Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Families and Social Services. Would the minister update the House on how the government is able to support Australians in need through a strong social security system? What impact would a different approach have on the social security system that Australians rely on?

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Boothby for her question. She's a strong champion for those Australians who need the support of our social security system in her own electorate, where 17,957 rely on the age pension, 3,963 rely on the disability support pension and 3,547 rely on Newstart. All of that is delivered through spending $176 billion on social security and welfare. In fact, it's a number that's risen from $132 billion in the last full financial year that Labor had responsibility for these matters, and we've done that while moving the budget towards balance and surplus. That is good financial management.

We've got the social security system back to a sustainable position. Under the previous government it was growing in expenditure at roughly twice the rate that government revenues were growing at. That is unsustainable and we've fixed that through basic managerial disciplines—for example, setting out a plan, executing against the plan and capably and competently managing money. That is something that Labor has a proven record of being hopeless at. It is no surprise that—when you gather together those chosen for their skills such as union officials, their core skill is shaking down money from business, like the donation from Unibilt to the Leader of the Opposition's campaign; when you gather together people whose core skill and background is being student activists, they're good at holding protests and waving signs; or, when you gather together people whose core skill is being a social justice warrior, they're good at showing you how many coloured bracelets they have on their wrists to show you how caring they are—people like this are not actually very good at management. That's why the budget blew out by $16 billion on the cost of detention centres when this hopeless rabble were in control, supposedly, of the budget.

The key point is that that is $16 billion which is not available to support vulnerable Australians, which is not available to support older Australians with the age pension, which is not available to support Australians with disability—because they've lost control of their expenditure. Yet Labor today is going right back to their core beliefs, their mismanagement of border protection. They're going to vote with the Greens to go back to ending offshore protection. That's what they want to do and that is terrible news. It's terrible news for Australians who want secure borders. It's terrible news for vulnerable Australians because it means less money will be available to support them. And it's terrible news for the people who invariably, tragically, are going to end up as the innocent victims of people smugglers, and people will lose their lives as a result.