Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020. It is a very lengthy name for a bill that does some pretty simple things, one of which, regrettably, is to send JobSeeker back to the old Newstart rate, a rate of payment which nearly everybody in the country, apart from, perhaps, the Prime Minister, agrees is unlivable for Australians. That is a very regrettable thing to do.

This nation is in the midst of a pandemic. We're still recovering from it. We're not out of the woods yet, and yet in the middle of this pandemic the government is seeing fit to send Australians back to a level of income that nearly everybody, apart from the Prime Minister, regards as unlivable. We note that this bill effectively continues, until 31 March next year, other beneficial social security changes that are due to sunset on 31 December this year by giving the minister relevant regulation-making powers, which include concessions to the JobSeeker income test and partner income test. Currently the minister has the power under the Social Security Act 1991 to continue paying the coronavirus supplement, except for recipients of youth allowance student, in three-month intervals, subject to being satisfied it is necessary to ameliorate the social and economic impacts of the coronavirus. Under this power, the minister has been able to set the rate of the coronavirus supplement. This bill repeals that ongoing power and will prevent the minister from extending the coronavirus supplement beyond 31 March 2021. No doubt, as we move into a post-COVID world—in the year to come, hopefully, with a vaccine on its way—we've still got to deal with the effects of the Morrison recession. This type of support is absolutely needed more than ever.

I have mentioned in this House some of these alarming figures previously, but let's reflect again on the numbers. With another 160,000 Australians expected to lose their jobs and 1.6 million Australians on JobSeeker, the government has missed a huge opportunity to deliver certainty for Australians who are doing it very tough, by delivering a permanent increase to JobSeeker in the budget. Over the past week, the Treasurer has come into this place and jumped around like a jack-in-a-box, talking about how there's an economic recovery underway—'economic recovery, economic recovery'. An economic recovery doesn't help people who are still on JobSeeker; it doesn't help people who are still unemployed. They have a finite level of income with which to pay all their bills. All the talk about an economic recovery doesn't help people on JobSeeker, so the last thing you should be doing is cutting their rate of payment in the midst of a pandemic.

There are many more jobseekers than there are job vacancies. There are simply not enough jobs for everyone who needs one. It's all very well for the Prime Minister to say, 'If you have a go, you get a go,' and, 'The best form of welfare is a job.' If every single job vacancy were filled, there would still be many more Australians unemployed. There are simply not enough jobs to go around. This is a fact of mathematics. There are not enough jobs to go around. And when there aren't enough jobs to go around, you have a moral obligation to look after those who are unable to get a job. You don't cut their level of income to less than what it costs to actually exist and live decently in this country.

It's even worse in the regions—some of which I represent—and that's a result of this government's failure to deliver a jobs program for our regions. It has no plan for jobs. It has a plan to cut JobSeeker payments, but it has no plan for jobs. In Tasmania, there are 21 jobseekers for every available job. Think about that. For every single job that's available, you've got 21 people lining up and 20 of them are going home disappointed. ABS figures released last week show that more than 50,000 Tasmanians are either looking for a job or can't get the hours they need to make ends meet. This has to be front and centre. Many Australians are in jobs—they're off the books as far as the government is concerned in terms of official unemployment figures—but they are underemployed, some drastically. They're not getting enough hours they need at work, which means they're not getting enough hours they need to pay the bills. That's why the neighbourhood food banks, community houses and donation boxes are absolutely flat out. They are feeding people now who they've never had to feed before: people with jobs. People who have employment are going to food banks to get their groceries, because the income they get is not enough. And yet we have this government seeking to take people back to the old rate of what was Newstart.

The number of jobs in Tasmania has fallen by 2,200 since August, and our unemployment rate is well above the national average. We're all hopeful in Tasmania that the reopening of borders that's underway this week will improve the desperate job situation that we have. But hope doesn't pay the bills. Hope doesn't pay the rent. Hope doesn't put food on the table. Hope doesn't put clothes on the kids. We need a jobs plan, not a wing and a prayer. In Tasmania, our jobs crisis is also a wages crisis. Tasmanians have experienced a fall in wages of 4.9 per cent, when the average fall has been 3.3 per cent. We're doing worse than the national average. And that drop-off comes off an already lower average wage in Tasmania. Tasmanian average weekly wages have fallen by $71, from $1,448 to $1,377, while national wages have fallen by $56 a week. We're doing much worse in Tasmania than the national average when it comes to affordability, and that's why the coronavirus supplement has been so important for people doing it tough.

That supplement is paid to recipients of JobSeeker payment, youth allowance, parenting payment, Austudy, Abstudy, partner allowance, widow allowance, farm household allowance and special benefit. Between 27 April and 24 September this year, the coronavirus supplement was paid at a flat rate of $550 per fortnight. We've heard lots of anecdotal evidence about the difference that the supplement made to people's lives. For the first time in a long time they were able to pay their bills, and buy clothes and new school shoes for their kids, things that most of us would consider as by the by. People on low incomes could finally afford those essentials. Between 25 September and 31 December, the government decided that the recovery was apparently on the way, 'So we'll reduce the supplement to a rate of $250 per fortnight.' Now they've announced that, between 1 January 2021—four weeks away—and 31 March 2021, the coronavirus supplement will be paid at a flat rate of $150 per fortnight. In a matter of eight months, they've stripped $400 a fortnight away from people who don't have the money to spare.

Earlier this month Labor moved amendments to the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Coronavirus and Other Measures) Bill 2020, calling for the government to deliver a permanent increase to the rate of JobSeeker. This is critical. As I said, everybody in this country, apart from the Prime Minister, understands that the old rate of Newstart was too low to survive on. We all know it was too low to survive on. We've had members opposite acknowledge that it's too low to survive on. We've got the Liberal member for Bass in my state acknowledging it's too low. But those opposite are nowhere to be seen when it comes to actually legislating a permanent increase to JobSeeker, and that's what is needed. People cannot afford to go back to the old rate. The government need to legislate a permanent increase to JobSeeker. This bill is a missed opportunity for the government to deliver a permanent increase to this base rate of unemployment support, and that's why Labor is moving an amendment calling on the government to permanently increase the base rate of JobSeeker payment.

Now, there are beneficial elements to this bill. It continues the coronavirus supplement for youth allowance for students and apprentices after December. There are increased income-free areas, taper rates and partner income tests that have been introduced as part of the pandemic. But this bill also puts in black and white the government's cruel plan to revert to pre-pandemic levels on unemployment support from 31 March 2021. Is that when they think it's all going to be over? Do they think the world is going to be back to normal as of March 2021? Taking those payments back to pre-pandemic levels will hurt, and hurt in the most essential way, around two million Australians. Two million Australians who are already doing it tough will be hurt even further by this cruel and heartless government. These cuts will affect people who have lost their jobs, single parents and students. On 31 March, rent will not go down, food prices will not go down, the price of putting petrol in the car will not go down, school costs will not go down, but this government is expecting people on low incomes to take a massive hit to their income. They're saying, 'Find a job'—that doesn't exist—'and be happy with the way life is treating you,' because, apparently, there's an economic recovery underway. Where is the empathy? Where is the understanding? Where is the support? Where is the arm around the shoulder, the Australian way of looking after your mate when they're doing it tough; where is it?

We had the Minister for Social Services just recently saying an increase to what was then Newstart would result in more money for drug dealers and pubs. That's what she thinks. That's where she thinks this money is going—to drug dealers and pubs. I'll tell you where it is going, Deputy Speaker Mitchell. It's going to rent. It's going to food. It's going to school costs. It's going to petrol in the car. It's going to clean clothes so that you can present yourself decently at a job interview. On the old rate of Newstart, which they're now returning to, people can't afford to go look for a job. They can't afford to get clothes in order to present themselves to a job interview. They can't afford the bus fare to the job interview.

When we talk about $40 a day, we're not talking about $40 in your pocket for your incidentals in life. We're not talking about $40 a day for breakfast, a bit of afternoon tea, lunch and a bus fare. We're talking about $40 a day that has to cover rent, food, petrol and health costs. No-one here in this place, I included, would be able to do it. It is scandalously cruel to expect people to be able to do it—and all because of some ideological view in the guts of those opposite. In their guts those opposite believe that people who are unemployed are unemployed because it's their own fault.

They really, truly believe that people just aren't trying hard enough to get a job, and maybe if they turn the screws on hard enough it will force people to go and get a job that doesn't exist. In Tasmania there are 21 jobseekers for every available job. Mathematics don't lie. For every job that's available, 20 people are leaving a job interview disappointed. What are they meant to do to pay the bills? Those over there should be ashamed about the situation they are putting already vulnerable Australians into. They're not satisfied with literally stealing the money of hundreds of thousands of Australians under robodebt. They're not satisfied with that; now they're returning Australians to a level of payment that they literally cannot live on. Those opposite should be ashamed.

The more generous partner income test for JobSeeker payment, which Labor negotiated, is tapering at 27c in the dollar and cutting out at a partner income of $80,000 per year. A hundred thousand people would be impacted if the more generous partner income test were not continued, including 40,000 people who would lose access to payments entirely. It's been announced that the government intends to continue to use this power. But why would it continue those and not retain the coronavirus supplement? Why would it do that? I don't understand. I don't understand how this government thinks when it comes to poor people in this country.

Just some stats: in 2019, 58 people took their lives due to being unemployed, 32 people took their lives due to work related mental strain, 37 people took their lives due to the absence of a family member, 19 people took their lives due to the threat of losing their job and 214 people took their lives due to housing and economic circumstances. Being poor can be a death sentence, and those opposite are making that much more likely. They should be ashamed of themselves. (Time expired)

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020. People in this place, at least on this side, are going to be very, very emotional and passionate in their contributions on this bill and the amendment that Labor has moved, because it is an emotional topic. We're talking about people. We're talking about Australians who are struggling and who have been struggling. We're talking about the lack of empathy, the lack of care, the lack of regard, frankly, from the government benches to that struggle. So people will be emotive and emotional. They will be passionate in their contributions, and I think it's because there is a degree of care for Australians who are suffering and for the constituents in our electorates we speak to who have been struggling and who will struggle on JobSeeker on $40 a day.

There are 160,000 people who are expected to lose their jobs, and there are 1.4 million Australians on JobSeeker currently. The previous speakers have talked about the missed opportunity to deliver certainty for these Australians with respect to delivering a permanent increase to JobSeeker and extending JobSeeker, and on both fronts the government has failed. We have consistently called for this increase for a number of years now, even before the pandemic struck, because we understood, and continue to understand, the need. But, of course, it fell on deaf ears on the government benches. And, if they have their way, the rate will return to $40 a day—$40 a day puts people into poverty; $40 a day forces people to skip meals; and $40 a day will take our economic recovery backwards, put a brake on it.

I've said this before: the people in my community who are on JobSeeker or Newstart are not saving that money in a sock under their bed. They're not buying shares with it. They're not going out on the piss. They're not going out gambling.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Use appropriate language, please.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But the government benches would like us to believe that people on JobSeeker are spending this money frivolously. That's just not the case. There are families who are struggling day by day to put food on the table and buy clothes for their children so they can go to school. I don't think it's an understatement to say that there are many Australians in this situation who struggled even before the pandemic. And they're not saving this money, as I said, under their beds. They're going to be spending it. They're going to be spending it in the economy. Even the economic argument that this government puts about the economic recovery, the economics of recovery, the reduction in unemployment and so on is short-sighted because that JobSeeker money is going to be spent in the economy. The single mum is now not going to buy that extra coffee. She's not going to be able to spend that extra bit of money in retail because it goes back to those basic needs when you're on $40 a day. And that can only be bad for the economy and our economic recovery in the long run.

So, for all of these reasons, Labor is moving this amendment today, calling for the government to permanently increase the base rate of JobSeeker, and we've said it time and time again. These amendments are about calling the government to reverse their plan to cut the coronavirus supplement around Christmas time and to deliver that permanent increase for JobSeeker.

The previous speakers have also spoken about the benefits in this bill. But, like everything this government does, they just short-change you, don't they? There's a lot of shallowness: it all looks good on the surface but, when you scratch it and go a bit deeper, you start to see the big gaps, the chasms, that emerge that a whole lot of Australians fall into. I can't understand why, but maybe it's people they don't like. There are demographics that have been left out of their support packages that have fallen through the cracks. It can only be because they don't regard these people, they don't care about them. I can't find any other explanation for it. Whether it's the unemployed, whether it's carers, whether it's people who are temporary migrants or whether it's asylum seekers and refugees, they're all falling through the cracks.

This bill includes continuing the coronavirus supplement for youth allowance—students and apprentices—after December; that's a good thing. But it also puts in black and white the government's plan to revert to the pre-pandemic level of unemployment support from 31 March 2021. As previous speakers have said, that is unnecessary; it's cruel. Two million Australians will be hurt by these cuts and Australians are already feeling anxious about Christmas, knowing that in just a few months these payments will be cut. Unlike the government, we on this side, Labor, know that the impacts of the pandemic will actually continue. They'll last for years. The pandemic isn't going to come to an end at the end of December or even on 31 March. We hope the vaccine is distributed and starts to work, but there will be ongoing economic and social impacts of what we have experienced this year. The Department of Social Services is expecting the number of people relying on unemployment support still to be elevated in four years time. So not only is a permanent increase in the base rate needed for the basic dignity of these people, so they can get by on a basic living wage with basic living costs covered, but it's also needed for the economic recovery. As I said, this money isn't going to be hidden under a bed; it's going to be spent in the economy.

We have argued that the minister should also have the flexibility to continue extending the coronavirus supplement for as long as the impact of the pandemic persists, not just until 31 March. And it's actually this power, which Labor insisted upon way back in, I think, March this year, that has enabled the government to introduce more generous partner income tests for the JobSeeker payment, make changes to the JobSeeker and youth allowance personal income tests which provide an income-free area of about $300 per fortnight compared with the prepandemic income-free area of $106 a fortnight—something, we are advised, around 15,000 people are benefiting from. We insisted on those changes. It also allowed the government to make changes to the JobSeeker and youth allowance eligibility criteria, so that sole traders, the self-employed, permanent employees who have been stood down or people self-isolating because they, or someone they are caring for, have been affected by the pandemic can continue to be eligible for payment. It has allowed them to waive the ordinary waiting period of one week for the seasonal work preclusion period and the newly arrived residents waiting period, and it has allowed them to extend the time people can maintain eligibility for payment and keep concession cards. We insisted on all of that. We pushed all of this because we understood the impacts and the follow-through.

