Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Simplifying Income Reporting and Other Measures) Bill and also in support of the second reading amendment moved by the shadow minister. This is a debating chamber, so before I move to the remarks I want to make I'd like to respond to some of the things that have been said by members of the government so far in consideration of this legislation.

The member for Moncrieff spoke, somewhat bizarrely I think, about how Liberals believe in feeding their children. I want to make it clear that everyone believes in feeding their children, no matter which political party they're aligned to, or even if they're not aligned to a political party. But the sad reality in 2020 in Australia is that not everyone can afford to properly feed their children.

Today, news.com.au has a report that everyone should find chilling. Its cost-of-living survey revealed the 'common struggle to make ends meet'. This is what news.com.au says—and those people who have been listening to the concerns that Labor has been raising about the state of the economy and how hard it is for families and individuals to make their way will find some familiar themes:

Soaring expenses, never-ending bills, low wages and inadequate welfare payments are creating a perfect financial storm that has left thousands of Aussies struggling to get by.

That's according to news.com.au readers, who have revealed in their own words just how hard life in Australia can be in 2020.

The results, according to news.com.au, are clear: many Australians are barely getting by.

Respondents to the survey were asked to select whether they felt they were on 'Struggle Street', 'barely coping', 'doing okay', or on 'Easy Street', based on how they were faring financially. About 53 per cent of respondents believe they were 'doing okay'—and I'll come back to what 'doing okay' means to these people later—only four per cent of Australians believe they were on 'Easy Street', and the rest were 'feeling the pinch', with 28 per cent on 'Struggle Street' and 14 per cent 'barely coping'.

So why did they feel they were 'barely coping'? Completely relevant to the legislation and the issues we're discussing in this debate today, this is what news.com.au reports about what Australians are saying about why they are doing it tough:

Many of those on government benefits such as the age pension, Newstart, the Disability Support Pension (DSP) and Austudy reported earning an income so meagre they were left with just a few dollars once necessary expenses like rent and bills were paid.

The member for Ryan said a number of times in his contribution to this debate: 'People should be clear—this legislation doesn't change the rate of social services.' No, it doesn't. It doesn't increase any of them, not even Newstart. Where businesses, welfare groups, community groups, and, if the member for Ryan's electorate is anything like mine, people who are struggling day to day to make ends meet are all calling for Newstart to increase. But let's just be clear about this: this bill doesn't do that.

News.com.au has quoted what people have said to that organisation. Again, I know that people on my side of the chamber, Labor members of parliament, hear this from their constituents day in, day out. I would expect that the Liberal members of parliament also hear this from their constituents, but it boggles my mind as to why they don't repeat it or aren't doing anything about it. But here's a quote from news.com.au:

I am on the DSP and it covers my mortgage and then leaves me with $90 to live on.

$90 to live on! Another said: 'Living off Austudy is impossible.' And another said:

Although I get full payment of welfare along with Rent Assistance, more than half of my pay goes to rent and bills every single fortnight. If I’m lucky, I may have $20 to myself.

And I quote from the article:

Another common theme was the impact of 'crippling' bills and other regular, unavoidable costs.

  …   …   …

Most respondents blame government policy for cost of living pressures, followed by big business and a shaky global economy.

Too right, government policy. This federal government's policy is letting down Australians.

Interestingly, we hear in this place often from ministers and members of the government about how they have brought down electricity and gas prices—they're personally responsible for it. Well, this Aussie, quoted in news.com.au, says:

The huge increases in the electricity and gas prices have caused a nightmare for me. Also, as (I’m) recently retired and not eligible for a government pension, the land tax increases (and) council rates increases have eaten into my income severely.

Another Aussie said:

It’s almost impossible to save any money—every time I get a little stashed away, in comes the electricity bill to take it off me again.

Someone else feels like they:

"are living in the most expensive country in the world," … while others reported "living pay cheque to pay cheque" and being "swamped" by bills, with "nothing left"

Another wrote: 'my gross annual income is $30,863 and (I) am barely holding it together.'

