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

I cannot let some of those comments go without commenting. I take the minister's point: things are not exactly the same—I got that wrong. Do you know why? Because the gap between Newstart and parenting payment single has in fact increased. So, yes, the minister is right: things have not remained the same. But things have actually got worse for people living on Newstart, hence the Senate committee of inquiry into Newstart and other allowances because the gap is getting worse, because the indexation between pensions such as parenting payment single and aged care has continued to be indexed at MTAWE—very fair—and in fact the age pension has gone up. Newstart, as we know, is only indexed against the CPI. So the gap between parenting payment single and Newstart—in other words, the difference between the two—has increased, so the difference in what people will receive when they are transferred from parenting payment single to Newstart will be increased. So, yes, you are right, I am wrong and things have in fact changed. But they have got worse.

In terms of parents being able to find employment, it is arguable whether the situation of employment opportunities has improved. If you go out and talk—as I have done on many occasions—to single parents, you find they express a lot of concern about the support they do or do not get from job service providers. Some say some of them are quite good. Others tell you stories of despair. This morning, when I was outside this place on the lawns out the front, where single parents were having a meeting and a rally around this particular piece of legislation, people were articulating to me the concerns that they continue to suffer with Centrelink: poor administration, referrals to employment providers who do not support people and do not provide a service, difficulties in getting appointments, inability to find work, inability to find ongoing work, being on and off and in and out of casual work and temporary work. So those things really have not changed too much. When people are being put onto Newstart they will be subject to the same activity requirements and, of course, then the same provisions that apply to Newstart in terms of non-payment weeks for noncompliance, meeting Employment Pathway plans and all sorts of bureaucratic processes that also take time away from parents looking after families. So some things have changed—and some things have not—and I would maintain that things will get harder under these particular provisions for those transferring onto Newstart.

In terms of incentives, and I have been through this argument several times, they are the same incentives and I note what the government runs about not increasing Newstart, that you need to keep payments really low so you incentivise people to find work. If you have got children growing up in poverty, that is the incentive! These children are already growing up in poverty and it is really hard yakka trying to raise children on a low income. People's incentive is a better future for their children, not living in poverty and not being condemned to poverty and being provided with more barriers. They want a better future for their children. That is their incentive. That is why we will oppose this. We will continue to oppose poor reform to income support. We want genuine reform, like Minister Macklin said in 2005. We want real welfare reform. Real welfare reform is not condemning people to poverty and making their lives even harder.