Fiona Phillips (Gilmore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are many aspects of last night's budget that I want to explore further, but I'm going to start with just one, which I think is so glaringly obvious it beggars belief I even need to. Unemployed workers over the age of 35 years are getting nothing short of a raw deal in this budget. We know that the older you get the harder it is to retain and find a job. We know that unemployment has skyrocketed. In my electorate there are more than 10,000 jobseekers. But if you are over 35, under the coalition government, you will have your wage subsidy cut and then removed altogether from March. If you are receiving JobSeeker you are on track to be getting $40 a day again. There is no incentive for people to hire you. In fact, the opposite: people are incentivised to hire someone younger. This is just not good enough. My electorate has been to hell and back this year with drought, bushfires, floods and COVID-19. All of our workers need urgent support, but the government has turned its back on jobseekers over the age of 35. We need to focus on helping our workforce get back to work. We should be creating jobs, supporting local people and making sure no-one is left behind. But I see none of that for Gilmore. The government needs to fix this mess now.