Many others share their agonising fear over how they would handle an emergency when they are living pay cheque to pay cheque: 'I can just cover bills but anything outside normal breaks me.' These aren't my words; these are the words of Aussies who are doing it tough. One might say they're having a go, but it doesn't appear to feel like they're getting a go. One reader said that she only eats every third day when her son is not with her and that she 'can't afford doctors or basic needs (and) rely on help from others …'. This is happening in Australia in 2020. It really shouldn't be. People who are doing okay describe themselves in this way:

I am not pay cheque to pay cheque and am able to put money away for savings. However, I also do turn down events and occasions because I do not have the funds.

Another person said, 'We're "just managing to keep the bills paid" with "little to no going out," but we're "doing okay."' You're right, member for Ryan; this bill doesn't do anything to increase any of the services that anyone relies on. But it should. It really should.

In my office, one of the significant inquiries that we have is from people who are relying on various Centrelink payments. Like everyone else in this place, I have constituents who have been burdened by the government's illegal, pernicious robodebt scheme. I've spoken in this place before about a single mum who came to me because she had had $30,000 garnished out of her bank account, leaving her with less than $50 to survive over a weekend looking after her children. I've also mentioned a first-time young mother who had a wrongful debt raised against her by the robodebt system that she did not owe—not once, but twice. We had to make inquiries and representations to get it waived the second time. Just last week a constituent contacted my office regarding a debt that had been levied against them by Centrelink or—somewhat ironically named–Services Australia, as it's now known. We asked for an investigation.

The local Services Australia—I would say at this point the people working there are terrific. They are working as hard as they can to do the best job they can under really difficult circumstances. These criticisms are not about people who work at government services. They are about the way this federal government runs, or runs down, those services. So I was contacted last week in my office by someone who'd a debt raised against them. The local Services Australia office did an investigation, and, low and behold, it was an incorrect debt. Because she had received a one-off commission payment from some work that she'd done, it had been averaged over the financial year—which is what the algorithm of robodebt does—and she had been levied a debt that she had been told to repay.

Notwithstanding what we now know, that the government knows, that this scheme is illegal, and notwithstanding that we know that serious numbers of people have died after receiving a robodebt notice—some 2,000 people—notwithstanding that we know, through Senate estimates, that the robodebt scheme led the department to take money from 73 estates of people who were dead—amounting to some 225,000 people—notwithstanding all of that, people are still being lumped with debts that they don't owe. It is still happening—why? Why won't the ministers just acknowledge that this shouldn't be happening?

On behalf of my electorate, I am calling for people who have paid a robodebt to get in touch with Gordon Legal and the class action that is happening, because we know that most Australians are good people. They understand that if a government says something to them, they should have faith in the government that the government is correct. So many people have received a robodebt notice and have paid it. Why wouldn't you, if you're a normal Australian who believes and trusts in our system of government? But now we know that, for thousands and thousands of people, that robodebt system wasn't correct. If you're someone that lives in my electorate and you've paid a robodebt and you have concerns—contact my office. We will help you. We will put you forward to see whether or not you can be part of that class action. I'm calling on the government, like many of my Labor colleagues, to just admit the mistake and pay back people the money that they're owed.

Very recently in my electorate, I've also had people come to talk about what seems to be an emerging administrative problem. These are people who have been on Newstart and have applied to be on the disability support pension and are entitled to go on the disability support pension because they have a disability. I have a constituent who applied in January 2019 and only just was transferred to the DSP last week. These are people who can't work because of their disability. I have another constituent who also applied over 12 months ago and was only just granted at the end of the last month. The arrears owed were over $10,000—such a substantial amount that it had to be paid over a fortnight. In my electorate, people from St Vincent de Paul have come and spoken to me a number of times about the burden that the inadequate state of Newstart is putting on these organisations looking after people in need in my electorate. It's not good enough.

This legislation is welcome. Hopefully, it will make some change. We support this legislation. But, like other Labor colleagues, I'm concerned about this government's capacity to actually role out an IT system and to make sure that it benefits vulnerable people and doesn't just cause them further distress.

