Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I would like first to address the issue of the modelling and the cost. Senator Bernardi, I am not sure if you were in the chamber when I articulated in my speech on the second reading yesterday that, according to the tax estimates by the Australian government for welfare services—and I am basing this on current prices from 1998-99 to 2005-06—the cost at the present time of the capped exemption for fringe benefits tax for public benevolent institutions is in fact $250 million, of a total expenditure of $25,000,000,740. So, as you can see, as I said last night, it is a relatively small proportion. If you just do the straight maths of increasing the cap by about a third, we are estimating that it is going to cost between $80 million and $100 million. Considering the value of the services that are delivered by this sector, which are worth over $50 billion—and I repeat again that that is a highly conservative estimate, based on the cost to the community services; if government were to deliver those, you would have to increase that price substantially—the Greens argue very strongly that an increase of expenditure of around $80 million to $100 million is a very, very cheap way to deliver these critical services to the Australian community.

As for the comments about my ‘hysterical’ outburst yesterday, let us put it in context. We are reinventing a little bit of history here, which is what I articulated last night. The Greens were the first party to come out and advocate for a rise in the pension for our pensioners. Let us make no mistake about this amendment. I was accused of supporting the government. I have actually looked at this legislation and understand what they are trying to do with the seniors card. If people’s incentives or benefits through the seniors card are altered with this change, they are certainly not pensioners, because pensioners will not come anywhere near meeting the ceiling on expenditure. So stop using emotive language, saying, ‘This is you cheating pensioners.’ It is a different issue.

Last night I said that if you are going to have a bleeding heart—and I am really happy that you changed from the way you were before—please deal with the issues that are actually affecting our community. As I said last night, because of the changes to the child support formula, right now there are hundreds of thousands of single parents, both mothers and fathers—although 85 per cent of single parents are mothers—who are suffering. When that legislation was changed, we knew this was coming down the track. But we did not know the size of the impact, because adequate modelling was not done. The interaction with Welfare to Work was not done. Where was the concern for the thousands of the lowest paid and lowest income earning members of our community? Where was the concern for the kinship carers that were impacted tremendously by Welfare to Work provisions? Where was the care for pensioners when their income in real terms keeps falling behind? That is the point I made.

As I said, I am really glad that there has been a change of heart, and one of the ways that you can demonstrate it is by supporting this amendment. As I said, the figures that we have been able to get hold of to date show that at this stage the expenditure is $250 million. That would go up by $80 million to $100 million. That is cheap. That is a cheap way of buying all the resources and commitment and support that the community sector give to this community. I think I have heard general support around the chamber for the community sector and the absolutely crucial and valuable work that they do. This is a way that we can support that work while the long-term solutions are found.

I am not pretending that this is the way that we can deal with the crisis that faces the sector. It releases a bit of steam from the pressure points that the community sector are facing. But if we do not address this issue we are going to be seeing a community sector more and more in crisis. As I said last night, I have been inundated with emails from people saying, ‘Good on you,’ and giving me examples—I articulated some of them last night—of what the issues are that are facing the sector and how important it is that we start addressing these issues.