Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

In fact, our welfare expenditure accounted for just 8.6 per cent of GDP in 2013 compared to the OECD average of 13 per cent. Perhaps Senator O'Sullivan can give me the figures which he is mumbling about. The government's claim that Australia is heading for some sort of welfare crisis is complete rubbish.

These bills build up the premise that people are not supporting Australia, but they are. These bills are an unprecedented attack on pensioners and seniors. The Prime Minister said that pensions would not be cut. Well, they will be. The real amount of pension will be cut. The pension indexation changes will impact on what people are able to get from their pension. Treasurer Hockey admitted that the Abbott government's changes to pension indexation will result in massive cuts to the age pension, saying:

… in 2024-25, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office, instead of being $74.8 billion a year it is $67.9 billion a year.

In Senate Estimates, answers from Minister Fifield showed that the changes to the pension indexation have been put in place in an effort to slow the rate of pension increase.

What has occurred is that people have been made afraid. They have been made afraid about the security of their future. They have been made to feel as though they are doing something wrong, when in fact they have not. That is not the intent of our system. It is to engage and support, not to demonise.

The major advocacy organisations that support aged people in our country are saying they want to have a discussion about retirement in Australia. They think it is an important thing to do. They do not like their members—older Australians—being referred to as 'leaners'. They want a discussion about how we can work together to best work as a nation. We need to look across the board at our retirement system and not take a blunt instrument like the indexation tool to rip money out of the fortnightly payments of Australian pensioners.

I remember, as you would, Mr Acting Deputy President Gallacher, that when we had the call several years ago to increase pensions, our government, the Rudd government, actually increased pensions. The people on this side were saying we should do more. So their argument is not consistent. With our superannuation changes, again, we believe that we should be protecting superannuation and not ripping it away.

But it is not just age pensioners and veterans who are being affected by these bills. Self-funded retirees are also being betrayed in the budget. The bills include the abolition of the seniors supplement, an annual payment of $876 to people who receive the Commonwealth seniors health card. Already the government has cut the pensioner concessions that are linked between the Commonwealth and state governments, a process that of course is blamed completely on the states, but that is just not true.

We believe that there is a clear indication in these two bills that people in Australia will now be divided into those who have and those who have not, and this government is ripping more money off the people who have not. We consistently talk about the issues of the cumulative effect of these cuts. You cannot take one issue and look at it in isolation. We had evidence during our inquiry about what the cumulative effect would be of the range of cuts. This needs to be addressed by the community and by the government.

In regard to the age pension and superannuation, I will be moving amendments to the bills today to remove the following cruel cuts from the bills: cuts to pensions, through the indexation changes; increasing the age pension to 70; abolishing the seniors supplement; the resetting of the social security and veterans entitlements test deeming thresholds; cessation of the pensioner education supplement; the removal of the three-month backdating of the disability pension under the Veterans' Entitlement Act 1986; and a pause to indexation of the income-test-free areas for all pensioners. Labor will not support these measures.

When we get to families there is another series of attacks. These bills contain measures that can only be described as a full-scale cost-of-living attack on Australian families. It includes a massive $7.5 billion in cuts to family payments. This legislation will put more pressure on the budgets of millions of families, and low-income families will be hit the hardest. We have figures from independent modelling agency NATSEM saying that the government has no credibility in claiming that this is a fair budget. NATSEM research showed that around 1.2 million families will be, on average, $3,000 a year worse-off by 2017-18. In contrast, the top 20 per cent of households will experience either no impact, a negligible impact, or in fact a positive impact.

The bills seek to freeze the payment rate for family tax benefits. They seek to freeze the low-income-free area for family tax benefits, including the low-income-free area for those who receive the maximum rate of family tax benefit A. According to the Department of Social Services, a freeze to the low-income-free area for FTB-A alone will see more than 370,000 families around $750 a year worse off in 2016-17. Over the life of the children's schooling, eligible families will be around $15,000 worse off as a result of this budget, including the measures in these bills. By 2016, a single-income couple family on $65,000 with two school-age children will be around $6,000 worse off each year. We have the figures. Through Senate estimates we tried to get information about these cuts. We tried to find out exactly who was going to be impacted. We found out slowly through Senate estimates that around 700,000 families will lose family tax benefit B, if the government actually gets these bills through.

Families will lose their payment when their youngest child turns six. We have been fighting these kinds of reductions for years, looking at the need for effective parenting. Again, removing this payment when the youngest child turns six does not engage effectively with what we know is best practice for families and for parenting. It erodes the sense of security, the sense of harmony, that people should have with their government.

Today I will also move amendments to reflect that Labor will oppose the indexing of parenting payment (single) by CPI only—the government is moving the wages benchmark. Labor will oppose the government's move to freeze the rates of family tax benefits; oppose revising the family tax benefit end-of-year supplements to their original values, and cease indexation; and, oppose limiting family tax benefit part B to families with children under six years of age. The new allowance, which as been put in because the government knew this was going to have an impact, further complicates the system and does not adjust effectively for the loss from the original cut. Labor will also oppose freezes to the income-free-areas for family payments.

The bills also include a measure to tighten the means testing for FTB-B from $150,000 to $100,000. Labor accepts the need for means testing. We in fact have implemented means testing for many payments, such as the age pension and the private health insurance rebate. We originally introduced means testing to family tax benefit part B. You will remember that when we did that, the people who are now in government but were on the opposition side of the chamber at the time and they abused our changes, saying that we were heartless, that we did not understand the need, and that we were not effectively fulfilling our role in government. It is always dangerous when you go back and read past Hansards. But I would encourage people to have a look at what this government said when they were in opposition about changes to our system. Compare the rhetoric and compare the allegations, then you will see—when you hear their statements—that there again is no consistency.

There was considerable debate in our inquiry and also considerable information from people who have written in to many of us through the committee process—through email and phone calls—about their concern about the young job seekers' changes. There were a series of questions that we put to the department at our inquiry about the impact and the research behind the singularly unique and harsh changes that the government has brought in, which will withdraw the safety net for young job seekers. I know many senators will be putting information on the record about how concerned they are about this.

The National Welfare Rights Network stated in our inquiry that the changes in this measure to unemployment eligibility for young people under 30 is:

…a fundamental attack on the basic right to social security and the principle of adequate income support based on need.

ACOSS said:

The removal of any income support for a group of people not in paid work fundamentally changes the Australian income support safety net.

The St Vincent de Paul Society said:

We find very concerning the idea that the government would intentionally remove any semblance of a social safety net for a particular group of people.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has also pointed out that amongst all the changes that were brought forward, this particular attack on young, unemployed people does not meet the requirement to fit the human rights expectations of our community. Again, I stress that these bills—as part of a wider budget—actually attack the relationship between our citizens and our social welfare system. These do not respond to the way that we have committed to ensuring that people in need will have support.