We know that this government has a pretty bad record of rolling out IT systems. The My Health Record system, which, in my personal opinion, is a terrific idea and should be something that Australians can rely on—this government has spent almost $2 billion on this e-health scheme, and we have doctors and patients refusing to use it because of legitimate privacy concerns, including breaches. I know from my personal experience, as someone that sees a range of medical professionals and has regular tests, that it's not working as it should, because people aren't uploading the records to it. They aren't confident in the system. Radiology reports aren't being uploaded. Blood tests aren't being uploaded. It is something that should make life so much better for patients in the system, but because people don't trust this government to roll things out properly, it is not fulfilling its potential. I really hope that this legislation does make life better for people that rely on services. But we will wait and see, and we will be vigilant.

I also want to express, in my closing remarks, my profound disappointment that I was in the chamber and a minister of the Crown yelled out at opposition backbenchers and called either me or someone else a goose. We deserve better than that. The Australian public deserves better than that. That's not how you behave when you're a minister. What you actually do is administer a system that makes life better for Australians, and you act like a mature adult, not a child.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Simplifying Income Reporting and Other Measures) Bill 2020, and I want to echo the words of my Labor colleagues—our shadow minister, the member for Barton; the member for Maribyrnong; and the member for Dunkley—in the great speeches they've given on this bill this morning.

Labor supports this bill, as we support any measures that will make the social security system easier and more accurate for those who interact with it. This bill will change the way income is reported to Centrelink so that it is reported when a person is paid, not when the income is earned, which will make reporting more accurate. The bill will also enable Centrelink to use Single Touch Payroll information from the ATO to prefill income for Centrelink reporting. The bill will not automate the reporting. Individuals will still be required to check and certify income that is prefilled using the Single Touch Payroll system. These are good changes that, for the majority of payment recipients, should make life easier and avoid under- and overpayments.

But, while we support this, we do have questions. This government has an appalling track record on these sorts of digitisation projects. It has run down Centrelink to the bone, which makes it incredibly difficult for them to administer their services in the way they should be administered. We have seen people waiting for hours on the phone, people hanging up, people giving up on trying to get answers to their questions and people waiting months and months just to receive the payments they are eligible for. The worst example is the disgusting robodebt scheme, where hundreds of thousands of Australians who had done the right thing and reported their income correctly were issued debts that were generated simply by an algorithm and, probably most appalling, the onus was put on those recipients to prove that they didn't have that debt. This has of course caused immense harm to people. Some of these amounts related to debts that were supposedly years old. We've all seen in our electorates people who have had shocking experiences. The member for Dunkley was just talking about some of those. So it's really hard to trust this government to get this right. I also want to second what the member for Maribyrnong called for yesterday: that any debts based solely on that algorithm be refunded.

What is at the root of these problems is government's inherent lack of respect for anyone who receives social security and, in fact, for the system itself and the vital role it has played and should play in this country in alleviating poverty and inequality. It in fact goes further than that. They want to attack, at every opportunity, people who receive these payments and downgrade the role of that system as it's seen by the Australian people. It is a system that is majorly failing people who rely on it. Newstart allowance is woefully inadequate, and the only people who won't accept that is this government. We've even had a minister say that if we increase Newstart the money will go into the hands of drug dealers. I think that just shows the incredibly out-of-touch, disrespectful and disgraceful attitudes within this government. The rates of Newstart speak for themselves, and I just want to get them on the record, yet again, because the message doesn't seem to be getting through. Newstart allowance for a single person is $559 per fortnight. That's $280 a week, or around $40 a day. Anyone who pays rent, buys groceries or tries to run a car or even buy bus tickets knows that that is not enough to live on in this country, with rising prices. It's just not. The number speaks for itself.

The other point I want to talk about is the income test on Newstart Allowance, which is also woefully out of touch with the current job market and current prices in Australia. This bill deals with income reporting, but it's not addressing the real problem, which is that when you're on Newstart and you have earned $104 in a fortnight your payment begins to be reduced by 50 cents in the dollar—$104! That's barely one shift. That is not in touch with our current job market. It's not enabling people to live. Their payments are cut as soon as they earn the most meagre amount of money. When you have earnt $254 in a fortnight, your payment begins to be reduced by 60 cents in the dollar, until it's gone. This is just inadequate. These are the issues that government needs to be looking at right now. We welcome the changes in this bill, but they are tweaking at the edges of a system that is inherently failing Australians.

