getting email after email about this bill from different sections of the community, from young people, from pensioners for good reason. As the member for Makin said, this idea that pensioners, who have often worked very hard in the factories of this nation, who came to Elizabeth in post war migration—many people came from the UK or from Italy or from Greece—are now being told that they cannot go on holiday. It is an extraordinary thing to do, to limit a holiday is if we want to limit the trip of a lifetime, the last trip to a home country often. It might be the last trip that they make to see the place of their birth and their family. This idea that we will have a two-tiered pension system is extraordinary.

As the member for Makin pointed out, the clean energy supplement is really a ridiculous proposition. For those who campaigned on this very matter in previous elections to be now hacking it away and basically giving us a two-tiered pension system is extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. What a horrific bill to present to this House. You just wonder how much trouble this government will get themselves into with penalty rates, with the Centrelink robo-debt system—they are in trouble over that—with the omnibus bill and with this assault on Australian families. It is one initiative after another—in this case, many initiatives assembled in the one package. You have to scratch your head about how they think the public is going to react to this. They have spent all week, including today, navel-gazing about their own jobs. They are more concerned at the moment about the Nationals whip, Mr Christensen, than they are about anybody else.

Debate interrupted.