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

I move Greens amendment (1) on sheet 7104:

(1)   Clause 2, page 2 (table item 4), omit the table item.

This amendment proposes to remove changes to the disability support pension. As I articulated in my second reading contribution, the Greens have great concerns with the changes. We believe they will have very significant unintended consequences and that they should be excluded. More time needs to be put into developing a much more sensitive approach to helping people with a disability. I could be generous and give the government credit for thinking this is the way in which you help people with a disability. In that case, I urge them to reconsider their amendments, because they will have very significant unintended consequences.

But I think what the government is about here is saving money. I do not believe this is the way to do it. Research clearly shows that punitive approaches do not work. The government has recognised that there are barriers to people with disabilities finding work, and it has made significant changes in addressing taper rates and introducing disability brokers. These are good steps. On the one hand the government is making positive moves in addressing barriers to employment for someone living with a disability. But these amendments are not a good step. The government has not worked out the detail. It is rushing them through in order to save nearly $50 million. I do not think these measures are appropriate. Even if the government brought them in at the end of the year, I do not think they are the way to go. This is a particularly bad time and this is a particularly bad way of doing things.

The government are rushing these changes through. They have not completed the impairment table. They do not know—and they admitted this; I had a bit of a to and fro with the department over this—what role the providers will have. They are still making it up, quite frankly, as they go along. They should withdraw these measures. They should at least start them when they said they were going to—although, as I said, I do not agree with the changes; but at least a delay would maybe blunt some of the most dramatic of their potentially unintended consequences.