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

I seek leave to take note of the response by the Minister for Community Services, Minister Collins, to the motion passed by the Senate last year on Anti-Poverty Week.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the response.

The operative substantive parts of that motion were causing the government to:

(i) take further action to reduce the number of people living in poverty in Australia, particularly the number of children living in poverty, and

(ii) develop a national anti-poverty plan to facilitate coordinated action across all levels of government to meet targets which reduce poverty and its causes.

While the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs in her response has gone through some of the policies that are currently in place and, as I said, I do wish to specifically deal with some of those policies in a moment, I am very disappointed that the letter does not specifically address that key point of the motion, which is to 'develop a coordinated national plan'. Committee organisations and those working on antipoverty have been talking about this issue for a very long time.

Before I address some of these policy issues I would like to point out some of the very important issues that are facing those living in poverty and the number of people living in poverty in this country and to also highlight the fact that a group of single parents rallied outside Parliament House today, talking about the fact they are now being forced to live in poverty, thanks to the policy that this government has introduced, which drops those single parents onto Newstart, which is at least $133 below the poverty line.

I would also like to specifically talk about the report of ACOSS—Australian Council of Social Services—which they released last year at the beginning of Anti-Poverty Week. According to the 2010 consensus data, one in six children in Australia are living below the poverty line—that is, 575,000 children, or 17.3 per cent of all children, are living in poverty. The government's policy, which was of course supported by the coalition, mooted to drop single parents onto Newstart. Of course, that figure would have increased on 1 January. Sixty-two per cent of all people living in poverty are in receipt of income support payments—again, highlighting the inadequate level of income support payments in this country.

We know that many people do not transition away from these payments and that they live in poverty for extended periods. The report of the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee inquiry into Newstart last year found that Newstart payments were inadequate and that Newstart payments and a lot of income support payments were supposedly designed for short-term support, not long-term support. We know that 62 per cent of people who are trying to exist on Newstart have been on that payment for over 12 months. We also know that many of those people are over the age of 45 and have trouble finding a job due to age discrimination. Many are single parents—and now there are even more single parents because of the government's policy change, which has dropped them onto Newstart—and those single parents have caring responsibilities. They are often stuck in insecure, temporary work and have to cycle in and out of work because their workplaces cannot meet flexible requirements because parents, of course, by very definition, are looking after the children.

Anglicare also released a report during Anti-Poverty Week. The report, which I helped launch, is entitled When there isn't enough to eat. The lived impact of poverty was based on the lived experiences of families who are accessing the emergency support services that Anglicare provide. There were also some really good interviews with support workers, telling accounts from families. This report found that 45,000 Australian families could not afford food all the time. One-third of the people participating in this survey indicated that they experienced severe food insecurity almost every week. One in 10 households surveyed reported that children did not eat for an entire day on a regular basis. Families reported that they may not send their kids to school if they do not have food for lunches and that they cannot have friends over after school because there is nothing to offer for snacks. Hunger has a range of very negative impacts on children, including embarrassment and anger, and hunger makes it difficult to concentrate. It also sets in place poor eating habits and nutritional outcomes for children, sometimes for the rest of their lives. Many children who are food-insecure struggle to learn and they act out or have other behavioural problems.

We are setting up these children to fail. By failing to provide even a basic income to these families—there is not enough to keep them in stable housing, put food on the table and cover the basic transport and utilities costs—we are ensuring that they in fact continue to struggle and continue to live in poverty and will find it very difficult to escape that poverty.

With that background I would like to then go to what the minister says the government have been doing about vulnerable families. They say that 'doing better for vulnerable families has been a driving force behind the Australian government's significant family policy reforms in the last four years'. I am sorry, but that is just a complete joke when they have just forced 87,000 single parents and their children into poverty. They have just condemned those families to poverty. So much for doing better for vulnerable families! Those are the very single parents and their families who are trying to survive on single parent payments, let alone being forced to survive on Newstart, and are the very definition of a vulnerable family. So much for this caring government, so much for a caring approach to vulnerable families.

In this letter the minister says that, from January 2013, a new Schoolkids Bonus will deliver assistance to around 1.3 million families. The government talk about it being used to buy books, uniforms and school excursions, stationery and other costs such as sports registration. Apparently, it is being suggested to single parent families, struggling to survive on Newstart, that they use the Schoolkids Bonus to pay their rent, their utility bills and their shopping—not to help their kids at school. 'Oh no, no; we've taken between $60 and $100'—and I heard this morning $140—'a week off these vulnerable families, but it's okay, you've got the Schoolkids Bonus.' It is one of the excuses the government uses for: 'It's okay, these families are getting supplements for all sorts of things.'

Recommendations are being made that they use the Schoolkids Bonus. The minister has taken on board to check whether it is in fact the department that is telling them that, the same minister, who, when I asked last year whether it was true that the agencies of Centrelink were telling people when they rang that they could contact emergency relief organisations and not-for-profit organisations, said that that was not happening. Now we hear that in fact people are being advised, because those are the organisations that help these people. They are relying on charities to pick up what this government should be doing. The government took $700 million away from vulnerable families for their supposed surplus, which has now been abandoned—$700 million because they would not stand up to the mining companies and big business and the most wealthy in this country. They would rather attack vulnerable families, whom the minister says have been a driving force behind the Australian government's significant reforms to family policy. Does that mean they do not think single parent families are families? Don't they qualify as vulnerable families? Those families and their children have been abandoned by this government. They have to struggle to try to get an interview with Centrelink and then they have to wait because Centrelink are so overwhelmed with demand.

One of the joyful parts of being a parent is celebrating your kids' birthdays and you make a big deal of them. When a single parent's child turns eight, it is not 'Happy birthday'; they have to cop a cut of between $60 and $140 a week. That is what happens for single parents on their eight-year-old's birthday. That is not dealing with poverty in this country. We need to do better and we certainly need a nationally coordinated plan, and the government needs to reverse its approach to condemning single parent families to living in poverty.

Question agreed to.