With this bill, the government is forcing people to rely, effectively, on food bank services and emergency relief. When those payments are cut, where are they going to go? They're passing the buck to NGOs already at full capacity. They're passing the buck to charities that are already overwhelmed. They're passing the buck to volunteers and neighbours. Australians have made a tremendous effort during this pandemic. I know my colleagues here know how much work is being done in their local electorates by NGOs, charities and volunteers to help people in need and to support them. That doesn't mean the government should renege on its responsibility, but it has passed the buck again. Where they have allowed people to fall between those cracks that have become chasms, the pieces are being picked up by ordinary Australians who are doing good, who are caring for each other and who are doing the best in what are the most difficult circumstances. So I don't think it's fair to say that the government has just missed an opportunity. It's way more than that. Yes, they've missed an opportunity to deliver certainty for Australians doing it tough by delivering a permanent increase to JobSeeker in this bill. They've missed that opportunity, but they've also failed to fulfil their responsibility and their obligation as the government of Australia to support people in need.

There are simply not enough jobs for everyone who needs one. There are about seven jobseekers for each job vacancy in a capital city. If you're in the regions, forget about it; it's even more difficult to find a job. That is the result of the government's failure to deliver a jobs program for our regions. I'm not suggesting that it's all the government's responsibility. There are a lot of things that are out of the government's control; they can't control everything. But one thing they do have control over and one thing they can make an impact on is ensuring that each of those Australians who are doing it tough has at least the ability to cover the basics of living through this JobSeeker payment. I've heard from my own constituents how some have been forced to skip meals and to struggle throughout. Across Australia, there are one million jobseekers left out of work, including older workers. The budget left almost one million Australians on JobSeeker aged over 35 out of the budget and ineligible for its wage subsidy. Older Australians represent the largest cohort on JobSeeker, and they also have the most difficulty finding work because of structural barriers and age discrimination. And the government just left them out of the budget. They actively made it harder for them to find work, with the new JobMaker hiring credit skewed towards younger jobseekers under 35. In the last 18 years, the proportion of people on unemployment payments who are over 55 has gone from 8.8 to 26.6 per cent. It has more than trebled. It's also true that many women over the ages of 45 and 50 have struggled, and those numbers have shot up, including the percentages of homeless single women in that age group. There are currently over 300,000 people over 55 on unemployment support, and they are having the most trouble getting off the payment.

I said earlier that the impacts of the virus are far from over and that Australians this year have done a tremendous amount of work, a tremendous job looking out for one another, working with each other and for each other. And they now need this government to look out for them and their interests. The people that are looking for work don't need more cuts. The people struggling to support their families to put food on the table, to buy clothes for their kids and to live in dignity like every other Australian don't need more cuts to JobSeeker in this particular period, at Christmas and in March. Australians, including all those on JobSeeker, expect and deserve a government that will actually support them during the tough times, not make a show of it and splash around the money and then keep entire groups without support or remove that support from them. Australians deserve a rate that sees them living in dignity, not in poverty; that sees people able to look for work; and that gives them that opportunity to go out and look for work, not just to worry about how they would feed or clothe their family.

That's why we're moving this amendment: because it is about empathy. It is about care. In this period during the pandemic, one of the probably less tangible things has been the manner in which Australians have cared for each other, looked out for each other, gone out of their way as neighbours or volunteers or by working in a charity to help those who need it most. To me, one of the wonderful things that have come out of this terrible year has been the efforts that have been made by ordinary Australians to look after people around them in their community—and not just their local family and friends but their larger community. I think that's been reflected in electorates around the country. People have done this.

It's time now for the government to step up and also understand that empathy and care can be translated into better policy. That's why we're moving this amendment and ask those here to support it.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First of all, I congratulate the member for Wills on a really terrific speech that outlines the issues that I very much want to emphasise in my speech today. I would also like to thank the member for Barton for her fantastic advocacy in this area. Having recently visited my electorate with the member for Barton, I can say how much she is loved throughout the country for her care, her empathy and, hence, her wish to amend the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020.

It's abundantly clear to me that one of the truisms in health is that, whenever there is a global health issue, the people who suffer the most are the poor. That is certainly the case in the COVID-19 pandemic. Both around the world and also in Australia, the people who suffer the most in this pandemic are those who have the least to lose. I remind those opposite that people in our communities are doing it really tough. For all of their rhetoric and self-congratulations, I do not think that those opposite have a true grasp of the state of things, particularly in some of the more disadvantaged electorates around the country. Outside the affluent suburbs of our major cities, outside the streets of our gated communities and outside the offices of our CEOs, Australians are doing it especially tough.

I'm honoured to represent the people of Macarthur in this place, and I truly mean that. My community has really been fantastic in how it's dealt with the pandemic. My community's greatest asset is its people, and at the present time their spirit of generosity and camaraderie is really apparent. The people of Macarthur are resilient and they band together to support one another in times of need.

At this time every year I normally run a toy drive, and we give the toys to families in our community who are struggling. This year we have been overwhelmed, more than at any time previously, with the number of toys, the number of gifts and the number of offers of services and things that have been presented to my office to give to those who are really struggling in the community.

Unfortunately these times of need occur too often in my community, and often it's because of the ignorance and the lack of action by government. Our schools have a relatively high percentage of at-risk children, and unemployment and underemployment are historically much higher in my electorate than national averages. The point that I want to make is that my electorate is consistently neglected by the coalition government, both at a state and federal level, and people's standard of living and quality of life ultimately bear the burden of this neglect.

This government's failure to adequately attend to the needs of my community and to deliver investment in south-west Sydney is ensuring that poverty is ingrained. The government needs to understand that its ignorance towards the needs of my electorate is affecting the prospects of local businesses, limiting job availability and forcing people into unemployment queues. The government's consistently championed its new JobMaker scheme, yet it's deliberately starving my community of the very infrastructure and investment that would actually deliver jobs in time of need.

The blatant ideological attack on the people of south-west Sydney is becoming increasingly apparent to its residents. The lack of infrastructure spending, the neglect in our schools, the lack of health services and the lack of transport options are really putting people in my community at risk, and people in my community understand the need for investment in our growing regions.

The increasing development is putting incredible stress on our environment and on our local flora and fauna, in particular our koala population, yet this government does nothing. Like many of my residents, I cannot understand why the government continues to starve our region of basic infrastructure and services.

I've cared for generations of residents in my electorate of Macarthur, and I understand the challenges of local families and the challenges local businesses face. Many of the young people on the JobSeeker program have been patients of mine. They're decent people. They want to work. They want to do the right thing. But they are starved of resources by this government. The cutbacks in the JobSeeker arrangement, and in particular the cutback to JobSeeker to $40 a day, will bear tragic consequences and increase the stigma of being unemployed on young people in particular. My constituents want their kids to be given support and help to get into the jobs market, to get decent jobs and to support themselves. They want the peace of mind of knowing that their local schools are good schools, that their local hospitals are good hospitals, that there are local jobs and their local transport system works the same as it does on the North Shore and eastern suburbs. It is absolutely disgraceful that this government has allowed this two-tiered sociological system to develop, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

My residents want to have the ability to own a home in a great community and they don't want to be forced into a life of couch surfing, or paying most of their income on rent or crippling mortgage payments. They want to be able to get to the city and to other places for jobs et cetera without having to pay extortionate tolls. People want the assurance that our social security system is a safety net for all.

I've been saying for some time that the rate of—previously the dole, then it became Newstart and now it's another euphemism—JobSeeker is far too low. I've advocated for increases, yet this government ignored those pleas. I hate to see people in my community being stigmatised and traumatised by being made to eke out an existence—and it is only an existence—on a rate that doesn't allow them to dress properly, to eat properly or even to pay for transport costs to go and look for a job. I really am sick of seeing young people in my community not being offered the prospect of a decent education to help them get into the jobs market. I've seen how the other half lives. I understand that many people are able to access all the services that people in my community want, but they can't. We need to see a permanent increase in the rate of JobSeeker, and that is abundantly obvious to anyone who looks at it—every support organisation in my electorate, every doctor who works in my community and every high school principal who struggles to get his kids jobs once they leave school. We're a rich country. We have people doing very well. We can afford to allow people looking for work to have a decent support system to look after them, yet we're not doing it.

We can subsidise the jet planes of billionaires and we can allow our CEOs to earn salaries in the multiple millions of dollars, yet we can't allow young people looking for work to have enough money to live on decently and to be able to actually look for a decent job. As previously mentioned by the member for Wills, this whole system is a missed opportunity for reform. It's a missed opportunity from a government that really doesn't have a plan for those who are struggling the most in this pandemic. And this pandemic is not over. We know that it will be some time before our community gets back to growth and gets back to the type of community we lived in less than 12 months ago. The government needs to be committed to reform, particularly to support those who are struggling more than most. We've fared relatively well as a country in the COVID-19 pandemic, but it still has had a devastating impact around the world and on our economy.

The minister ought to have the ability to extend the coronavirus supplement for as long as this pandemic continues and for as long as our economy needs it. Having short-term increases over short periods of time is not good enough. The system needs to be reformed to care for those most at risk. There's a consensus belief that an increase to the rate of JobSeeker would be good for the economy. It seems utterly bewildering that the government would seek to have the economy operating in idle mode and removing desperately needed support for so many Australians at a time when our economy is crying out for more cash flow. Returning JobSeeker to the old Newstart rate isn't good for individuals, it isn't good for communities, it isn't good for jobs, and it isn't good for the economy. Even I understand that, if an individual has less money in their wallet, they have less money to spend on local businesses. The last thing we need in my community is to have our local businesses struggling even more. The government is already starving my community of desperately needed investment, and now they're seeking to turn off the tap for so many young people, in particular, in my community. There are those who say, 'We can't keep spending money,' but we are spending money on supporting other people. We need to be spending money on supporting the most disadvantaged. There simply aren't enough jobs to go around at the present time because the government has no job-creation program. We presently have seven jobseekers for every job vacancy. Matters are even grimmer in the outer metropolitan, rural and regional areas—a fact which the junior coalition partner should readily understand. Many of them, I think, even support a permanent increase in the JobSeeker rate.

In my community and all over the continent people are facing an anxious and uncertain Christmas. It's okay for us; we know that we'll be able to support our families this Christmas. For many people in my community they're not sure about that; they will have to rely on support from non-government agencies to get through Christmas. Christmas is actually a very stressful time for the most disadvantaged in our communities, and we need to be aware of that.

The proposed cut to the JobSeeker rate, and the threat to the futures of many people because of it, is even more worrying. The least the government can do for the thousands of jobseekers in each of our respective communities is to come to the table to provide some certainty and some concept that it wants to support them with a permanent increase in the rate of JobSeeker. If we want our economy to recover, people need to have money in their pockets to spend on our local businesses and money to support local jobs. It's a vicious cycle: if people have less to spend on local and small businesses, these very businesses have less to spend on wages and jobs. It's a very real risk that the move to reduce the rate of JobSeeker will result in more business closures and job losses, and that's the last thing we need.

I echo the sentiments of my friend and colleague the member for Barton and call upon the government to abandon their Christmas cuts to unemployment payments. This is just not the right thing to do. I also speak in favour of the amendment moved by the member for Barton, which is designed to get the government to not cut the coronavirus supplement at Christmas, permanently increase the rate of JobSeeker and enable the minister to keep paying the coronavirus supplement after March.

The reality is that this government has provided support too narrowly when it has come to the pandemic and this recession. We saw entire sectors of the workforce overlooked and neglected when it came to—

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hear some chatter from those opposite. They should know that in their communities there are many people suffering and who will suffer this Christmas. Casual workers are perhaps the worst off this Christmas. The government don't support dnata workers and they don't support older workers.

This government should be ashamed of itself. It has no plan and no idea. It had an opportunity to enact revolutionary change but it wouldn't do it. It wouldn't support the most disadvantaged, and that is to its unending shame. The government has left Australians on JobSeeker aged over 35—almost one million people—out of the budget and ineligible for its wage support structure. The government has unfortunately not seen the need to act to support all Australians. I often hear from constituents who, through no fault of their own, find themselves out of work yet are too young to retire. They are also unsupported. These people face structural barriers in gaining employment as well as age discrimination. These are people with families and mortgages. It's a terrible shame. The government must do better. (Time expired)

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First of all, I would like to take the opportunity to thank the government for the financial assistance they have provided to the over three million people who are Centrelink recipients through the provision of the coronavirus supplement since the original outbreak of the virus back in March.

I'd just like to make it clear: we actually don't need this legislation, the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020. The minister already has the power through regulation to extend the supplement. The only exception is if you're a student or apprentice on youth allowance—and they could deal with that separately. This legislation before the House today technically is not needed.

This legislation does two things, though. It does reduce the coronavirus supplement from $250 a fortnight to $150 a fortnight from 1 January 2021 but I think the underlying purpose of this legislation by the government is to draw a very hard line on the supplement from 31 March 2021, which sounds like a long time away but really isn't. The purpose, then, of this legislation is that there can no longer be any extensions to the coronavirus supplement.

That will take us back to the old Newstart rate, which I know would take many, many people—particularly older people who are having difficulty finding employment but are not yet at the age of retirement, many of whom have worked for decades but can no longer find employment—down to, for a single person, $282 a week. That's actually what every person in this House receives for one night for accommodation. It's pretty outrageous that we would do that to our fellow Australians. In my electorate you cannot rent a single property—not even a one-bedroom bedsit—for $280 a week. So to know that we are going to be taking people back to that rate from 31 March, as winter's coming, is outrageous, and I think we need to do better as a nation.