I want to use this opportunity to talk about someone from Canberra I met recently. Their situation illustrates how these payments are impossible to live on. I recently spent a day with Financial Counselling Australia's A Day in the Life program, which enabled me to spend a day with financial counsellors who provide a not-for-profit service to people dealing with problems of debt and are getting themselves out of those issues. It is an incredible service they provide. They are at the coalface of dealing with the impacts of this inadequate system and the structural imbalance in our society that is just stacked up against the poor in every way. It is hard to see how people can get through life without a decent safety net to rely on, given some of the challenges that are inherent in the way our economy and our society work.

I spent the day with Care Inc here in Canberra. I want to thank their director, Carmel Franklin, and all the counsellors I spent time with that day. I got to meet one of their clients, whose name I won't use. It was great to actually go step by step through what his experience had been. This was a man who had worked hard all his life and he was battling some serious mental health issues and also a physical injury of an ongoing nature. When he lost someone very close to him, this came to a head. He found he was unable to work anymore and went onto Newstart Allowance. He was doing his best to manage his bills—just normal bills.

One in particular that had become a problem for him was his internet and phone bill—just basic things. The first thing the counsellor worked on with him was budgeting, but this was not an issue, because he was already budgeting so carefully. Another thing that this government doesn't realise is that people trying to live on Newstart have to be incredibly resourceful and disciplined just to get by on that. They are not enjoying life. They are not buying drugs. They are skimping to get the bare minimum, which he was doing. He had some bills come up and he took on a payday loan, which is another thing that, frankly, should not be legal in this country, in my view. These are the loans where you can get some money quickly but you face absolutely exorbitant and unfair interest rates that just drive people into absolute financial crisis.

His debt was growing and growing and they were trying to help him with that. Eventually, two things meant he was able to get back on his feet, as he put it. First, as a long-term unemployed person he was allowed early access to his superannuation, when he got to six months on unemployment. That is a double-edged sword really. He needed that money, but it is basically robbing his future self of something that he had built up. You are allowed to access up to $10,000. But what many don't realise is that it has a tax rate of 22 per cent. So, he lost almost $2,000 of his superannuation to tax.

To solve his problems, he took out this meagre amount of money, which he really should have been continuing to invest for his future, and was able to settle his debts. But the thing that really made a difference for him was that, after many months of proving the injury and the mental illness issues that I mentioned, he became eligible for the disability support pension, which, of course, is a higher rate than Newstart. That meant that, as he said, after meeting all the bare essentials he had $30 a fortnight to enjoy. I think those numbers speak for themselves.

As the counsellor said, the problem is not people's ability to budget. It is not always people getting into payday loans or any of these other disgraceful things that go on. It is the fact that people cannot live on these payments. I don't know how much longer we need to keep saying that to this government. So many people are saying it, and those opposite are just deaf to the fact that people are struggling so hard in this country.

We are a rich country. We should treat people better than that. One in six Australian children are living in poverty. That's not good enough. The government needs to acknowledge that these payments are too low. It could do so much for so many people by reviewing and increasing them, by looking at the interactions of Newstart with the job market and by looking at those income tests that I mentioned, which are absolutely ridiculous by today's standards. I again call on the government to please listen to the struggling people in your electorates and increase Newstart.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take pleasure in speaking on this particular bill, the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Simplifying Income Reporting and Other Measures) Bill 2020, but perhaps it should have a very different title. As we heard the member for Maribyrnong say earlier, perhaps it should be called 'trying to fix our robodebt mess', 'trying to fix our robodebt stuff-up', or perhaps 'trying to fix an IT implementation that went badly wrong and took money off innocent Australians who didn't owe any money'.

We will be examining the detail of this particular bill very closely and putting the government on notice to get the implementation of the changes correct this time, unlike with the robodebt implementation, which saw many, many Australians pay money when they didn't have to. We're very concerned at the very high risk of stuffing up the implementation of these changes once again. As I said, given that this government stuffed up robodebt and has run down Centrelink services to the point where pensioners are waiting for months to get the pension, the last thing we want to see is people having their payments cut off or being saddled with unfair debts because Centrelink failed to manage this properly.

If people have questions, they should not be left waiting on the phone for hours. All of us in this House—and, I'm sure, in the other place as well—are rung by constituents who have been left on the phone for hours because Centrelink had been cut right down when it comes to staff; it's been run into the ground. The simple fact is that the government doesn't care about people on social security payments. Whether it be pensioners, the unemployed or those with a disability, those opposite do not care. You can see that they don't care from the actions that they've taken.

