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

The so-called budget emergency which underpins this measure is the government's key justification for its cruel and unnecessary cuts to our country's most disadvantaged. We have had a number of people, including my colleague Senator Whish-Wilson, highlighting what a bunk the so-called budget emergency is. In the same way as we have a confected budget emergency or budget crisis we also have a confected welfare crisis, which is used to justify these cruel measures. I think we should note that while the measure contained in the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Budget Repair Levy) Bill 2014—if it was properly implemented and people were not using the loopholes, which I will come to in a minute—would potentially make $3 billion, this budget takes $12 billion from the most vulnerable members of our community. This levy is simply to hide the fact that this government is driving an ideological agenda to take that money off Australia's most vulnerable people and fundamentally change our community—that is what this budget is about, that is what these measures do—and you make a little token, with a whole lot of little loopholes built in, to make it look as if you are also hitting your mates. You are not. You are hitting the most vulnerable.

Mr Hockey's claim about the end of the age of entitlement was all about driving his ideological change to cut income support, social security, and things like universal health care. That is what this is about, let us make no mistake. And, let me tell you, you are not fooling Australians. They hate it. They know what you are up to. This emergency has been debunked by the International Monetary Fund and again this week by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office. This confected budget emergency further entrenches inequality in this country. If that is what the aim was—and it seems like it is—that is what you are doing.

Allowing inequality to continue to grow will put significant pressure on our community; in fact, it fundamentally changes our community. We know that inequality in itself has negative health impacts. The government's agenda hits single parents, pensioners, carers, people with disabilities and our young people, our next generation. We know that these groups are already living in poverty and suffering the effects of that poverty. We know what impact poverty has in entrenching disadvantage and intergenerational consequences. We already know that our current income support system is inadequate. Try living on Newstart—I have—for only a week: you cannot do it! We know that people on Newstart are living in poverty. We know that single parents are living in poverty. We know that 30 per cent of people over the age of 65 are already living in poverty.

This budget comes with a big price: driving the most vulnerable members of our community into poverty, and increasing inequality. It is because of the inherent inequality of this budget, and the apparent acceptance by this government that growing inequality in general is okay, that we want to see these budget measures defeated. We do not want to see a levy in place; we actually want to see progressive tax reform. We believe that this levy needs to be a permanent tax change. We have never hidden the fact that we think we need tax reform. But this levy, as I said, is simply designed to make it look as if the mates, the big end of town, are paying just a little bit.

We know it is actually the most vulnerable in our community that are going to be paying the price not just because they will be living in poverty but also in terms of the long-term consequences. The cuts of $12 billion to payments and programs for those on low incomes are permanent changes for those community members and our community. The agenda here is not the confected budget crisis, not the confected welfare crisis, but the fact that this government wants to change our society. This temporary deficit levy will raise $3 billion—if you do not manage to find a loophole. Senator Wong articulated some of those loopholes, as did my colleague Senator Whish-Wilson. Of course, the race will be on to find those loopholes, so we will never see the $3 billion from this levy. Avoiding the real conversation and relying on trickle-down economics is clearly what this government are at. They clearly want to create a mean and cruel society in Australia—and these cuts are particularly mean and cruel to the most vulnerable members of our community.

This government has not gone for revenue measures which would genuinely raise a significant amount of money for our budget. There is new evidence internationally that more than $21 trillion of assets are hidden offshore due to tax loopholes. If the Australian component of this was taxed properly, it would certainly generate more income for Australia. And it would also change the conversation about our national wealth. Instead we have a community where the gap in Australia between those who have the assets and the money and those who do not is growing. The wealthiest one per cent of Australians have more than 60 per cent of the country's wealth—and the way these changes will impact on the most vulnerable people means they will keep it and it will grow. The nine richest people in Australia have a fortune that equates to the bottom 20 per cent of our country—that is, 4.5 million people.

There has been a concerted effort to make out that income support is putting enormous pressure on our budget. But the HILDA report today—bad timing for the government—shows that there has been a gradual decline in welfare reliance by all working aged people over the last two decades. In 2001, 23 per cent of people aged 16 to 64 received welfare payments each week. In 2011, that figure had fallen to 18.5 per cent. The proportion of households receiving any welfare fell from 41.3 per cent to 34.7 per cent. The HILDA survey reports today have put paid to Treasurer Joe Hockey's claims that there is a welfare mentality in Australia and the government needs to cut the social security budget. The Treasurer says welfare is costing each Australian $6,000. Let us have a think about what that is for. It is to support seniors. It is for the age pension and to support people in aged care. It pays for family tax benefits. It helps people with disability. It not only pays for the DSP and other disability supports but also funds the NDIS. It also funds and helps support those people who cannot find work.

It pays unemployment payments, it pays sick payments, it pays veterans and it pays carers. Of course, the government is going for them too. It supports other programs that provide help to people with disabilities. It provides childcare, income support payments and child support payments, and it helps to pay states for people with disabilities. In other words, it provides those fundamental supports that a caring and generous society provides to its citizens and which underpinned our social security system when it came into being at the beginning of the last century. The feedback I am getting from the community is that community members still want those supports and still believe we should be providing those supports to members of our community.

Let us look at the Oxfam report released today, where we learn that 64 per cent of those surveyed said that inequality was making Australia a worse place to live. The government seem to be in denial about what inequality looks like. Not only are they making the situation worse for many members of our community who bear the brunt of these budget cuts, but they also have the gall to suggest that Australians have equality of opportunity under this government. They obviously do not understand what equality of opportunity means. If you entrench disadvantage and poverty, you increase inequality. They clearly need to go back and gain an understanding of what equality of opportunity means.