This is going to affect people on partner allowance, widow allowance or youth allowance, people who are on the JobSeeker payment and people who are receiving Abstudy living allowance, Austudy, parenting payment, farm household allowance—we're going to do this to our farmers as well—or special benefit. While this is going to affect the individual, in my community it's also going to affect my small businesses, because money circulates in the economy. So people won't be going to the butchers or to my fruit and veg stores. Do you know what that's going to mean? It's going to mean a constriction. That's going to mean that people who are currently working are potentially going to be under the threat of losing their jobs, and then we increase this problem.

There are going to be some big winners out of this, though: payday lenders, the pawn shops and the buy-now pay-later schemes. It's going to entrench debt. It's going to entrench hardship. It's unnecessary and it's really bad for the economy to do this. It's going to increase the demand on homelessness services, critical emergency assistance and food relief. It's going to increase the demand on mental health services. They're all services that government pays for, so we're actually not saving any money by doing this. It's a furphy to think that this is helping the budget's bottom line.

Just yesterday I received an email from a woman in her 50s who's currently homeless. She's worked for a long time in her life, but she doesn't have a job at the moment. She's trying to secure private rental in my electorate. Particularly on the south coast, there are up to a hundred people attending open inspections for one home, because we just don't have enough rental properties. She's worried about how she's going to live post the coronavirus supplement ending.

What do we need to do? This is an opportunity for the government to create a permanent increase to the JobSeeker rate. For a very long time the sector was calling for $95 a week. I think that that would be a very reasonable amount that would still provide a huge incentive for people to try and get off JobSeeker while also ensuring that the absolute basics of life can be met.

There's another thing we need to do, and we never really talk about it in this place: we need to lift the age criterion for moving from the single parenting payment to JobSeeker. Right now, when your youngest child is eight years of age, you are moved from that to JobSeeker. I don't know a single member in this place who would leave their eight-year-old child at home alone during working hours. If they managed to get a job, they would be there until at least five o'clock at night and then do the drive home. People say, 'But there's after-school care.' Well, not in the regions. It's very, very difficult to get a place at after-school care in the regions. So, for some parents who have been able to find employment, their children are home alone at night. I really don't think that's the Australia we want to see. We should be lifting that to at least age 10 or 12. I would say 12. That's the age a child is more independent and would move to high school. But eight years of age is unnecessarily cruel, and to be honest I'm quite surprised that that was a decision made by Labor. That shouldn't have been done, and I think that we need to address that urgently. It's a wicked thing to do.

With this legislation, we're put in a very difficult position. Do we support the legislation that gives another three months of just a little bit extra for people who have enormous bills in January?

I don't know about you, but in January it's the time when all the bills come through the door. If you have children at school, it's new schoolbags and pencil cases and shoes and school uniforms. And the council rates come in. Everything comes in just after Christmas in January, and that's when we're reducing people down to $75 a week. So we've got two choices: do we play chicken with the government and think that they're going to actually do a permanent increase or do we accept this, knowing that on 31 March we are condemning people to abject poverty? It's a horrible decision to make, and I would urge the government to rethink their legislation.

Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to start by echoing some of the sentiments exposed by the member for Mayo, particularly those sentiments around the beneficial elements of this bill, the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020, in its giving ability for the continuation of the coronavirus supplement until 31 March, which is obviously something we'd like to support. Indeed, the bill has several beneficial elements. It continues the coronavirus supplement for a number of allowances—youth allowance, students and apprentices—until after December as well as increased income-free areas, tapering rates and partner income tests, which were all introduced as part of the government's package to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

But I also want to express here real disappointment that this bill presents a huge missed opportunity for this government to permanently raise the rate of JobSeeker. In doing so, I support the amendments put forward by the shadow minister and the member for Barton, which are aimed at getting the government to, first of all, not cut the coronavirus supplement at Christmas; second, deliver a permanent increase to the base rate of the JobSeeker payment; and, third, retain ongoing powers to keep paying the coronavirus supplement after 31 March. Let's not pretend that 31 March is some kind of cut-off rate when the pandemic is suddenly going to stop and the economic impacts of the pandemic are suddenly going to stop. The amendments also retain ongoing powers to make other beneficial changes to taper rates, income tests and eligibility criteria after 31 March 2021.

The member for Mayo made a very good point—and it's a point I often make—about the fact that, as parliamentarians, we get $280 a day or thereabouts for our travel allowance. I thank her for making that point. I think it behoves each one of us in parliament to reflect on that today—and possibly every day that we're here. That daily allowance that we get would be equivalent to a week of payment on JobSeeker if it goes back to its pre-coronavirus rate—$280 a week compared to $280 a day. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing against the fact that obviously we need a travel allowance. Yes, those of us who rent or stay in hotel accommodation do need that, but I think it's important for us as parliamentarians to reflect on just what that means: our daily rate is equivalent to what the JobSeeker rate would go down to once this coronavirus supplement has ceased—$280 a week. I ask each and every parliamentarian—there are not many in the House today, but I know that there are those who are possibly watching this in their office—to reflect on how they could live, and if they could live, on $280 a week. You're living on $280 a day today. Think about what it would be like trying to live on that for a week.

I've lived on that. I've lived on that and raised two children, and it's not easy. You have to choose between putting food on the table and paying your rent. Often, you have to do that. As the member for Mayo, the member for Macarthur and the member for Wills rightly pointed out, we're moving into Christmas and, come January, the bills will pile up. You'll get your rates bills, which can be in the thousands, and the electricity bill and the gas bill. Often, you'll end up putting those bills off and try to make payment arrangements because you need to buy books to send your kids to school with. You need to buy their school uniforms and their pens and pencils and other things they need to go to school with. That can run into the hundreds of dollars as well. We're on a pretty good wicket here, and sometimes it's really easy for us to forget that there are so many Australians who are in such a dire state that even $10 is so much more significant for them.

I want to talk a little bit about what this bill does. We know that at the start of the pandemic the government introduced the coronavirus supplement, which was an additional $550 a fortnight. We supported all of that. In fact, we'd called for the government to have these wage and JobSeeker supports in place not just during the coronavirus supplement but even before that. Members on this side have been calling for an increase in the JobSeeker rate, and whatever it was called before then—what was it called before then?

Ms Burney interjecting—

The Newstart rate; thank you, member for Barton. Currently, the coronavirus supplement is paid through these regulation-making powers of the minister under the Social Security Act. This bill takes that away, beyond 31 March. That's quite curious to me, because surely the impacts of this pandemic will linger beyond 31 March. I don't know why it's 31 March. It seems to be some kind of arbitrary cut-off point that the government chose. I can't quite understand why—perhaps it was picked out of a hat. I don't know. But it's clearly obvious, I think, to everybody in this place that the economic and social impacts of the coronavirus pandemic are going to linger well beyond that.

Yesterday, in question time, the government ministers who were asked questions referred—I don't know if anyone else noticed—to the term 'comeback' quite consistently. I think it's the next most used thing after 'snapback'. Remember when they used to use snapback? Now they're saying comeback. I think that's quite telling, because it really speaks to what's going on here. We have a government that thinks it's okay to pay $30 million for a piece of land that's worth $3 million and thinks it's okay to stand up for a former senator utilising $4,000 an hour—it's not even a day, it's an hour; I don't even know what $4,000 an hour looks like—of taxpayers' money for what, essentially, is a job interview. Yes, we support an Australian in the OECD but it's a post-political career—yet the government expects a million Australians who are unemployed to make do on $40 a day. What does $40 a day buy you these days? It doesn't buy you much, really. Imagine having to pay your rent, your rates, your electricity bill and all your other bills and still buy food and—if you've got children—feed your children on $40 a day.

I think government members' use of this term 'comeback' is telling of the philosophy behind this bill. It really amounts to abject cruelty and the dismissal of Australians who are struggling through this pandemic—Australians who have lost their jobs, as well as Australians who are in insecure employment and know that they could lose their jobs tomorrow. I think it says a lot about how this government treats them. But what do you expect from government members who think that it's okay to live on $40 a day, who think that they could do it but have never done it, and who talk about 'lifters and leaners' and 'giving a hand up, not a handout'? If that's the philosophy and the ideology with which this government approaches our robust social security system, then I really do despair for our nation. Australia is the envy of the world for its social security system and for the fact that we have a system that looks after the most vulnerable.

One of the other things that this bill does is remove the minister's ability to make regulations that waive the liquid assets waiting period and assets period. The government shouldn't have reinstated the liquid assets waiting period in September. That has had real consequences for people. I was approached by a resident of Cowan, a resident in my community, who had been let go from a job that he had worked in for a number of years. He got a very small redundancy payment, nothing to write home about—let me just say, it was a lot less than what some members here will get as a pension when they leave. With that, he bought a car, because he needed a car to look for work, and paid some bills, but he was unable to get JobSeeker payments because of the waiting period. He was unable to get any form of assistance because of the waiting period. With that, he faced homelessness, he faced poverty, he had to go to food banks to feed himself, and he was unable to look after his son, who he shares custody of with his ex-partner. It really had an impact on his mental health and wellbeing as well. These are the real consequences of some of the measures in this bill.

I don't think there is a member in this House—I'd be surprised if there were—who has not had people from their electorates, like people from Cowan, come to them in a desperate state because of losing their jobs, because of being unable to find employment—particularly those over the age of 50. Let's face it: if you're over 50 and lose a job, it is so much more difficult to find a job. People have come saying that there is nothing for them, that there is nowhere for them to go, and that there is nothing for them in the government's 2020 budget to help them either find a job or get into to work to help them recover from the economic and social impacts of the coronavirus.

In closing, I reiterate my opening points. Whilst there are many beneficial elements of this bill—and we definitely support continuing the coronavirus supplement for youth allowance after December—the amendments that the member for Barton has put forward are going to benefit all Australians. In particular, for my community in Cowan, they are amendments that we need to have to ensure that those most vulnerable members of the Cowan community are able to get through what are going to be the lingering impacts of the coronavirus. Other members have mentioned the broader economic impact of not being able to support local businesses, not being able to buy local and not being able to spend money in businesses and the flow-on impact that that'll have on businesses as well; that's another concern that I share.

I support the amendment put forward by the member for Barton. And I urge this government very strongly to consider the fact that returning to the JobKeeper payment precoronavirus is going to have a significant impact on Australians and a flow-on impact on the economy. This time is the perfect time for us to be discussing a permanent increase to the JobSeeker payment.

Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Skills) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020 and on the amendment moved by the wonderful member for Barton, who continues to push the Morrison government for a proper safety net which actually catches people when they need it—a safety net which doesn't let people fall through the cracks, which is why we are so disappointed in this bill. It is a missed opportunity for the government to deliver a permanent increase to the base rate of unemployment support—to lift it from being punitive, poverty inducing and a barrier to getting one's life back on track—and that is why Labor has moved an amendment to call on the government to permanently increase the base rate of the JobSeeker payment and not cut the coronavirus supplement at Christmas, of all times.

There are many beneficial elements to this bill, including continuing the coronavirus supplement for youth allowance recipients after December as well as the increase to income-free areas, taper rates and partner income tests that have been introduced as part of the pandemic. However, this bill puts in black and white the government's cruel plan to revert to pre-pandemic levels of unemployment support from March 2021. It will revert JobSeeker back to the $40-a-day rate. This is unnecessary and cruel.

In the wake of this pandemic, the budget was an opportunity for the government to deliver lasting structural change for Australians needing help while boosting businesses and jobs, and they've missed that opportunity. Labor won't stand for it. We know people are doing it tough. There are 1.8 million Australians who will be relying on JobSeeker by Christmas. In my electorate of Cooper, close to 12,000 people right now are relying on JobSeeker just to survive. There are local folk who, through no fault of their own, have found themselves without a job. Some are people, quite frankly, who could have kept a job during the pandemic had the government extended JobKeeper to their industries, like the workers laid off from La Trobe University; like many casual workers; like workers in the arts and entertainment industry, of whom there are many in my electorate; and, of course, like so many women.

I was contacted by a constituent called Neil just recently. Neil is 53 years old. He and his wife, between them, have 35 years experience of working in the university research sector. Because JobKeeper was not extended to their sector they have both lost their jobs. They have two small children. They are not eligible, unfortunately, for JobSeeker, because they are finally at a stage in their lives—because it's very difficult in the university sector and it's very precarious, insecure work where you move from contract to contract; very few people have permanent tenure—in which they have saved enough money to put a deposit on a house. Unfortunately for them, they lost their jobs because there was no JobMaker, and they are not eligible for JobSeeker because of that small nest egg. He is 53 years old. He fears he will not be able to get another job. The JobMaker scheme, of course, as we know, is an incentive for people to employ people under 35. Neil is 53. He feels desperate, he feels let down and he feels alone.

Everybody knows that it would be unthinkable to push the JobSeeker payment back to pre-pandemic levels: $40 a day is impossible to live on. It would be an act beyond forgiveness and definitely beyond the boundaries of responsible government. Constituents have told me that the extra money means being able to live without anxiety, being able to treat the kids to a new book or a new pair of shoes—let alone have a decent meal or even a meal out. One single mum told me it has meant she's been able to finally focus on setting up her own business. The increased JobSeeker, along with the short period of time when she had access to free child care, meant that she was able to sit at her desk and start that business from scratch, finally having the time to give it the attention it deserves. Imagine that: assisting someone to actually make their own way—making sure that people can eat, be healthy, be well dressed and be mentally well and ready to go out and find work and to actually stand on their own two feet. God forbid that any government would want to help people do that!

When it comes to unemployed people, the Prime Minister and his government are only interested in chasing illegal and immoral robodebts, driving people further into poverty and desperation. The Prime Minister has often tried to call on the long bow of Australian values, but they do not know the true meaning of Australian values, and it makes me furious when they pretend they do. Their values are all about dog eat dog, or kick people when they're down. If you're poor, if you're sick, if you need an education, if you're unemployed, if you're young, if you're old, if you're a woman or if you're from a migrant background, then, bad luck: you're on your own.

