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

I rise to make a contribution to this debate on this very important topic. When Senator Fierravanti-Wells describes Newstart and income support as a 'lifestyle choice', you understand where this government is coming from. They simply do not understand these issues. The contempt they show to young Australians, older Australians and people who are trying to exist on the meagre Newstart allowance is beyond anybody's wildest thoughts. They are appalling. It is quite clear how they view the most vulnerable in our community. While this government expends all its energies on trying to protect the big banks, big miners, big polluters and big businesses, we know how they are carelessly and cruelly treating young Australians. Young Australians are being condemned to live in poverty. That, of course, means they have a very uncertain future because we know what impact living in disadvantage, particularly in your early years, has on the rest of your life.

Today the Prime Minister said to the crossbenchers, 'Make some suggestions about alternative revenue sources.' And believe me, we—the Greens—have made plenty for a start. But they are deaf to that because they are too busy protecting the big end of town while they make young, vulnerable Australians pay the price—and they will be paying the price for the rest of their lives. This government is failing young Australians. This budget is grim for young Australians, as education becomes inaccessible, housing is unaffordable and the government wants universal health care to be a thing of the past. All these changes condemn young people to a very uncertain future. My colleague Senator Di Natale will address some of those issues shortly.

But the most gobsmacking impact on young people in this budget is dropping them onto no income support for six months, or longer—because if they make a mistake in compliance they are then given another month with no income support. This exposes young people to poverty. It is yet another barrier to work when people are forced to live on nothing—I repeat: nothing—for six months. The government know this is cruel. They know it is going to drop people into disadvantage, which is why they have allocated some additional funding to emergency relief, so young people can learn early to go and beg for support. That is what we are teaching our young people: go to charity. I am not maligning charities at all; I am a very vocal and strong supporter of charities. But to teach young people that that is what you do—you go and beg for support—is outrageous. And that is not even new money: they have taken $240 million out of the discretionary grants program in the Department of Social Services and reallocated that to emergency relief. So programs that could actually help young people and the most disadvantaged in our community are being robbed to pay for this cruel government's approach to young people.

This is going to affect hundreds of thousands of young Australians. I asked in estimates, along with a number of other people, about how this cruel program was going to work. I asked about young people when they had come through the six months of being condemned to work for the dole, out of which they would get no training and no guarantee of jobs at the end. I asked whether, if they then managed to find casual work or part-time work, they would get the wage subsidy. I was told: 'Can't answer that.' I asked if they got part-time or casual work could they still get the job commitment bonus, because it is not young people's fault that the work is not there—because it is not. When I asked that I was told: 'No, we can't answer that; we call that micropolicy, Senator.' In other words, they have not worked out the details of what impact these programs are going to have, how they are going to help young people, how they are going to assist young people to find work or how they are going to work out their wage subsidy scheme. They could not tell me because they have not worked out the details.

Young people want to work. Contrary to what Senator Fierravanti-Wells has been portraying to this chamber, young people do not see this as a lifestyle choice. They want to work. The work is not there. When you are condemned to live in poverty, on nothing, you will be more worried about where your next meal is coming from, which charity to go to to get your next meal or which charity to go to to help you find accommodation. When you are living on nothing you will not have accommodation or you will not be able to maintain accommodation. It makes a complete farce of the next piece of cruelty that is happening here, which is that you are living on Newstart with no payment—nil payment—so you still have your obligations under Newstart to be looking for jobs. And the government are saying, 'We think they're going to have to make 40 applications for work a month.' How can you make 40 applications for work a month when you haven't even got stable accommodation and you don't even know where your next meal is coming from, let alone have access to a computer or any means to be able to get those applications in? That is the last thing that you are going to be able to do.

That leads me to the question of how you find work when the work is not there. You go to your job service provider, of course. The government have not quite worked out how that is going to work yet, because they are putting extra compliance on that. So the normal rules for Newstart stream 1 and stream 2 are not going to apply for young people, but they could not tell us in estimates how that is going to work either. Job Services Australia are not providing the services that need to be provided for young people and Youth Connections is now gone. If they do not have any ideas they should start looking seriously at the proposals by the Brotherhood of St Lawrence, who have put out a very good report that makes very sensible suggestions—which, by the way, do not include dropping people onto no income support for six months.

The government have got this wrong. Go back to the drawing board. Don't condemn our future leaders and senior people in this country to such a bad start. That is what you are doing: you are condemning them to poverty, you are condemning them to poor life outcomes, because living on nothing is appalling. (Time expired)