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

There is gross unfairness at the heart of this government's budget. We now know that people will not be benefited by these processes. We will also be moving amendments in this particular section of the bill. We will be removing the following sections to extend the ordinary waiting period for working age payments, we will be rejecting the cessation of the education entry payment and we will be rejecting moving people under 25 from Newstart onto youth allowance, which would be with weekly cuts to their already minimal allowances.

The forcing of young people under 30 to wait six months without any support at all then becomes a rolling punishment. It is not just once; but it is six months on, six months off. Think about what that will do to Australian families. This applies to people under 30. These are independent people who now will be forced back to relying on family or charity. That does not meet any requirement under our acceptance of what should be what our nation does. We are also rejecting the pauses to indexation for the low income-free area for student payments, including the student income bank limits. We are also rejecting pausing indexation of income-free areas for all working age allowances.

There are many other elements of this bill that need consideration. They are enormous piece of legislation, but I think it is important that senators across the board can identify elements that offend them, that cause fear and that we should be addressing. We believe the government has not effectively shared the pain of the budget. They said that there would be pain in the budget, but it has not been shared fairly. The most vulnerable, who are the people who are reliant on support, will bear the greatest punishment. We reject this process and we will actually be ensuring that the through this debate, we will be focusing on what needs to change.