The Treasurer let the cat out of the bag when he said he drew on Thatcher and Reagan for inspiration. The idea that governments should step aside and let markets rip is the core of his values. Decades of Thatcherism and Reaganomics have created the inequality and insecurity we face today. Wealth didn't trickle down to the masses; it flowed all the way into the deep, deep pockets of a very privileged few. 'Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps,' they say. There is one job for every eight jobseekers out there right now—a statistic that in reality is much worse given the number of employed people who are actually looking for more jobs to get by. For all of those people, the situation is dire. There just aren't enough jobs. Even if you pulled yourself up by your blooming bootstraps there still wouldn't be enough jobs. As we've pointed out in this House over and over again, this country was going downhill long before the pandemic. With insecure work, record low wages growth and rampant underemployment, this government was overseeing the weakest growth since the global financial crisis.

Let's talk about what's missing in this bill. It's jobs. We have to tackle the casualised and increasingly insecure labour market to deliver a generation of job creation and record low unemployment. The last people willing to listen to about how we need to do that are Thatcher and Reagan fans. Rather, we can turn to our own history for a blueprint of how to do it. After the Second World War, the Chifley government implemented a full employment policy, outlined in a white paper written by HC 'Nugget' Coombs. It was a tangible plan to realise the potential of all Australian workers. It begins with the simple recognition that the people of Australia will demand and are entitled to expect full employment. It places the responsibility for delivering that full employment squarely upon the government's shoulders. It committed the government to an economic framework that ensured that everyone who wanted a job could get one, and at the same time it allowed our country to welcome two million migrants from postwar Europe into the economy.

That's fanciful, I hear you and many of the younger generation say. But it was a policy that prevailed in this country for some 30 years. Even successive Liberal governments maintained it, keeping unemployment at or below two per cent. It meant pulling policy levers to get people employed, like co-investment in the automobile industry or direct government employment in utilities and the Public Service, through apprenticeships, traineeships and cadetships and through massive public works programs and smaller ones at a local government level. It's not fanciful, and with political will and acknowledgement of the failures of the neoliberal approach that has not created the resilient economy that we need, we could achieve it again. I see a sustainable future for our economy with direct investment in revitalising our energy grid, encouraging investment in wind and solar farms, building a hydrogen industry, closing the loop on our own waste management and hiring Indigenous rangers to reconnect us with traditional land use and care.

A full-employment policy could support the workforce we need to regenerate our environments devastated by last summer's bushfires and help mitigate the climate emergency. It could include procurement policies that help our manufacturing sector grow and diversify so we're not reliant on global supply chains for vital products. We could increase the number of permanent workers in the public sector, including in services like Centrelink phone lines. We could clear the visa backlog. It could drive vocational training and entry-level opportunities for good, steady jobs to ensure that the NDIS and the aged-care sectors deliver for the vulnerable people in our community. A full-employment policy with a jobs compact is key to ensuring we have a workforce that is skilled, ready and able to build the infrastructure and the society of the future. Yes, it will cost money, but the return would be immeasurable. The basic economic premise that money in people's pockets is what drives the economy is sound.

We need a plan for jobs, but we need a good, secure safety net to go alongside that. As the member for Barton said, we think that people right across this chamber, in their heart of hearts, know that the base rate of JobSeeker is too low. It will return millions of Australians to poverty. The effects of poverty stay with people for life, and the idea that somehow or other you can just pull your socks up, strap your shoes on and get on with life is not the reality for many people living in this country. We in this place, elected representatives, have a duty to those people. We have a duty of care and we have the capacity to make their lives ones of dignity.

I urge those who sit opposite to consider the amendments to this bill. We can pull people out of poverty. We can give people the opportunity to ready themselves for jobs, to find work, to start their own businesses, to make sure that they actually have some bootstraps to pull up, to make sure that their children have all the opportunities that a secure life can give them: a roof over their heads, plenty of food on the table, a good education and parents that are not absolutely strung out with anxiety because they don't have the income and the means to provide that for their families.

Society needs nothing more than a secure job and a good social safety net that protects you when for a reason out of your own control you find yourself without a job. Mr Deputy Speaker Wallace, I commend these amendments to you and to the government. They need your support.

Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020. Everyone agrees we are managing the health impacts of the COVID-19 crisis well in Australia. Thanks to Australians listening to the medical advice from experts and following the restrictions implemented by their home state or territory, we are for the most part COVID free. It's been wonderful seeing over the last couple of weeks the images of families and friends being reunited after being separated for months. So, from a health perspective, Australia is currently in a very good position. However, it is a far different story when it comes to the subsequent economic recession we are in.

If you looked at just the reports of a booming stock market, surging property prices and the reduction in the number of people receiving JobKeeper, you could be fooled into thinking we were back to normal. In fact, I think that in question time today the Treasurer will spruik the GDP figures that came out today that returned only half of the damage to the economy that we have suffered over the last nine months. But nothing could be further from the truth. That's been one of the strangest things about this recession. Certain industries and sectors have shown very positive signs of recovery; however, for significant and growing portions of our community, their circumstances are very grim—much grimmer than they were at the peak of the COVID-19 lockdown.

During the last fortnight I've had the privilege to visit some wonderful organisations helping the growing number of vulnerable people in Shortland. Many of my constituents might be surprised that there are food banks and distribution centres in our community. I want to acknowledge and pay tribute to the wonderful volunteers at Belmont community kitchen, OzHarvest at Windale, Manna House, Survivor's R Us and Southlake Marketplace for the truly magnificent work they are doing in the community I have the privilege to represent. At this time of year, particularly in this recession, many people are doing it tough, and these wonderful organisations, supported by their incredible volunteers, make an immeasurable impact and difference to the lives of so many people. Throughout this pandemic they have seen and heard firsthand how many people in my community are struggling. I want to thank all these volunteers for being there for those in need in our community.

At OzHarvest Newcastle, thank you to Elaine and Garry Ennis, Mary Riley, Max and Pam Gentle, Dale Bray, June Butler, Brian McEnearney, Kathy Herbert, Sean Carver, Helen Atkins, Ruby Wilson, Peter Gilford, Trish Stevenson, Pauline James, Sally Lucas, Bryan Wright, Lesley Byrne, Wendy Sahu-Khan, Sandy Olive, Christine Harvey, Toni Quinn, Peter Tom, Astrid Michaelsen, Carmel Byrne, Cathy Robertson, David Clausen, Michelle Lembcke, Colleen McKellar, Mark Henderson, Genevieve Briars, Nicole Fernance and Janet Manderson. OzHarvest has also had assistance from local Rotary clubs, so my thanks also to Gail and Kevin, Lyn Dennis, Lyn S, Richard Addinall, Lou Buzai, Tom Burgess, Paul, Janine, Pat, Marilyn, Kathy Brogan, and Louise.

Southlake Marketplace has had a number of volunteers working from their five sites throughout this pandemic. Thank you to Terry, Tracey, Wendy, Ange, David, Graham, Nicole, Tracey, Betty, Ray, Vicki, Kerry-Anne, Richard, Andrew, John, Jeff, Lynette, Moira, Kate, Eve, Jess, Hannah, Jessica, Carolyn, Corrie and founding director, the formidable Christine Mastello.

At Survivor's R Us, thank you to Adam Young, Kevin Humbles, Margaret Humbles, Adedevi Adekanmbi, Stephanie Turner, Sandra Eaves, Toby Sweetman, Liam Stokes, Jarrod Sawczuh, Hayden Sawczuh, Leanne Arnott, Cathy Arnott, Rynell Williams, Margaret Yoke Low, Jo, Bailey Clark and Ann-Maria Martin, the founder of this great organisation.

The feedback I've received from the managers of the local food banks I just mentioned was very disturbing, and I was reminded this recession is far from over, and that's the context for both the debate around this legislation and the second reading amendment moved by the member for Barton. The clients of the food banks are facing a much more difficult situation than they were six months ago, and this is directly linked to the government's cuts to JobKeeper and JobSeeker. There are 1.6 million Australians relying on the JobSeeker unemployment support, with the government predicting 1.8 million will be on JobSeeker by the end of the year. There are a further 1.5 million Australians on JobKeeper. The latest data from the ABS, released last month, show that the official unemployment rate rose to seven per cent, that over 10 per cent of Australians are still underemployed and that the proportion of people looking for work increased. There are 2.4 million Australians who are either out of work or desperately needing more work—this year is an historic high. The figures we've seen this year, including the 2.4 million, overshadow any previous figures for this measure—2.4 million Australians out of work or desperately needing more hours to meet their financial commitments.

In my electorate of Shortland, we have about 8,000 JobSeeker recipients and an estimated 17,000 who depend upon JobKeeper, so nearly 30 per cent of all Shortland residents aged between 15 and 65 depend upon one of these payments that the government has cut. And this brings me to the feedback I received from the food banks in my electorate. Ann-Maria from Survivor's R Us at Cardiff told me that at the height of the lockdown they were providing food packages to around 150 families. They have seen a massive spike in demand since the government's cuts to JobKeeper and JobSeeker in late September. They are now providing food packages to over 450 families. Just reflect upon that for a moment: demand from families in danger of starving tripled at exactly the same time this government cut JobKeeper and JobSeeker. This is no coincidence.

I received similar evidence from Christine from Southlake Marketplace. Christine was literally in tears as she explained the massive surge in demand for their food parcels. Southlake Marketplace were assisting 400 families at the height of the lockdown. Immediately after the September cuts, this surged to around a thousand families in need of assistance to have enough food. Let me restate that: demand for help with the basics of life is at 250 per cent the level of pre-September cuts because of this government's decisions around JobKeeper and JobSeeker. Christine also made the point that they cannot currently meet the demand for Christmas hampers and toys for families and kids in our area. She was distraught at the thought of turning away families, meaning kids would not receive a Christmas present. It's obvious that families in my community are hurting because of deliberate decisions of this Liberal-National government.

The cuts to JobKeeper and JobSeeker are a deliberate act of cruelty by this craven, out-of-touch government, and I do not say that lightly. This cruelty means thousands of families in my community would be at risk of starvation without the intervention of charities like those in the electorate that I've mentioned previously. The government has chosen to cut JobKeeper and JobSeeker at the worst possible time. Removing much-needed support to those who need it the most is bad economics and disgusting social policy, and it's a damning indictment on this government. To make matters worse, we're hearing stories of families being evicted from their homes despite an eviction moratorium being officially extended by the New South Wales government. Loan deferrals have also been ended by many banks, meaning those families with mortgages are also facing grim circumstances. Many are not only struggling to put food on their table; they are struggling to keep a roof over their head.

I call upon the government to stop these cuts, which will go deeper in the new year, to ensure that families in my electorate and around Australia can have food on the table and a roof over their heads at Christmas. I am extremely concerned about the further cuts to JobKeeper and JobSeeker and the impact they will have on those who are already struggling. This recession is having huge impacts on people's mental health and wellbeing. Many support services have spoken about the significant increase in demand for their services. This will only get worse when the support payments are reduced and JobKeeper is removed altogether.

Sadly, just yesterday there was a report about the rise in domestic violence in Australia during the COVID pandemic. This is something that the local food banks in my community are very aware of as well. Christine from Southlake Marketplace said that the spike in domestic violence is something she'd never seen before. Out of the hundreds of new people she has been helping during the pandemic, she estimated that one-third of them are women who have fled domestic violence. Similarly, Ann-Maria from Survivor's R Us said the number of domestic violence victims seeking support from her organisation has increased 65 per cent during the pandemic. These are devastating figures and they are happening right across our nation. One of the main reasons for this increase in domestic violence is unemployment and financial stress and, again, this will only get worse when JobKeeper and JobSeeker are cut in the new year.

The government's new JobMaker hiring credit won't fix the financial struggles that so many people are facing. Despite their initial claims that JobMaker will create 450,000 jobs, Treasury recently conceded that it will actually only be around 45,000 jobs. That's nowhere near enough to address the unemployment crisis. About 2.4 million Australians are out of work or desperately needing more hours versus 45,000 new jobs under JobMaker. That's before you consider that there are 928,000 Australians aged over 35 on unemployment benefits who have been deliberately excluded from the scheme by this cruel government.

This economic crisis is far from over, yet this government is planning on removing crucial support from those who need it the most. It's symbolic of this government's attempt to pass the baton of the economic recovery from government to business and consumers—and they're doing it in a very ham-fisted way. They're cutting direct government support to people who need that money the most—to people who literally spend every dollar they receive from the government, thereby stimulating the local economy. As I said, 25,000 Shortland residents in receipt of JobKeeper or JobSeeker will have those payments cut or disappear directly, pulling millions of dollars a fortnight out of the Shortland economy.

At the same time, the government is embarking on their very courageous investment allowance to stimulate business investment. The challenges for that investment allowance which go to the recovery from the coronavirus recession—which is at the heart of the debate on this legislation—is that first off, businesses, even if they get 100 per cent instant asset write-off, are going to be very reluctant to invest in new pieces of equipment unless they're sure that they will get new customers to buy the products from that new machinery. If businesses have very little confidence in the economy—and we are seeing cuts to JobKeeper and JobSeeker that will actually deprive money from their customers—why would businesses invest in new pieces of equipment?

Secondly, if you look at the distributional impact of who will use this investment allowance, the businesses that have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID recession aren't capital intensive businesses; they're cafes, hotels, accommodation, bars and bistros. For many of these places the biggest piece of capital equipment they are likely to invest in might be a new fridge or a new coffee machine, whereas this investment allowance is obviously much more relevant to capital intensive manufacturing, for example, where a facility might spend $5 million on a new laser cutting machine. So even if a business thought they had the customers to justify new investment, this investment allowance is targeted at businesses that were not impacted by the COVID recession as directly as those in hospitality or accommodation. This is one of the flaws with trying to pass the baton of the economic recovery away from government to business.

Another impact would be where the personal tax cuts are targeted. Targeting those tax cuts at middle- and high-income earners, as this government has done, will be less effective than providing direct assistance to low-income earners. The marginal propensity to save is higher for high-income earners. In plain in English, if you're on a high income you can save more of your income than someone on a low income. By targeting these tax cuts to high-income earners, some of that money will inevitably leak out of the economy into savings rather than be recirculating through consumption, thereby stimulating the economy.

