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

Well, there is probably one thing that I agree with the government about—that is, that this budget has changed and will change society. But it will be for the worst, by far for the worst. I think Senator Back must have been reading different documents to the ones we have been reading. Oh yeah, single parents are going to get $750 extra—when you have taken $3,000 off them, when you have taken the indexation off them and when you have taken the education supplement, which, by the way, they just got back in March, off them. No, single parents will not be better off. I can tell you that, for sure.

This is after you dumped single parents onto Newstart. You have not fixed Newstart or raised it so that people can stop living in poverty. What this budget will do is drive young Australians, older Australians, single parents and the most vulnerable even deeper into poverty. Some of them are already struggling and living in poverty. This will drive far more people into poverty and drive those that are already in poverty into deep and persistent disadvantage, which has intergenerational impacts that will take a long time for these families to recover from.

These cuts take out over $12 billion from low-income earners—from families, pensioners, single parents and young people—and overshadow the other aspects of this budget. This is a fundamental change in our community to make it a much tougher community, to make these people suffer, because that is what this government is trying to do. It is almost as if they deliberately sat down and thought about how to make it the toughest for the most vulnerable members of our community. Let me tell you, you succeeded. How could you conscionably think that it is acceptable to take young people off Newstart for six months and give them no means of support? That will change our community. Those young people will have nothing. They will not be able to pay for any medicines, for going to the doctor, for any absolutely necessary things. What are they supposed to do? Just under 30, go back and live with mum and dad, come and go from mum and dad when they get back onto Work for the Dole? It is on top of your normal six-week waiting period, then you get six months waiting period with no payment, then you get Work for the Dole for up to 25 hours and then you are back off again, living on nothing. How do you pay for food? How do you pay your rent? How do you pay for the absolute necessities of life? You can't. That is a mean, cruel and harsh society. Is that your vision? That is what you are going to achieve. It is not a vision, by the way, that we, the Greens, share and we never, ever will.

How does this government think it is going to be building a better society? Who is doing the heavy lifting? It is the most vulnerable: older Australians, younger Australians, single parents and the vulnerable—that is who is doing the heavy lifting. As I said, single parents are copping cuts all over the place. Younger people will be far worse off. They will have the compulsory job readiness activities for those who can find work. It is almost as if the government is sitting there thinking, 'All these young people are just sitting there on the couch collecting their easy welfare.' Have they never seen how hard it is for young people to find work? They are not out of work because they want to be, they are out of work because there are no jobs. So just making them poorer and dropping them literally into poverty, because they will have no means of support, how do you think that is going to make it easy to find work? How do you think they are going to find clothes to even turn up for an interview? How do you think they are going to be employed if they have no proper attire to even go for an interview? I asked the Assistant Minister for Social Services, Senator Fifield, yesterday what evidence he had that living in poverty provides an extra incentive for people to find work. He could not provide one because there is none. The evidence shows that in fact dropping people into poverty provides yet another barrier to employment. These are demeaning policies. They are designed to have the deserving and the undeserving, and if you are unfortunate in this country, from now on you are the undeserving.

The government had made their promise to pensioners and now they think that Australians will be fooled to think that they have kept it. They have raised the retirement age by 2035. They will be changing indexation of the pension and it will make up to $100 difference a fortnight, but it will be after 2017. In the meantime there are lots of other little cuts that are already going to impact on older Australians.

This is cruel and it is mean—and I have not even started touching yet on the impacts on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. First off, the government have taken $534 million out of the budget because they are supposed to be getting the administration better. The problem here is that the budget conveniently does not say which programs are surviving and which programs are not. Aboriginal organisations have got a letter that says, 'Well, we have made these cuts and we are making a decision about which programs and contracts will continue for, say, six months or 12 months. Hang by the phone, folks, and we will tell you whether in less than two months time your organisation's work will continue, your contract will continue, or whether it will finish.' They have also cut funds completely into national congress, showing what complete disregard the self-professed Prime Minister for Aboriginal affairs has for self-determination and for elected Aboriginal people representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I say this to the government: if you have in fact genuinely found $534 million worth of savings, why aren't you putting that back into Aboriginal programs? We are nowhere near closing the gap and a lot of indicators are not being met. So we will not under this budget be meeting our close the gap commitments to close the gap within a generation. Again, this is mean, cruel and tricky to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. What I should also mention is that the cuts to Newstart, the changes to Newstart, the changes to Youth Allowance and the increased health care costs are going to disproportionately impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people—on top of the cuts, a double whammy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Senator Di Natale has already outlined today some of the impacts of the cuts to health care. The cost of basic medical care will throw up a huge challenge to the most vulnerable and those on income support and low incomes. For those living on $255 a week a hit of $7 for visiting a doctor is huge to your budget. I will stop here again and just say that when you are living on Newstart you are already living in poverty. Every single dollar counts. When you are living below the poverty line you think about every dollar you spend because you have an extremely low and fixed income.

Increasing the co-payments for prescription medicines for those on low incomes will also be a burden. We already know that many people on low incomes are not filling their prescriptions. In fact, when we had an inquiry into section 100 of the PBS process, the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs found that Aboriginal people would share prescriptions because they could make them stretch longer. Of course, that is completely unacceptable.

This is the sort of thing that we are going to see under this government. This is going to fundamentally change our community—and not for the better. It will be a darker, meaner, crueller future that the coalition and the Abbott government foresees for the most vulnerable members of our community. We the Greens will not be a part of it. We will not help this government do in the most vulnerable members of our community.