Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about inequality. In 2016 the member for Maribyrnong said:

As long as 2.5 million Australians live below the poverty line, and one out of every four are children. … We cannot say the fair go belongs to all.

Inequality is not just about income or wealth. It's also about opportunity and access: the opportunity to get a good education, access to affordable health care, access to secure well-paid local jobs, the opportunity to own your own home, access to care and support if you are living with a disability, and access to good quality aged care when you need it later in life. Inequality doesn't just hold back individuals; it holds back everybody.

A recent report by the Productivity Commission, Rising inequality? A stocktake of the evidence, notes that while economic mobility in Australia is high some Australians experience entrenched economic disadvantage. Why, in a wealthy country like Australia today, are one in four single women over 60 living in poverty, with many at risk of homelessness? Why is a young mother—who I met at her appointment with a financial counsellor, after leaving family violence—struggling to find $460 a week to keep her private rental so that her three children have a home, while juggling child care and her casual cleaning job? Why is a grandmother—who I met in Bateau Bay; while on a surgery waiting list, she had been bumped that morning—housing her adult son in her garage because, after his partner died, he was no longer on the priority housing list?

In their report, the Productivity Commission describes disadvantage as:

… encompasses poverty (low economic resources), material deprivation (an inability to afford the 'basic essentials of life'), and social exclusion (an inability to fully participate in the ordinary activities of a community).

According to the commission:

Persistent and recurrent poverty affects a small, but significant proportion of the population. About three per cent of Australians (roughly 700 000 people) have been in income poverty continuously for at least the last four years. People living in single-parent families, unemployed people, people with disabilities and Indigenous Australians are particularly likely to experience income poverty, deprivation and social exclusion. For people in these circumstances, there is an elevated risk of economic disadvantage becoming entrenched, limiting their potential to seize economic opportunities or develop the skills with which to overcome these conditions.

On this same subject, a recent report by UnitingCare Australia and NATSEM, Child social exclusion, poverty and disadvantage in Australia, shows that many children are experiencing multiple types of disadvantage, leading to social exclusion—like the young children of the mum who I referred to earlier, who was with the financial counsellor while fleeing family violence and at risk of homelessness, or the grandmother who I met at The Entrance, who is now is raising her four grandchildren. The report found that housing stress limits access to education and health care and that reliance on low-paid, insecure work places enormous pressure on these families and their children.

This matters and we need to do something about it. On our side, we have a plan to grow the economy and make sure that nobody is left behind. We will restore funding to schools and hospitals so that everyone has access to the essential services they need. As a pharmacist who worked in mental health inpatient units at my local hospital in Wyong for the last 10 years before this job, I saw the strain put on patients, their carers and their families due to the cuts to health services, particularly in mental health. On our side we will work to ease the cost-of-living pressures. We will stand up for working people, strengthening industrial relation systems to make sure that every worker has a secure job and secure employment.

We believe that every child, wherever they were born or wherever they grow up, should have the opportunity to meet their potential. The evidence is overwhelming that children who miss out on early years of learning, often those children from disadvantaged backgrounds, are the ones who would benefit most from our preschool program. That's why we've committed to permanent, ongoing funding for the National Preschool and Kindy Program for four-year-olds and will extend that cover to three-year-olds.

Labor will also remove the NDIA staff cap, freeing the agency to make the best long-term decisions about how they deliver quality services to Australians with disabilities. The most vulnerable in our community—the young, the aged, those living with disability, Indigenous people and those living with mental health conditions—need to be protected. We need to make decisions that are in the interests of those individuals and the interests of all Australians.