The philosophical underpinnings of this legislation, which is effectively a cut to JobSeeker, coupled with the fact that JobKeeper will be abolished early in the new year, really highlight the flawed approach that this government has adopted to recovering from the recession. It's a recession where we still have 2.4 million Australians who are either out of work or who want more hours, we have up to a tripling in demand for the services of food banks and we've had huge spikes in domestic violence. And what is this government's response? To cut government assistance, and to cut government assistance at the worst possible time. Labor, on the other hand, has called for a more balanced approach: a permanent increase to the JobSeeker payment; investment in things that enhance productivity and labour force participation like child care; a reinvestment in Australian manufacturing to bring those jobs home; and investment in reducing power prices through the $20 billion Rewiring the Nation initiative.

This legislation is flawed. Labor has made known our view about what parts of it we will support. Justice demands a permanent increase in the JobSeeker supplement, not just so those families can survive but, quite frankly, so the economy can recover.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to be able to speak to some of the matters in the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020. Obviously there are some things that we support and things we would like to see done differently, and I will talk to some of those points. Essentially, this bill is a missed opportunity, as so many bills have been during the response to COVID.

It's a missed opportunity to deliver a permanent increase to the base rate of the unemployment benefit. I don't think anyone in this chamber seriously believes that it is possible to do anything other than, possibly, subsist for a short time on the paltry $40 a day that is the current permanent base rate. I think we all recognise that there is terrible hardship amongst those who experience unemployment, especially those who experience it in the long-term. For people who live outside Sydney, in regions like mine on the edge of Sydney, that entire base rate amount could go on your transport cost to get to a single job interview. Those sorts of costs mean that you can't afford to get employed. You can't afford to stay unemployed, but you can't afford to get employed. We're creating terrible mental health and economic consequences for people, and this bill is a missed opportunity to address some of those things.

The other concern that I want to address in a bit more detail is the plan to take away so many of the other supports that were put in place, which the minister was given the power to do to respond and react to COVID. Taking away the minister's ability to pay the coronavirus supplement after 31 March means that there will be millions of families still carrying the scars of the economic impact of the pandemic who will have no hope of getting back on their feet.

The timing of this, around Christmas, is curious. This is a time when we want to encourage a boost in retail spending. We want to encourage people to pump money into their local shops. Yet the time frame that the government's put on this means it's a real dampener on what we might otherwise see. I know that my local shops, from the top of the mountains down to the bottom of the mountains, across to Windsor and Richmond and into the smaller villages, are hoping to see people feeling confident enough to spend money over Christmas and through January. Keep in mind that 12 months ago our local economy stopped because of bushfires in November. By November and early December last year, we'd lost houses, the place was covered in smoke and international visitors had stopped coming. So we're 12 months into an economic catastrophe for many businesses. Of course, the wage subsidy that we pushed for, JobKeeper, has helped maintain the viability of some businesses through this period, but they were coming off a very low base. If their community, which relies on JobSeeker, has less money to spend, that's going to directly show up in their daily tallies, in their daily turnover, and they'll feel that.

At the start of the pandemic, the government introduced the coronavirus supplement, that additional payment of $550 a fortnight to those who were receiving the unemployment support, as well as to single parents and students. People told me that made an enormous difference. People were able to pay not only their rent but also their electricity bills. They were able in some cases to get ahead on some of their bills. We've already had 40-degree days in Western Sydney and Greater Western Sydney, so people know their bills are going to be higher because they need to use their air-conditioning, if they have it, or fans or other things to cool down. They know it pays to get ahead in their bills. People did that, and people are really proud of the fact that they've been able to do some planning ahead in some cases.

I also had parents tell me they were able to buy new shoes for their kids. That always comes up as being one of the fundamental things that you want to be able to do as a parent—to give your kids the shoes they need as their feet grow and grow and grow. I remember, from when my kids were little and I was just starting a business, the pressure to try and keep those kids' feet in shoes. How people do that on unemployment benefit or the payments that they receive is anyone's guess. The fact is that they haven't been able to.

The coronavirus supplement really made a difference and gave people a sense of hope. I know that, for one young woman, the supplement meant she was able to cease being homeless. She was able to get a small place of accommodation that she could afford in the Hawkesbury. It's a notoriously expensive area in which to live, especially across the river, but she was able to find something. But, through one of the agencies supporting her, we now hear that, as the supplement reduces, she is recognising she won't be able to maintain that home. She will, in her mind, just have to go back to being homeless. That is an absolute travesty—that someone has had a taste of what it's like to get their life back together by having a roof over their head and this government seems to have no qualms in taking that away from people.

It's clear that the impact of the pandemic is going to persist for many years. Some people will probably have snapped back; some may have done what the government envisaged was going to be the economic strategy early on. But for every snapback we know that there are some who may never make it back. The message I keep hearing from the groups supporting vulnerable people is that those who they see as traditionally vulnerable have become even more vulnerable throughout this period. If we look at the number of people relying on unemployment support, we know that is still going to be elevated in four years time. There are not enough jobs. This government has not got a plan in place to help stimulate job creation or create jobs directly. So we know there will not be enough jobs for people. Right now there are eight people for every available job. Yet we're saying: 'If you're one of the seven who can't find work, that's just too bad. The tap is being turned off.' It's unnecessary and it's cruel.

I think we in this place have to recognise that the increase has done a couple of things. It has helped people financially, it has helped them within themselves and it has helped them with their own mental health in being able to feel a sense of hope and a sense of purpose. They are three really good things. In fact, I'm happy to congratulate the government on recognising the need for a supplement. But I am so disappointed that the government's goodwill in doing that doesn't extend to going forward into the future.

On the timing of the pulling away of this support: in Labor senators' additional comments in the report of the Senate inquiry into this bill, I particularly noted the comments by Anglicare Australia. Anglicare said to that inquiry:

… officials from the Department of Social Services talk about the kinds of numbers that they were expecting to see unemployed in April—

These are the comments of Ms Chambers, from Anglicare—

They were predicting an increase from what we're seeing today. So, as to pulling these benefits back, we are arguing—I do need to be clear about this—for a permanent increase—

in the JobSeeker payment—

In the meantime, it is clearly not the time to be pulling this back. And not only that, but, as to the timing and the actual date that we're looking at this decrease coming in, we know, from decades of data, that, in emergency relief and in financial counselling services, January is always the peak for those services. It is an expensive time of year for families. There's preparation for the school year. There are increased costs in cooling their dwellings, especially in the last couple of summers we've had. There are Christmas peaks. There are all those kinds of things. So, even down to the month and the day, it is not the right time.

Why won't the government listen to the data from reputable organisations? Every month of the year, they're out there helping people. They don't just turn up at Christmas; they are there the whole time. And they're saying that this is the worst possible time to be pulling these supports away.

I spoke with the CEO of Foodbank in the last week or so. They have identified so many problems with the current situation and the government's plan for reducing relief. Foodbank says, 'Demand for food relief is up, and we believe we have not yet seen peak hunger in the COVID-19 crisis.' While charities are seeing the need for food relief become erratic and unpredictable, the overall demand to the end of September was up by an average of 47 per cent from pre-COVID days. Charities are reporting a further jump of 25 per cent since JobSeeker and JobKeeper were reduced at the end of September. The latest dashboard figures I received, for November, say that charities are anticipating a 45 per cent increase in people seeking food relief this Christmas versus the same time last year. To meet the Christmas demand they expect they will need 41 per cent more food. So yet more evidence that this is a time of year when people really need support, yet this is the very time of year the government has chosen to pull away these supports.

Within my community, the organisations that are going to feel this most are not just the people who provide Christmas Day meals—those groups like Belong Blue Mountains and all the different people who even in COVID times have found a way to deliver a Christmas meal—but those people who are constantly out there with food parcels. HCOS, Hawkesbury's Helping Hands, Hawkesbury Community Kitchen and The Living Room are all seeing increases—everyone from Gateway Family Services at the bottom of the mountains to Junction 142 at the top. These are the organisations that will pay the price, in fact, for the government's decisions here. So I really urge the government to think about the timing.

The other gap in this legislation is that it still provides nothing for older workers who have essentially been left out, overlooked by the government, workers like Marco who I spoke about in question time a few weeks ago who's just a little over 35—in fact maybe a decade or two over 35. He's not old enough for older worker support but he's too old for the additional support the government's providing for young jobseekers. It's unfathomable that you would rule out an entire category of people, one million of them, who just aren't going to get any additional assistance when they actually represent the largest cohort of jobseekers. They have the most difficult time finding work because of structural barriers and age discrimination. And that's not new; that's something older workers have come and spoken to me about since I've been a member of parliament. In the last 18 years the proportion of people who are over 55 on unemployment payments has gone from 8.8 per cent to 26.6 per cent—so it's more than tripled. Currently there are more than 307,000 people who are over 50 on unemployment support and they're having the most trouble getting off the payment—a missed opportunity.

The big gap is clearly that, alongside pulling back the supports, there's no corresponding focus on jobs and training. What we could be seeing from this government is a real drive for jobs in the renewable energy sector. We could be seeing jobs being created with a social housing program to upgrade and build new social housing, so that people like the woman who I fear is going to become homeless as the supplement supports are pulled away have somewhere safe that they can go. We could be funding people to help the environment recover from the devastating bushfires we had. There has been so little on-the-ground assistance flowthrough from this government for bushfire recovery in World Heritage areas. The volunteers are out there; they're working their guts out. They need support from this government. That's the missed opportunity.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020 is a largely unnecessary bill. The government actually doesn't need to pass most of it; it's a stunt. The government think they're being clever mixing up a few nice things with a whole lot of nasty things, but they don't even have the guts, the courage, to tell people what this bill is actually about. They're bundling things up in one bill and going, 'Well, if they vote for it, then we can say they're voting for cuts; and if they don't vote for it, then we'll say they're voting against nice things.'

There are a few things, sure, we should vote for. I don't think they actually need the power to continue the coronavirus supplement for youth allowance after December. They could probably do that; the minister almost certainly has the power to do that. But they wanted to put nice stuff in it: continued increases for income-free areas, taper rates, partner income tests—fine, good. Vote for it. They probably don't need the power, given the extraordinary emergency powers that the minister got at the start of this year to do these kinds of things during this pandemic, this national emergency. So they already have a lot of these powers but actually what this is about, astoundingly, is taking the minister's powers away—the very powers that have been used through the pandemic to provide the coronavirus supplement, to provide the increases to social security payments. The government thinks it's being clever. They don't actually want to put a bill before the parliament that says, 'We're going to cut unemployment benefits to $40 a day,' because people might actually clue in that that's exactly what they're going to do. All they're going to say is: 'Oh, we're just adjusting the minister's powers.' If these powers go, if this bill is voted up, in practice what it will do is implement a massive horrible, nasty cut to unemployment benefits.

The bill implements, in effect, the budget that the government just handed down; it bakes in cuts to unemployment benefits for well over a million Australians trying to survive on the unemployment benefit right now. It bakes in a cut to the unemployment benefit back to the old rate of $40 a day. I don't believe anyone in this House can imagine living on $40 a day. I don't think I could live on $40 a day. The evidence says anyone who tries to live on $40 a day cannot actually survive without ending up in poverty. This is a cruel, nasty, mean, vicious, vindictive and downright unfair cut by the government—a government too cowardly to even come here and fess up that that's what they're actually doing. I haven't heard many government members with the guts to come in and say: 'What we want to do is cut unemployment benefits to $40 a day. That's what we're voting for.' They buried it in technicalities and little weasel words, but that's exactly what this bill does.

It's no exaggeration to say that this is the single greatest act by any Australian government to push 1.5 million Australians into poverty. That's what will happen if this bill is passed. Let's be very clear on that. I can think of no other thing any Australian government has done—no single act, no piece of legislation passed by this House—that has, with one vote, pushed more Australians into poverty in one go. In my electorate, well over 20,000 people rely on this coronavirus supplement to boost their income support payments. So, if this bill is passed, what we're saying to those people is: 'You had $550 extra a fortnight that finally got you out of poverty so you could pay your bills and eat. We cut it to $250, and a few weeks ago we cut that to $150, and now we want to cut it to zero dollars, to push it back to $40 a day—$565 a fortnight. Good luck to you!'

The context for this is critical. The government's own budget—these are not my numbers; these are the government's numbers—says 1.3 million Australians are relying on unemployment benefits in some form. That was when the budget was handed down at the start of October, and then, a couple of weeks later, they said, 'Well, by Christmas, it's going to be 1.5 million Australians.' Then, three weeks ago in Senate estimates, they had to fess up: 'Actually, by Christmas, 1.8 million Australians are going to be relying on, and trying to live on, unemployment benefits.' These are the government's own numbers. At the very time when more Australians than ever before in the history of our country need help from the government, the government is in here cutting support.

This morning we saw that the national accounts showed growth, and that's welcome. Growth is returning—3.3 per cent. No doubt in an hour the government is going to come in and trumpet this as if everything's tickety-boo: 'It's all on the way up. We're all recovering.' They going to say 'comeback' to every question, as we heard yesterday from the marketing department, the spin department—that thing that masquerades as a government. They'll say: 'It's all on the comeback. It's all tickety-boo.' Try telling that this Christmas to the projected 1.8 million Australians who are going to be trying to live on unemployment benefits knowing what's coming down the pipe because of this government's budget—a cut to $40 a day. How do you think their budgeting is going to go? And the government wonders why people call it the 'Morrison recession'. Of course there was going to be a recession with the global pandemic, but we call it the Morrison recession because it's deeper, it's harder, it's darker, it's longer and it's harsher because of this government's failure to act and now because of their efforts to cut the support that they put in. That's what this bill does: $40 a day. I really can't understand it. It actually makes no logical sense. Everyone in this country knows the rate was already too low. Those radical socialists at the Business Council of Australia said the rate was too low. ACOSS said the rate was too low. Even their former leader, former conservative Prime Minister John Howard, said the rate was too low and had to be raised. It's a disincentive to work. People in my electorate and right across the country face those dreadful choices: 'How do I afford clothes to go to job interview? How do I maintain my health? How am I going to afford this $7.70 train ticket to get across the city to get to the job interview? It's a trade-off between that and the $5 co-payment to buy my pharmaceuticals for the week for my kid.' That's what real people in the country face, but the government's response is: 'Don't worry about it. Ignore the evidence. Ignore everyone else in the country. We know best; we'll cut it to $40 a day.'