Since they've held the reins of government, they've tried to cut the pension on a number of occasions. At every single budget they've tried to cut the pension. We hear them say that the best friend that pensioners have is the coalition government. Well, that is absolute rubbish! If you look at the track record of this coalition government, cutting the pension is in its DNA, and the actions of those opposite have proved it. They have tried to cut the pension and increase the pension age to 70 in every single budget, making Australians who have worked all their lives and paid their taxes work longer.

In the 2014 budget they tried to cut the pension indexation, a cut that would have meant pensioners would be forced to live on $80 less a week. This unfair cut would have ripped $23 billion from the pockets of every single pensioner in Australia. Again, in the 2014 budget they cut $1 billion from pensioner concessions, a support designed to help pensioners with the cost of living. How mean and cruel spirited. The people that earn the least amount in our society get the cuts—an $80 cut.

In that same 2014 budget they axed the $900 seniors supplement to self-funded retirees receiving the Commonwealth seniors health card. The Liberals tried to reset the deeming rate threshold in 2014, a cut that would have seen 500,000 part-pensioners made worse off. Then they come in here today and spout this nonsense that the coalition and the Liberal government is the best friend that pensioners have.

In 2015 they did a deal with the Greens to cut the pensions for around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the pension assets test. If you were a pensioner and you'd saved a bit and had a bit on the side, they lowered the rate of the assets test, meaning that you lost money in your pensions.

In the 2016 budget they tried to cut the pension to around 190,000 pensioners, as part of a plan to limit overseas travel to pensioners to six weeks. We saw the same legislation go through this House before Christmas. How mean to tell a pensioner, who has worked all their life, who has paid their taxes, who has contributed to the building of this nation, that you're only allowed to go overseas for six weeks, no longer, otherwise you get cut off and you have to reapply for your pension. Many people have the absolute right in their pension, in their old age, when they've retired, to go wherever they want for as long as they like. And no-one has the right to tell them that they're not allowed to travel or that they have a time limit on their travel. No-one has that right to tell someone who's worked their entire life, paid their taxes, helped build this country, that they cannot go overseas for a certain period of time. This is just another way to try and cut pensioners' savings, cut pensioners' income, while they give to the big end of town. They're quite happy to spout that and to carry on about it.

These figures are fact. These are things that this government tried to do, so I'm very concerned about this particular bill as well. I've got to say that what we saw with the robodebt disaster was an absolute disaster. Money was taken away from people that didn't owe money. For many constituents that came to see me in my electorate office, we wrote to the minister and asked them to investigate. They went to the appeals and they were deemed not to have owed the amount of money that they were told they had to pay. In fact, we did some calculations, and 80 per cent of people who came to see me in my office either were given money back or had that debt dropped. What about the thousands that paid that money and haven't got it back, or perhaps believe that the government, because it's a letter from the government, from Centrelink which is a government agency, is correct? We have no confidence in this government when it comes to dealing with pensioners and social security.

We saw, as I said, the robodebt scheme unleash this faulty algorithm against the social security recipients who, even if they reported their income 100 per cent correctly, were slapped with debts in the thousands.

This bill, which is named the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Simplifying Income Reporting and Other Measures) Bill 2020, should quite simply have its name as 'Fixing up the robodebt stuff-up that this government didn't have the ability to admit to'. They didn't have the ability to take responsibility and say, 'We were wrong' and drop it. We have been dealing with for at least that two years, and it has been raised in this place continuously.

As I said, we have absolutely no confidence. We'll be watching this bill, scrutinising it, and ensuring that when it goes to the Senate there is a real eye kept on it to make sure that they don't stuff it up again.

David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I would like to thank those members who have contributed to this debate. This bill is the next step in addressing the issues of unintended multiple superannuation accounts by preventing Australians from being forced into having multiple accounts due to their enterprise bargaining agreement or similar determination. This bill will improve outcomes for members by providing a choice of funds across the superannuation industry. The bill will commence on 1 July 2020. I commend the bill to the House.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Barton has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question before the House is that the amendment moved by the member for Barton be agreed to.