Equality of opportunity means access to education, yet funding for Gonski has been dropped and tertiary education will become much more expensive, particularly for women. Equality of opportunity means access to housing, yet we have seen funding for social housing cut. Equality of opportunity means access to work, yet this government is putting in place policies that make it harder for people to find work. The perverse incentives that are being built into these measures for young people will entrench poverty and make it harder for people to find work. Equality of opportunity means access to health care, yet this government is fundamentally undermining universal health care at a time when we are not, for example, closing the gap adequately for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in this country.

This debt crisis is a confected crisis, and the debt crisis levy is a poorly constructed, ideological budget initiative that simply highlights that the government is being dishonest with the Australian community. There is no budget crisis and there is no welfare crisis. There are ideologically driven attacks on the Australian community that are confected to try and justify the horrendous cuts that the most vulnerable in our community face, such as dropping young people into poverty for six months.

If you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you will never know what it is like to be unemployed and have no income for six months. Maybe you think you can go home to mum and dad. For a start, in estimates—and I asked in a number of estimates committees—no-one could tell me how many of the young people they expect to be caught up in this measure are living at home: 'I can't tell you, Senator.' 'How many have children?' 'I can't tell you, Senator.' 'Will a couple that are both unemployed and have children be subject to this measure?' 'Yes, one of them will.' So we will have families living on one Newstart allowance. We heard in the media over the weekend—and we did not hear this in estimates—that if you are pregnant you will be subject to this measure as well. The cute thing about that measure is that you are still on Newstart—nil start, nil payment. It is an abomination to treat the income support system in this manner.

The Greens support sensible measures to raise revenue and manage the budget by targeting those who can afford to pay. This includes keeping the current tax on mining superprofits and keeping a price on carbon pollution. We proposed a new deposit guarantee levy on the big banks' profits and the removal of billions of dollars in corporate welfare—such as the mining diesel subsidies—but none of these were considered in the budget.

You could say there is a welfare crisis in this country. The welfare crisis is the fact that this government refuses to look at where you can get real revenue and remove the welfare for big business. This government is refusing to consider measures such as removing the mining diesel subsidies, which provide billions of dollars to the big end of town. We need to assess why we are prepared to abandon a caring society and let this idea of a budget emergency stand when it will only further entrench inequality and make things much worse for many people in our community. How can this government continue to say that there is a budget emergency when there clearly is not, and how can it continue to try to take $12 billion off the most vulnerable in our community?

Inequality has a significant impact on people's sense of belonging and makes them feel excluded. It has real impacts on people's health. Poverty has long-lasting psychological impacts, as well as the most obvious impacts of not being able to eat, pay for housing, pay for clothes or afford your kids' schoolbooks. Anglicare released a report last year that showed the impact of not having enough money to buy food and what that means for our most vulnerable families. It talked about the shame that children experience when they go to school with no lunch or when they cannot bring their friends home after school. It talks about the lifelong disadvantage that is experienced by people entrenched in poverty and how those early experiences make people feel long-lasting shame.

Housing stress is reaching a critical peak, particularly in my home state of Western Australia. We have families living in one room, or worse, in tents and in their cars—families with young children living in cars. How can you go to work, go to school or expect to perform in job interviews when you have not got a home and you have not been able to eat, when you are stressed because you cannot feed your family?

The Salvation Army's Economic and Social Impact Survey has also highlighted the serious challenges facing many people across Australia, including homelessness and housing insecurity, a lack of food and heating, no access to money in emergencies, and social isolation. The report also highlighted the serious consequences of the GP co-payment and the challenges to the PBS, with a quarter of people surveyed already unable to afford medical treatment and 34 per cent of people going without medication. Poor health, insecure housing, going without meals and being unable to at least heat a room in the house during winter are events and situations that trap people in long-term disadvantage, and they are real, they are live, they are happening now.

It is time to stop pretending that this is a level playing field and that everybody has the same access to opportunity, when clearly they do not, and this budget makes it worse. We need to start talking seriously about how we resource the kind of community we want to live in, the kind of community that provides those things that I outlined that our social security pays for. This is something that the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, seems to think the Australian community do not care about. Well, I can tell you they do care about it. They do care that we have a caring society. This government has lost touch with that society. We do not want a temporary debt levy to relieve a fake budget emergency. We want proper tax reform, not this temporary levy—and, let me guess, the government will say the need for the temporary levy will end, just by coincidence, by the end of 2015, beginning of 2016, when the next election comes around. That is why we have a temporary levy—to make it look as if something is happening. It is not. It is not going to collect the revenue that the government claims it is, because there are loopholes built into it.

The budget measures take $12 billion off the most vulnerable. This levy will disappear, but those changes will still be there. Those people that this budget affects will still be living in poverty. This builds inequality into our future economy. If that is what the government were planning to do, they have done it. The disparity between the very wealthy and the very poor is already a cause of economic and social problems. This will get worse. Already in 2014, at the Davros conference, the United States President, Barack Obama, and the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, have identified inequality as a major risk to the pace and stability of future social and economic growth. That is what will happen in Australia as well. If this budget proceeds as the government planned, it will increase inequality. The Greens will not support that. We will not support these measures. We want permanent reform to our tax system, not a temporary levy that the government will conveniently take off before the next election and look like they have delivered something.