We saw the positive impact of the coronavirus supplement. The small, volunteer-run local food charities that I went around and saw during the pandemic said that, for the first time in living memory, they were not seeing every week the same people on Newstart coming in and asking for food vouchers because finally they had enough money to buy food. They saw a whole bunch of new people who were excluded by the government—casual workers, temporary migrants and a whole lot of other people come in, and the queues weren't shorter—but it proved that giving people that level of money to live with pulled them out of poverty. It also is dumb economics; it jeopardises the recovery.

We know every dollar given to people on social security is a dollar spent in the local economy. To be putting the economic recovery at risk and actually cutting jobs, in effect, in local communities is profoundly dumb when we think about the shared desire across the House to support small business and to support the economic recovery because money is not going to flow. I know in my community 22,000 people next year will have $250 less a fortnight to spend at the shops. What do the government think that's going to do for unemployment? It also confirms this is a wasted recovery.

There is no reform in this budget at all. The government have blown $98 billion, a record of new spending in the budget this year. There's no reform; a trillion dollars of debt, hurtling towards $1.7 trillion of Liberal debt by the end of the decade; not a single idea for change; no jobs plan; no investment in the energy grid; no modernisation; and a whole bunch of slogans we get for manufacturing from the mob that chased the car industry out of Australia. Apparently, manufacturing is important to them now. It's all marketing and spin. There is no direct job creation. They put all the effort into tax cuts, and there's absolutely a place for stimulus through tax cuts, but it's not enough. The government also have a role in direct job creation—in stimulating the economy and spending money directly on job creation. The vision of the government, of course, is for a snapback—'Let's get everything back to just how it was at the start of the pandemic.' Believing their own projections, in four years, unemployment might be back to where it was before the recession took hold. But Australians deserve something much better. They deserve a better economy than we had before.

When we went into this recession, the economy was weak. The government would like you to forget that. Underemployment was at record levels, with over 1.6 million people not having enough hours of work; business investment had plummeted; wage growth was at record lows, anaemic at best, and has now plummeted to zero; and casualisation was at a record levels. Who knew sick leave had a purpose? The pandemic has taught us one thing as a society, as a country: perhaps it should be that sick leave had a purpose. There's actually a purpose for decent employment conditions.

You saw the government's response to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews's fantastic announcement in his budget that he was going to trial a pilot of a scheme for gig workers and casual workers where they may get five days a year of sick leave, the right to be sick. Surely if the industrial revolution back hundreds of years ago gave us anything, it was the right for workers to be sick and not lose their house, be able to feed themselves and, as we learnt, not go to work and infect the rest of the community with a virus. It says everything you know about the government that they reject these ideas. We can be a better, fairer society where people can live on social security and feed themselves and their families when they can't get a job.

Newstart, JobSeeker or whatever you call it raises a question, doesn't it? The Prime Minister loves renaming things. His biggest effort, I think, at the start of the pandemic was to not get the wage subsidy in. He resisted that. There were 100,000 more people who went on the unemployment queue because he was too proud to accept Labor's advice that he should have a wage subsidy. He eventually announced one a couple of weeks later, JobKeeper. That will go in March. There will be nothing left for the international education sector and nothing left for the travel sector. A lot of sectors are going to take a lot longer to recover, but they're in the sight of the gun in March. He renamed 'Newstart' 'JobSeeker'. I wonder if now that he's cutting the rate back to $40 a day he'll change it back to Newstart. We might have JobSeeker gone and we might get Newstart back. That would be a moment of honesty. His TAFE cuts got renamed JobTrainer. We had JobMaker, or 'JobFaker', which was going to help 450,000 people, he told us, except his own officials said in Senate estimates that it was actually 45,000 people—so a factor of 10 exaggeration from the marketing guy.

The government are taking a big political bet with this. You saw how freaked out they were, at the start of the pandemic, about the idea that middle-class Australia might actually discover what it's like to live on $40 a day: 'It's alright for people in Labor electorates and a few buried in National Party electorates in the country, isn't it, because they have no-one else to vote for. That's alright, but we couldn't have middle-class Australia living on $40 a day. Better give them a coronavirus supplement.' So we're taking a bet—aren't we, government?—that everything will be back to normal when you make these cuts in March.

The government's rationale is twofold. They have two talking points on this: 'We can't afford it,' and, 'It's a disincentive to work.' We can't afford it? What a load of rubbish! You're running up $1.7 trillion of debt. Budgets are about choices and priorities—$4,000 an hour to fly Mathias Cormann around Europe in a luxury government jet; government subsidies for Clive Palmer's jet; government subsidies for JobKeeper so executives can pay themselves bonuses from the companies reaping millions from JobKeeper; $30 million for a piece of land worth $3 million; and tax cuts. Tax cuts have a place, but we in this House, when the government's tax cuts are fully implemented, get a tax cut of $16,000 a year. I did the maths on that. That's $43 a day. For each of us, the tax cut that this government has passed as its priority is bigger per day than the government says someone on Newstart has to live on. That's a disgrace. That says everything you need to know about this government's priorities. So don't believe their marketing spin that the country can't afford to keep people out of poverty. It's a matter of choices and priorities. They say it's a disincentive. Well, there aren't enough jobs. There are seven jobseekers for every job. It doesn't matter whether you cut the rate or raise the rate; it's not going to create more jobs. Indeed, cutting the rate in this way will mean fewer jobs in local communities.

But the disincentive argument is not the only argument. It's also about poverty and adequacy. The rate is not adequate to keep people out of poverty, and we have to pay attention to that. Interestingly, there's some analysis. What we've had in a public policy sense with the coronavirus supplement is a great experiment. We had an experiment where we actually put some more money in and we could measure its effects. So what impact has that had on the labour market? It's made no difference to the employment market. Professor Jeff Borland summarised his recent research on the impact of the coronavirus supplement on the labour market as follows:

One is that you could have a substantial increase in JobSeeker without adversely affecting incentives to take up paid work … and … there is no evidence that the higher level of JobSeeker during 2020, with the COVID-19 supplement, has had any appreciable effect on incentives to take up paid work for the people who are receiving JobSeeker.

It's an understatement to say I'm disappointed, but I'm not surprised. This is who the Liberal Party is. Cutting the social safety net of this country is what they get out of bed for. It's in their DNA. It's who they are as a party. They exist to protect the people who already have wealth. Don't believe the rhetoric about aspiration. That's to cloak the reality that they exist to protect the people who already have wealth. They've never, ever come in here and increased social security payments for the people who need it most; they've only cut. They pick on the most vulnerable. With robodebt, they were using the power of the state and the Commonwealth logo to scare the bejesus out of people by sending them fake debt notices. But even for the Liberal Party this is a new low: cutting unemployment payments to $40 a day and pushing 1.5 million Australians into poverty. Shame on the government!

Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020 and to support the amendment moved by the member for Barton. This bill is a missed opportunity for the government to permanently increase the base rate of unemployment support, and that is why Labor is moving an amendment calling on the government to permanently increase the base rate of JobSeeker payment.

There are beneficial elements to this bill, including continuing the coronavirus supplement for youth allowance recipients after December, as well as the increased income-free areas, taper rates and partner income tests that have been introduced as part of the pandemic response. However, this bill confirms the government's cruel plan to snap back to pre-pandemic levels of unemployment support from 31 March next year. Taking payments back to pre-pandemic levels will hurt around two million Australians: people who've lost their jobs or whose businesses have folded, single parents and students. Vulnerable people in crisis are more at risk because of this government's decision.

This bill ends the minister's ability to pay the coronavirus supplement after 31 March 2021, when we know that millions of people and families will still be hurting from the economic impact of the pandemic. Labor will be moving amendments aimed at getting the government to not cut the coronavirus supplement at Christmas, to deliver a permanent increase to the base rate of JobSeeker payment, to retain ongoing powers to keep paying the coronavirus supplement after 31 March 2021, and to make other beneficial changes to taper rates, the income test and eligibility criteria after 31 March next year.

This bill will end the minister's power to indefinitely extend the coronavirus supplement after the end of March next year. At the start of the pandemic the government introduced the coronavirus supplement. There is a $550 fortnight additional payment to those receiving unemployment support as well as to single parents and students. Labor supported this additional payment, which was urgently needed, not just because of the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic but because unemployment payments were simply too low to live on. They were forcing people and families into poverty, some of the most vulnerable people in Australia, particularly in regional and remote Australia.

Currently, the coronavirus supplement is paid to most people through regulation-making powers the minister has under the Social Security Act 1991. The impact of the pandemic will clearly persist for many years, with the Department of Social Services expecting the number of people relying on unemployment benefits and unemployment support to still be higher in four years time. Not only is a permanent increase in the base rate needed but the minister should also have the flexibility to continue the coronavirus supplement for as long as the impact of the pandemic persists and impacts those most vulnerable people in Australia.

Earlier this year Labor negotiated with the government for a separate power to be included in the Coronavirus Economic Response Package Omnibus Act 2020, enabling the minister to make other changes to the social security system to help people impacted by the virus. This power ends on 31 December this year. This bill extends this power but only until 31 March next year. Labor supports this extension, but this power needs to continue for as long as the impact of the pandemic persists on our community.

Because of this power, which Labor insisted on, the government has been able to: introduce more generous partner income tests for JobSeeker payment, which Labor negotiated—and we're advised that around 100,000 people are benefiting from this, including 40,000 who would not otherwise have been eligible for any support during this global crisis; make changes to the JobSeeker and youth allowance personal income tests, which provide an income-free area of $300 per fortnight compared to the pre-pandemic income-free area of $106 per fortnight, something, we're advised, around 15,000 people are currently benefiting from; make changes to the JobSeeker and youth allowance eligibility criteria so sole traders, the self-employed and permanent employees who have been stood down, and people self-isolating because they or someone they are caring for has been affected by the pandemic continue to be eligible for payment; extend the time people can maintain eligibility for payment and keep concession cards; and make other beneficial changes relating to pension portability, mobility allowance and self-declaration for couple assessments.

This bill removes the minister's ability to make regulations that waive the liquid assets test waiting period and the assets waiting period. The government should not have reinstated the liquid assets waiting period in September, and they should drop their cruel plan to make people wait 26 weeks to get unemployment support if they have even the most modest savings. It's a false economy. It means people are forced to run down their savings, to dwindle them, and it makes it more likely they will struggle to keep a roof over their heads or keep the car on the road or food on the table. It also means people are more likely to need to rely on other support from charity, like Foodbank, or emergency relief. Labor has called on the government to continue the liquid assets waiting period suspension.

One hundred and sixty thousand Australians are expected to lose their jobs by the end of the year, and 1.8 million Australians are expected to be relying on unemployment support by Christmas. On the Central Coast of New South Wales in my community, there are nearly 19,000 people receiving JobSeeker and over 2,500 young people currently supported through youth allowance. There are 4,000 fewer jobs on the Central Coast than there were in February this year. Coastal communities, like mine, were severely impacted by the pandemic. Retail, hospitality and tourism have had a severe hit. Over 4,000 businesses are still relying on JobKeeper and 15,000 workers are relying completely—entirely—on JobKeeper payment.

The government has missed a huge opportunity for Australians doing it tough by not making a permanent increase to JobSeeker in this bill and giving the most vulnerable Australians certainty—giving them some security and peace of mind. With more than seven jobseekers for every job vacancy across Australia, there are simply not enough jobs for everyone who needs one. It's even more difficult to find a job outside of big cities, in regional areas or the outer suburbs. In my community on the Central Coast there are 15 jobseekers for every vacancy.

Australians relying on government support face an anxious and uncertain time this Christmas. They'll have less money to spend in local businesses, meaning less spending in the local economy. I visited The Entrance Neighbourhood Centre in my electorate this year in the middle of the pandemic. I spoke to them about the support they were offering, particularly to women and families. They said to me that, for the first time that they could recall, there were fewer parents coming in with electricity bills or needing support with groceries. Having this increase, this coronavirus supplement, has been a real benefit to people who were otherwise living in poverty and did not have enough to get by. To think that, whilst we're still feeling the impacts of the pandemic, this is going to be cut away! People, particularly women who are sole parents of families, are really going to be in crisis. It's just not fair. It puts them and their children at risk.

And there are older workers. In my community, one in five people are aged over 65. It's a popular place for older people to live, but it's also a hard place for an older person to get a job. If you find yourself out of work, if your business has folded or if the company you work for has reduced your hours to zero, what are you going to do? There are 15 jobseekers for every vacancy, and there's an incentive from the government to employ younger workers. The budget left out Australians on JobSeeker aged over 35. Almost one million Australians are ineligible for the wage subsidy. Older Australians are the largest group receiving JobSeeker. As I mentioned, in communities like mine there are 15 jobseekers for every job that's available, there is now an incentive for a business to take on a younger person, and structural barriers and age discrimination already exist. Where does that leave these older workers? It leaves them out in the cold. In the last 18 years, the proportion of people receiving unemployment payments who were over 55 has gone from 8.8 per cent to 26.6 per cent. It has more than trebled, and that has only made it worse for people looking for work in this crisis. There are currently an estimated 307,000 people over 55 receiving unemployment support, and they will be the ones who have the most trouble finding work.

I would now like to turn to how the proposals in this legislation really impact people living with mental health problems in Australia. On 16 November, the government finally released the Productivity Commission's final report into mental health, months after it received it. As was noted in chapter 19, 'Income and employment support':

Most people who experience mild to moderate mental illness are able to manage their illness and mitigate its effect on their employment. But for some, especially those with more severe illnesses, there are barriers to employment at the individual and community levels.

