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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to a question without notice asked by Senator Siewert today relating to income support arrangements.

I asked Minister Cormann to firstly confirm the source of funding for the emergency relief money. That is the $229 million that I asked about last week. I asked him to confirm the source of that money because I was very concerned during estimates, when we were trying to find out where the $240 million worth of cuts would comment from, when we heard it would be from discretionary grants in the Department of Social Services. We had to have a spillover estimates hearing last week because during normal budget estimates the government were not able to answer questions on that particular area of funding because they were in the process of developing tender documents. They subsequently released those documents on the day, 19 June, that we had a follow-up estimates hearing last week.

For those listening and those in the chamber who were not involved in those estimates, the documents were about five centimetres high. We were trying to find out where they had collapsed a range of programs into what they called the broadbanding programs of only five or six streams, cutting $240 million. We as a community affairs committee and as a community need to know where that $240 million has come from. We cannot ascertain that from the documentation and the government was unable to answer those questions, but what is obvious is that $240 million has been cut from Social Services's discretionary grants program.

Then, on the other side of the books, we get a 'new' $229 million—so-called new money for emergency relief for the young people who are forced to live on nothing. That is absolutely essential funding for those young people, if that measure passes this place. I will do my best to convince people not to support the passing of that cruel, harsh measure for young people. Those young people are going to be expected to live on nothing, so of course they will need some sort of emergency relief. I will remark that last week when I was asking that question the government would not rule out whether that would comprise food vouchers or confirm what other form that emergency relief would take.

This money is not new money. This money is money used to fund community grants programs that are designed to give young people a better start in life, and particularly to help those most vulnerable children in our community who need that sort of support. They are taking money out of those programs that provide that excellent support and putting it into emergency relief for young people who are going to be permanently damaged by those earn and learn measures—they are punitive and they will present so many barriers to young people being able to find work that they just will not work. They will not do what the government wants to do—to help these people find work.

At the same time as the government are railing against the huge amount of money that they are spending on income support and social security, they are pouring out billions of dollars in corporate welfare. We saw in the Australia Institute report today that nearly $17 billion worth of subsidies and so-called industry assistance is provided to mining companies in particular, but other forms of big business as well, and on top of that the mining sector gets billions of dollars worth of assistance from the federal government. The federal government talk about needing to address the cost of welfare, but they do not include the cost of corporate welfare. It costs billions and billions of dollars. They do not seem to worry about that. They do talk about leaners and lifters, but with that definition just who is doing the leaning and who is doing the lifting? It seems to me that the big end of town is doing a lot of leaning on the public purse, and where does the government cut most? It cuts assistance for those who are going to be most vulnerable and who need the most support. That is the area where this government has decided to cut. It is an ideological cut—not because of their confected budget crisis but because they want to cut income support to the most vulnerable. These programs carve massive holes in the so-called safety net. The holes are so big that it is not a safety net at all. The government should focus on ending corporate welfare, not cutting help for the most vulnerable. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.