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

Yet another report has been released, this time by the ANU, which explains again how raising the rate of Centrelink pensions and payments would be the most efficient way to reduce financial stress and poverty in Australia. Mind you, increasing payments above the poverty line is nothing new and echoes statements from the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Council of Social Service, Council on the Ageing, KPMG and Deloitte Access Economics, to name but a few. Yet the government continues to insist on keeping thousands of Australians in poverty, most obviously those on JobSeeker but also those relying on the age pension and DSP, for instance, who are left unable to pay bills and rent, to feed their children, to use the heater, to drive a car or to sleep at night due to fear of unexpected costs.

In particular, the ANU modelling showed that lifting JobSeeker by $190 a week would dramatically reduce poverty among recipients from 88 per cent to 34 per cent. Indeed, we saw with the coronavirus supplement how increasing payments improves lives. To illustrate that, during a speech last year I tabled 56 stories, collected by the National Council of Single Mothers and Their Children, telling how these payments helped cover children's health care, TAFE fees, car repairs, healthier food and other basic needs. But now this reprieve has ended, because the Australian government cruelly reduced the rate again.

There is, regrettably, more than a whiff of ideologically behind the continuing demonisation of jobseekers and the barely coded message that some Australians are living the dream, sitting on their backsides while the rest of us work hard and pay our taxes. I can tell the parliament right now that this is rubbish, because no-one wants to live in poverty. If people can work, they will work. Maybe, instead of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on jobactive providers, which a 2019 Senate inquiry slammed as being 'not fit for purpose', the government should heed the advice of economists and put that money back into the economy through increasing Centrelink payments. Moreover, it's important to acknowledge that there are some Centrelink recipients who simply can't work—for instance, because they are full-time carers or they suffer from poor health—and that these people should feel safe, secure and supported by the government. They shouldn't live in fear of having their payments unexpectedly cut off, receiving unexplained debt or being forced to attend useless appointments for jobs they simply cannot do.

As I've said countless times before, we're a rich and fortunate country. We can afford to support our most vulnerable, so let's stop messing around with people's lives, keeping them in poverty, and instead start paying Centrelink pensions and payments at a rate that people need and our lucky country can afford.