The clear and known link between financial distress and mental health crisis is, sadly, well established. Many Australians have experienced mental health distress and mental health crisis for the first time this year due to the economic impacts of the pandemic—because they're newly unemployed, because they've been reduced to a zero-hour contract or because their business has collapsed. The increase to JobSeeker payment has helped to ease this distress and helped to mitigate some of the extreme mental health impacts of this crisis. The Prime Minister has spoken many times in this House and elsewhere about his commitment to the mental health and wellbeing of all Australians, and I believe he is genuine. However, the decision to cut income support fails to do this. It undermines it. It means Australians who have relied on this support in the aftermath of the pandemic, as it continues to unfold and we still feel its impact, now face another hurdle and another risk to their mental health and wellbeing.

On the same day as the Productivity Commission report into mental health was released, the government also released the interim advice from the National Suicide Prevention Adviser. The introduction of the adviser is welcome, as is the government's 'towards zero' goal for suicide prevention. Any life lost to suicide is one too many. Recommendation 7.2 of the interim advice is:

Develop a Commonwealth process for reviewing new policies or initiatives to ensure they assess any impacts (positively or negatively) on suicidal risk or behaviour.

If that lens were applied to this legislation, it would fall short, because this legislation—dropping and cutting support to the most vulnerable people in the middle of a pandemic—risks their mental health and wellbeing and that of those around them. Cutting the rate of support for vulnerable Australians in the middle of an economic downturn, in the worst recession in 90 years—in living memory—is unlikely to help the government in its goal towards reducing suicidal ideation and suicide. Government announcements of increased funding for mental health services or direct provision of mental health services, and better access to them, are of course welcome and necessary, and often overdue. But, until the government begins to consider the consequences of policies like this, it will continue to fall short of its own aspirations.

This bill is a missed opportunity. It is a wasted opportunity for the government to deliver a permanent increase to unemployment payments. It also puts vulnerable people at risk. It puts vulnerable people at risk and it lays bare the government's plan for unemployment and other payments to go back to their pre-pandemic rates on 31 March 2021. This is why Labor have moved amendments, why we are calling on the government to stop its Christmas cut to unemployment payments and to announce a permanent increase to give people peace of mind, to give them certainty, to give them and their families the security that they need.

It seems everyone except the Prime Minister understands that returning to the old Newstart rate is not good for people. It's not good for families, it's not good for small businesses and it is not good for jobs and the economy. The RBA, the Business Council and the Retailers Association, as well as community groups and economists, support an increase in the base rate of unemployment payments. An increase would be good for people, for households, for local jobs and for local economies, particularly in areas outside of big cities—for the outer suburbs and for regional and remote Australia—and it would lift people out of poverty. The old rate was so low it was stopping people from being able to afford the basics: to keep a roof over their head, to keep groceries on the table, to be able to provide a fair go for their kids.

The government should show some heart this Christmas. It should really think about the most vulnerable Australians, those individuals and families who find themselves in crisis this Christmas, because the decisions that the government makes now will have profound impacts on these people and their families. This legislation would have a severe impact not just on the financial security but also on the mental health and wellbeing of some of the most vulnerable Australians.

I'll finish where I started by calling on the government to make a permanent increase to unemployment payments, to give people peace of mind and security and the insurance they need to be able to have a fair go, to have a good quality of life, and for us to be able to come out of this recession as a fairer country. I think that's what all Australians want. This government, as I said, should show some heart this Christmas and reverse these cruel cuts.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020. Reducing the coronavirus supplement from $250 a fortnight to $150 a fortnight is the wrong thing to do, quite simply because people won't be able to live on it. It's that simple. In fact, the unemployed are already at rock bottom on the original coronavirus supplement amount of $250 a fortnight. How on earth are they going to live on $150 a fortnight? It's just not enough. Sure, at $150 a fortnight, it means the unemployed will be getting about $50 a day, and, sure, that's a darn sight better than $40 a day, but it's not enough. It's not enough to pay for your housing. It's not enough to pay for your food; your medical expenses; your transport; your clothing, so that you look good for a job interview; and your ICT, so you've got a phone and the internet to be able to even apply for jobs. It's just not enough.

Crucially, it's way below the poverty line. Why do we even have a thing called the poverty line if we're going to ignore it? The poverty line is exactly that; it's the figure at which you are in abject poverty and you can't live a decent life. In fact, the poverty line is about $65 a day, so about $50 a day is way below the poverty line. So this decision by the government will be completely and utterly unacceptable, and it will be entirely out of step with the views of the community and welfare groups and business groups—all sorts of people, including former Prime Minister John Howard. He is well known to be on the record arguing against $40 a day, and I suspect he won't be all that impressed with $50 a day either, on a coronavirus supplement of $150 a fortnight.

To make the point about how small an amount of money this is, I draw the attention of honourable members to a printout off the web just yesterday about rental prices in Hobart, because Hobart now is one of the most expensive places in Australia to rent a house. I'll just flick through some of these places to rent: an ordinary-looking house is $830 per week; another house with three bedrooms is $600 per week; a one-bedroom apartment in a high-rise—well, low-rise—is $300 per week; a three-bedroom house is $600 per week; a three-bedroom apartment is $800 a week; a slightly bigger house is $650 a week; a house is $850 a week; a room in a boarding house is $260 a week; another townhouse is $850 a week; a house is $725 a week; a two-bedroom cottage in Bathurst Street in Hobart is $495 a week; and another boarding house is $250 for a single room.

I could go on, but I'm sure my colleagues understand the point I'm getting at: when you are on JobSeeker and your coronavirus supplement is only $150 per fortnight, or $75 a week, you can't afford to rent any of those places. Even the single room in a boarding house at $260 a week is unaffordable. All this poverty by design will ensure is that we will have more homeless, more couch surfers and more people living in a tin shed out in the backyard. We can do better than this. We can do so much better than this.

The government claims that unemployment benefits are really just a stopgap of course, that they're just something for maybe a few months while someone goes and gets a job—in fact, it should be a bit tough so they're encouraged even more to go and get a job. But the fact is almost all the unemployed want a job and they are doing everything they can do to get a job. This urban myth in some quarters that they're all dole bludgers is a terrible misrepresentation of the fact. And when you've got a situation like we now have in my electorate, where over 10,000 people are relying on JobSeeker and there are 21 people on JobSeeker for each job, the fact is most of those people who are currently unemployed stand a very real risk of being long-term unemployed, so it's no good to just give them a stopgap. They need a living income, because they stand to be unemployed for many, many months, so they're going to have rent, a car to run, food, medical expenses, ICT, grooming expenses. Many of these people are not young, single people; many of these people are people with families to support. So the idea we can have a stopgap for unemployment benefits misses the point that we're going to have a lot of long-term unemployed—and we're always going to have a small number of people who are simply unemployable. Even if you are lucky enough to get a job in only a few months, you've still got the sorts of rents that I referred to before and you're probably still paying $300, $400 or $500 a week in rent, on your mortgage payments or whatever.

I suggest we need a whole new approach to so-called welfare payments in this country, because, if we can bring ourselves to accept that people have expenses and they need to pay those expenses, then surely we can accept that everyone in the country whether you are unemployed or you are disabled or you are a carer or you are aged should get enough in income support from our government so that they can live and live a dignified life.

I frankly don't even understand why Newstart or JobSeeker is at a different rate to, say, the age pension or the disability pension or carers payments or other payments. Surely they should all be the same amount. I think this global pandemic gives the government, and the opposition, an opportunity for a fresh look at the way we pay welfare in this country—or income support would be a better way to term it—and say, 'Okay, we've evolved for all sorts of reasons, some of them lost in history to where we are now, but it's time to have a root-and-branch review of the way we provide income support and to be prepared to redesign it from the ground up.' I'm very attracted to the idea of a living income for all Australians. So, no matter what your circumstances are, if you need income support from the federal government, you will get an amount of money that you can live on, and it will be consistent for all people who need income support. That's the view of ACOSS and others. Logically, that amount of money would be above the poverty line, because as soon as a government, maybe with the support of the opposition, agree that people should be paid an amount of money below the poverty line then you've got poverty by design. Surely we can do a lot better than having poverty by design in this country, but that's what you've got with the old Newstart rate. That's what we're probably barely avoiding with the old coronavirus supplement, but that's what you'll get with the new coronavirus supplement.

If it is the government's intention—and I fear it is, come March or April—to get rid of the coronavirus supplement altogether and go back to $40 a day then I make the point again: it's poverty by design, which means we have a very cruel government. I'm delighted that the opposition is now talking in stronger terms about increasing unemployment benefits should they become the next government, but I do fear that the current government is ultimately heading for $40 a day, and that's a very, very cruel policy.

I note that the ACOSS position is to have a living income, as I described; to make it in the order of $472 a week, which is basically the current age pension or disability pension; and then to acknowledge that different people have different extra needs, so there'll be supplements. Perhaps someone with a disability needs a particular supplement. Someone who's renting and paying the sort of rent I referred to earlier would continue to get Commonwealth rent assistance but hopefully at a realistic amount, because when you've got housing unaffordability like you have in many parts of Australia—especially in Hobart, which is the most unaffordable city, believe it or not, of all the capital cities in the country—we obviously need to look afresh at Commonwealth rent assistance. Can we afford this? Of course we can.

I apologise if I sound like a broken record, but I'm going to have to say this another thousand times, I reckon, before honourable members start to listen to me and pay attention. The fact that we are such a rich country means there is no reason in the world to have poverty by design, unless you're a cruel government. I remind honourable members of the figures. In Australia, our median wealth per adult is No. 1 in the world. We are the richest people in the world, out of about 200 countries, as measured by median wealth per adult—richer than even the Swiss. When we look at our average wealth per adult, we're No. 2 to the Swiss. These are mind-boggling figures. We're the 14th biggest economy as measured by GDP. We are a fabulously wealthy, fortunate and lucky country, I would add, with our resources, our social capital and all our other advantages.

I suppose it's all about priorities. What do we think is important? I propose that what's important is for a government to look after the most disadvantaged members of our community and to look after them as well as we humanly can. Surely, by that standard, we can't tolerate a coronavirus supplement of $150 a fortnight, resulting in a gross amount of about $50 a day, which is $15 a day below the poverty line. It's poverty by design.

Before I close, I'd like to take this opportunity to give a plug to JobKeeper. I know we're here talking about JobSeeker, but I do want to make the point again to the government that the job isn't done here with JobKeeper. It was always fundamentally flawed because of the exclusions to eligibility, and it's not too late for the government to look afresh at this and to provide JobKeeper assistance, for example, to local government, to the tertiary sector and to other sectors that currently miss out. It would also give the community more certainty about the future of JobKeeper. We're going a few months at a time here, but that's no good to one business in my electorate that provides conference and event management. They've got no bookings for the rest of this year. They've got five events booked for September 2021 and more for 2022 and 2023, but are they going to last that long? They've got 17 staff at the moment on JobKeeper, but there's a real risk that they will fold and Hobart will lose a wonderful company and that expertise because JobKeeper won't be there for as long as it is required.

The international travel sector: I know the government's announced a little bit of assistance for international travel agents recently, but it's not enough. Remember that travel agents make most of their money from international bookings; they make almost nothing from domestic bookings. So that's another sector that's going to need not only long-term support but some certainty now to encourage them and to allow them to keep those businesses afloat for as long as is needed, because some of these businesses aren't going to get any sort of decent income for another 12 months. We know that now, so why can't we say to them that we will continue JobKeeper in particular sectors for as long as is needed? I'm thinking of constituents who own a number of travel agencies. They could go to bed at night knowing, 'Okay, we won't fold the business. We'll keep it afloat a bit longer, because we'll have a bit of support for a bit longer.' They'd be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel—maybe the end of next year—when they can resume some sort of normal operations.

In closing, back to JobSeeker, I don't agree with reducing the coronavirus supplement to $150 a week. Frankly, it's at rock bottom already at $250 a week and that actually puts it roughly equivalent to, or a little bit less than, the age pension and the disability pension. However, it puts it roughly around the poverty line and it roughly achieves that alternative model, which I've spoken about, which is a living income for all people who rely on federal government income support. We should keep the $250, and the government should say they're going to keep the $250 and stop teasing people with three months here, three months there. No wonder a lot of us think the next three months at $150 will be the last three months and we're going to go back to $40 a day. We're going to go back to poverty by design and to betraying the most disadvantaged members of the community. We're going to go back to ignoring the fact that we're one of the richest countries in the world and we can afford to do so much better.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020 and in favour of the amendments moved by the member for Barton, and there are a couple of key reasons why. These amendments seek to ensure that the government does not cut the coronavirus supplement by Christmas. They also seek to deliver a permanent increase to the base rate of JobSeeker so we do not see people who looking for work living in poverty on $40 a day. These amendments also seek to retain the ongoing powers to keep paying the coronavirus supplement after 31 March 2021 and to retain those powers to make other beneficial changes to the taper rates, income tests and eligibility criteria after 31 March.

These amendments are critical and necessary. Firstly, I wish to highlight that we are not yet through the pandemic. Until we have a vaccination and the world is immunised, we will still face the risk of our community and our economy periodically having to shut down to try and keep people safe. We are quite lucky and have worked hard in Victoria to get through our second wave, and we are now in a COVID-safe environment. We have worked hard as a community and as a society not only to ensure the health of individuals but so we can start to work together to open businesses and the economy. It is only because we have worked together that we're able to do that. However, cutting back the support, as the government proposes to do by Christmas, will hurt that recovery. It will hurt that recovery because businesses that rely upon customers getting the higher rate will soon see those customers disappear, making the recovery longer than it needs to be and putting thousands of local jobs at risk. It will also make it very hard for families.

