Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is for the Treasurer. One in eight Australians live in poverty. Helping them helps all of us. It means that more Australians can afford to pay their rent and their bills, to get to interviews and get a job, and to feed their kids and themselves. Eradicating poverty would transform their lives as well as our economy. Will you instruct the Productivity Commission to inquire into the economic cost of poverty to Australia?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks to the member for Kooyong for her question about an issue very near and dear not just to her heart but to mine and to everyone on this side of the House, and that is: how do we go about, in the most responsible way that we can, making life easier for the most vulnerable people in our community?

The honourable member, who follows these things closely, would know that the Productivity Commission has already, quite recently, put out what I thought was a really terrific piece of work about social mobility—intergenerational mobility—in our communities. For me, this really goes to the heart of the matter that the member for Kooyong raises for the House today, which is: how do we make sure that people can not just get by but get ahead, and how do we prevent intergenerational disadvantage—which exists in many of our communities, including, if we're honest about it, communities like the one that I represent—from cascading through the generations? That's the work that the PC did. I want to thank the chair of the PC, Danielle Wood, and her colleagues for doing that important piece of work, because I think the PC has given us an important reminder about how much we cherish intergenerational mobility in this country but also about how we can't be complacent, particularly at the very bottom end of the income and wealth scale and also when it comes to the very top.

I know that the honourable member's question is well motivated, and I know it's well informed by the work that the PC has already done. We're not contemplating another study of that kind, in addition to the one that the PC has just released, but we are proudly, as a Labor government, very focused on the most vulnerable people in our society and on that question of intergenerational disadvantage. It's why we increased JobSeeker and the working age payments, working closely with my colleagues here on the front bench. It's why energy bill relief has happened a couple of times. It's why we've made sure that everyone gets a tax cut, not just people who are already doing a bit better than others. It's why I work closely with the minister on a whole program of addressing place based disadvantage in our communities where that is the biggest challenge. It's why we've supported increases to the minimum wage. It's why we're supporting decent pay rises for early childhood educators and others as well. It's why we've expanded paid parental leave. There are a whole range of things that we are doing. I could go on about those things that we are doing.

We are proud of the progress that we've made for Australia's most vulnerable people, but we don't pretend that every challenge in our economy and, more importantly, in our society has been fixed. That's why the work of the PC about mobility is so important to us, and that's why, in every single budget, we do what we can to help the most vulnerable people in our country.