As we have seen recently, with other clusters and outbreaks in South Australia and Sydney, this hasn't just happened in Victoria. Whilst we still have Australians returning from overseas who could quite possibly be infected with coronavirus, we are at risk. That is why it is too soon for this government to be withdrawing support. We are still at risk of second, third and fourth waves just like we are seeing in countries all over the world. It is premature for this government to be winding back support because we don't know when the next outbreak will be. We are prepared for, and we are doing all we can to stop, a second, third or fourth wave, and that is why the government is ill-advised to be cutting back support now. It's also the time—right before Christmas—at which they're cutting back support. I've been talking to so many people in the welfare agencies in my community, and what they are telling me is that this year they're seeing less people and the regulars aren't seeking as much support. The extra support that people have received from the coronavirus supplement has meant that they have been able to put a little bit away for Christmas. There are less people asking for toys from Uniting this year, but there are new families asking for toys—people who did not get access to appropriate support through JobSeeker because of partner income or who did not get access to JobKeeper and have now lost their jobs. Again, this is an area where the government is letting down the community.

The other part that is so critical to this amendment is calling for a permanent increase to the base rate of JobSeeker. I cannot believe that the government is putting forward the real proposition in these bills that, come March 2021, everyone on JobSeeker will drop back to $40 a day. Yes, it was a temporary measure that they introduced, but what we have seen through the introduction of this temporary measure is how vital this extra support is. It actually lifts people up out of poverty. It allows people to have dignity, the security of a roof over their head, food on their table and the opportunity to look for work if there are jobs available. I also point out to the government another reason why we need to lift the base rate and lock it in on an ongoing basis. Our jobs market has not returned to what it was prior to the pandemic. They may gloat about figures and national headline figures, but the lived experience on the ground is very different. Yes, there are lots of hospitality jobs—insecure, part-time, flexible jobs for people who can work nights and weekends. These jobs are not suitable for a single mum who may not have appropriate care arrangements, and they are not suitable for older workers who may have worked for their entire lives in another industry and don't have the required skills.

We've also got to make sure that any support in JobSeeker is linked to a proper training program. I note that, very few of the jobs advertised are entry level jobs, and all of them are seeking highly skilled workers. If you're working in an industry that has been shut down, like the arts, entertainment and events sector, it's hard for you to transition into a hospitality role, like a chef or a barista, without appropriate training. You will need access to a decent rate of JobSeeker whilst you undertake that training. That is where the government is not thinking holistically about how we can help people who may want to transition into other industries. You need a decent JobSeeker payment whilst you are retraining for the other jobs they may exist. This is what the government isn't doing. They are running their entire policy based upon short-term economic outcomes and their own budget, not on long-term job security, economic security or building long-term resilience into our local communities and economies.

I want to highlight some of the lived experiences of people in my electorate, what they have gone through in the recent months and what it would mean to them if these cuts went through, particularly if they went back to $40 a day as the government is proposing. First of all, there's a fabulous volunteer at Eaglehawk Community House. She is one of the people the government are attacking when they cut these payments. She worked tirelessly through the period of lockdowns and restrictions in Victoria. The Eaglehawk Community House made over 15,000 meals, and she was responsible for cooking all of them. On JobSeeker, not quite old enough yet to retire and struggling to find work with the skill set she has, she volunteers at the Eaglehawk Community House. When the pandemic hit and we faced restrictions and we had some little clusters break out in Bendigo, she cooked meals. She cooked 15,000 meals to help our community and did it with the support of JobSeeker, yes, but as a volunteer for Eaglehawk Community House. This is who the government are attacking when they cut these payments, someone who has volunteered so much of her own time to help our community, particularly the most vulnerable, when things were tough, when people were living at home and in isolation.

There is also Peter, who spoke to my office and to me about how the extra payments meant he could buy some warmer clothes this winter, some shoes that fitted and some extra food. It even meant that he could fill up his car without feeling guilty. He didn't have to plan where he was going based on the petrol that he had. He said that it might not seem like much to most, but to him it was a lifeline. As someone who had worked hard their whole life until he experienced some health issues, finding himself unemployed and needing support from the government was already hard, but then to live in poverty on the old Newstart rate was absolutely heartbreaking. He was grateful for the increase because he was able to purchase things he wouldn't have been able to. It's also improved his mental health because he isn't sitting at home stressing about money. JobSeeker should be more like the pension. It should help secure people, particularly those who've worked hard their whole lives and only at the very end are finding themselves in a situation where they can no longer work because of ill-health.

There's also Melissa, a single mum in her 30s receiving the parenting payment single. Currently, it has allowed her to put some extra money into her utilities and mortgage. It's a bit of a financial buffer. She is not wasting it, as some in the government are suggesting, but getting ahead. One of the main reasons she said that she was always sceptical of this government was that she didn't believe it would continue, so she got ahead in her bills and in her mortgage. She at least is looking forward to this Christmas, because it is the first time she will not have to turn to family for extra money, but she does worry about what will happen next year when this government winds back the support. Melissa is concerned because she has a six-year-old and is not currently receiving child support. That's another battle. She said that the extra buffer means that she is able to get ahead in her bills, as I've said, and put a bit of money aside for the car and house insurance. That way she is able not to stress about money this Christmas.

Then there is Sharon, who's an older woman who was facing homelessness. Just before the rise she had been couch surfing. Having run out of options of staying with friends, she was booked in to stay at the Castlemaine caravan park to pitch a tent with all of her worldly possessions during the middle of winter. Then the rate increase came in, and it meant that she could afford a bond, that she could afford to rent. She is now doing work, now that she has secured accommodation. She has had some work as a COVID patient screener and is working with her employment agency on further work opportunities. She is keen to work and willing to give anything a go that she has the skills for. She's got confidence and optimism now. People like Sharon are the very people we want to see helped, and with a decent rate of JobSeeker they can get the help. It's about allowing people and families to secure the basics—a home, food security and transport security—so that they've got the confidence to go out and apply for the jobs. It means that they can do the extra training required to get the jobs that exist. That seems like common sense to me, but the bill that we have before us isn't common sense. The bill before us would cut support way too soon, impacting businesses in so many local areas and impacting individuals. I strongly urge the government to consider the amendments put forward by Labor. This is an opportunity to rewrite a wrong. If you really want to see our country rebound stronger and more secure post this pandemic and this recession, invest in those in our community who are doing it the toughest: the people who were unemployed before the pandemic and the people who have become unemployed during the pandemic. Right now they're the people who will secure our long-term recovery. If they've got a decent rate of income support, they will have the means to afford their rent, food, transport and the extra costs that may come with retraining for the jobs that are available. As I've stated, it will also help to secure the thousands of local jobs and small businesses in our community relying on these people to have a higher rate of support. It just makes economic and social sense to have a decent rate of JobSeeker.

I do not want this country or these individuals to go back to the old rate of Newstart which destined people to poverty and created an underclass of Australians who were struggling. It became a mindset of trying to survive day to day: 'Can I afford my rent? Which bill will I pay this month? Which bill will I get extended?' It pushed people into poverty who didn't need to be there. It was poverty by design by a government that was determined to be cruel. And this suggestion by some industry and some employers that a higher rate of JobSeeker keeps people from applying for jobs is nonsense. Those employers who are looking for workers should look at the jobs that they're offering. They should look at the training that they're offering. They should look at the job agencies and at whether the job agencies are sending them the appropriate people. If you've got a job that's not filled during this pandemic and this recession, we need to look at the employment industry and employment services. Simply cutting JobSeeker will not find you the workers that you need—another point that this government misses.

It's very, very simple rhetoric and very, very lazy rhetoric to suggest that a lower rate of JobSeeker will force people into the jobs that are available. On behalf of the 10,000 or so people in my community who are currently receiving the supplement, I again urge the government to give them a happy Christmas and a new year where they can feel safe and secure going forward. I urge the government to keep the higher rate of the coronavirus supplement, lock in an ongoing JobSeeker rate that is livable and that gives people the dignity, respect and the means to look for work. I urge the government to retain the ongoing powers to make sure that we have fair income tests, fair eligibility criteria and tapering rates that are fair and that ensure that more people have the means to look for good work and can secure their futures and their children's futures.

Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak after the member for Bendigo, and I echo many of the sentiments in her fine contribution to this debate on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020. As we have done before with so many pieces of legislation in this place, yet again it is up to the Labor Party to come and discuss these issues: why some of them are important, why some of them need to be changed, why some of them should be defended and why some of them should be stopped. Yet again, another piece of legislation comes to this House with hardly any government members—I don't think there were any other than the minister—willing to stand up and discuss their own policy. This isn't Labor Party policy. This is the government's policy, which, yet again, none of them want to get up and defend. None of them have the courage, the commitment or the passion for their own policy and their own legislation to get up in this place and bother to talk about it. This bill will affect literally hundreds of thousands of Australians who will return to $40 a day because of what this bill does, yet not one government member turns up and fronts the debate on this bill. This will be their legacy—coming to this place and tearing away support for those people and those Australians who have, throughout this pandemic, relied on government.

This coronavirus support payment began because we faced a global pandemic. I remember the press conference that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer did outside the Prime Minister's office here in this building. They spoke about how there was going to be a wage subsidy for those businesses that had to close their doors, and they spoke about how those people who found themselves out of work as a result of this pandemic would receive an extra $550 a fortnight. Everyone who was out of work was going to be looked after. And then, bit by bit, they walked that back and started pulling away that level of support for Australians. Except one thing hasn't changed yet—this pandemic is not over. This pandemic is still with us. Yes, Australia has put itself in an enviable position when it comes to managing this virus, but the virus is still here. We've seen most recently in South Australia how quickly we can shut down and how quickly things can change. I sincerely hope that no other state in this country or, frankly, anywhere in the world has to deal with another outbreak. I hope that we see it out to a vaccine, an effective vaccine, before another outbreak. But, dare I say, there will be one. This pandemic isn't over.

More to the point, the economic fallout and the economic consequences of this pandemic will be with us for years. The unemployment rate will take years to recover. I hope I'm wrong; I hope we have huge amounts of economic growth. But I'm not convinced yet that this pandemic is not going to take years for us to recover from. Yet we stand here with no government MPs willing to put their name, their voice, their time and their effort into defending this bill which will ultimately bring hundreds of thousands of Australians back down to $40 a day in March, striking them to the poverty line.

If this pandemic has taught us anything, it is that through no fault of their own Australians can find themselves out of work. It has happened to my family, it has happened to my friends and I'm sure every single member in this place can point to people they desperately care about who have done the right thing in this pandemic and shut down their businesses and stood down from their work in order to do the right thing by others in our society. What did we see at the start of the lockdowns in April? We saw hundreds of thousands of Australians, many for the very first time in their lives, accessing the JobSeeker payment, the support payment for unemployed Australians, because of this pandemic—through absolutely no fault of their own. In fact, because many of them were willing to do the right thing by others, they were sacrificing. And the businesses that they were involved in were sacrificing some of their operations because government restrictions, both federal and state, required those businesses to not operate in the way in which they usually would.

And what did we see from this government? What did we see from the Minister for Government Services? I remember the queues around the block of thousands and thousands of Australians wanting to access the JobSeeker payment for the very first time. In order to do so they needed a CRN number, and in order to access a CRN number at that point in time you had to go into a Centrelink office. The government just sat there and the minister just sat there until the country and MPs on this side of the chamber were literally pleading with them to change the arrangements to access a new CRN, so that people didn't have to literally line up and gather when we were asking them not to line up and gather because of the pandemic that we were facing.

And then finally the minister said—I remember it well—'We have changed the arrangements. You can now go onto the myGov website and leave your details, and a Centrelink operator will call you back.' That happened a couple of days later after days and days of the queues. And then what happened? The myGov website crashed, and what was the response from the minister? It was that it had been hacked. Except it hadn't been hacked; that was just something that the minister decided to say without any facts or any evidence to support it. Then, when that was pointed out to this minister, what was his response? His response was, 'Oh, my bad.' 'My bad,' says the minister. I'll give him credit: it was one of the first times anyone on that side of the House said 'my bad' and owned up to a mistake in government.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not this week.

Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not this week, the member for Lalor rightly points out. But it shows the attitude and it shows the views of those opposite toward Australians who through no fault of their own found themselves out of work and found themselves in need of government support.

The coronavirus supplement during this pandemic has helped thousands and thousands of Australians. It has. It has been a great thing. For many people this was the first time in their lives where they weren't worried about whether or not they could buy food. They weren't worried about whether or not they could cover some of their rent. The thousands and thousands of Australians who through no fault of their own found themselves out of work were able to have some level of confidence and some level of support to be able to get through whatever this pandemic was throwing at Australians.

But then the government began the process that has led us here to today. They started crawling back and cutting the support. Except this pandemic is not over. This pandemic is still with us, and the government is cutting the pandemic support. In Victoria during stage 4 lockdown, we couldn't even have family over for dinner. Childcare services were only available for permitted workers. They were some of the hardest days in Victoria that I can remember, but Victorians pulled together. Victorians did the right thing. Victorians supported each other and achieved something truly remarkable. Instead of that—instead of supporting Victorians during our hour of need—the government pulled JobKeeper and JobSeeker support, and now they're doing it again, and this pandemic isn't over.

We face again a government that started this pandemic with an acknowledgement that, yes, we needed to support people to help Australia get through this pandemic, and now that all seems to be out the window. There were even some of us wondering if maybe the Prime Minister wasn't the ideological zealot we once thought he was. Maybe he had some understanding of what Australians are going through. But his instincts are clearly riding to the surface again, and he is clearly leading a government that is returning to the old Liberal way of pulling support away from Australians, of removing government assistance for people during hard times, making people go through unnecessary hardship and allowing Australians in this country to return to poverty. That is the legacy of this bill, that is the legacy of this government and that is the legacy of those MPs over there, none of whom are willing to stand up and put their name to the speaking roster on this bill. None of them are willing to stand up and say, 'Yes, I support making Australians only live on $40 a day.' Effectively, that is what this bill does, and it's not surprising that none of you are willing to put your name to it. This pandemic isn't over. This pandemic is still going to be with us for months ahead, and you on that side of the House are consigning Australians to living in poverty.

We on this side of the House understand the effect of this bill. We understand how important it is, and that's why we're standing up and saying, 'Don't do it.' You should be extending the payments and you should be making sure that Australians are not consigned to poverty. It is not too high a goal to aim for. It is not too much to ask. If you're not going to do that then at least stand up and tell us why.

Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.