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

I rise to contribute to the debate on the Labor Party's motion on fuel excise and the amendments foreshadowed by Senator Lazarus. The Labor Party's motion is 'that the Senate notes the Abbott government's petrol tax ambush and its negative impact on cost pressures facing Australian households and businesses'. Then Senator Lazarus has some amendments to that, and in particular I would like to talk to part 2 of the foreshadowed amendment that talks about how the underhanded act to increase petrol prices will have a negative impact on Australian families, pensioners, low-income earners, single parents, retirees, the sick, the disadvantaged and businesses, including small business owners. That is exactly right. This will have a negative impact on pensioners, single parents, low-income households—in other words, the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our community.

But of course we need to bear in mind that the impact of this comes on top of the other budget measures that this government wants to impose on the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our community. Of course, the government does not care, because they do not think the poor and the most disadvantaged actually use cars or consume petrol. Mr Hockey clearly does not understand that. Who can forget his comments that the poorest people either do not have cars or do not drive very far in many cases? But they are opposing what is meant to be, according to the Treasury, a progressive tax. It is simply absurd, as everybody in Australia pointed out at the time. The fact is that the poorest and most disadvantaged in our community will be desperately hit by what essentially amounts to an increase in the cost of living. I will shortly go through some of the terrible poverty figures we are faced with in Australia.

Very often the most disadvantaged and poorest live in communities that are poorly served by public transport, communities where it is hard to access public transport and communities that are some distance if people have to travel to the city. And this tax will not invest in public transport. Mapping done by a Queensland university, called VAMPIRE mapping, looked at peak oil, the scarcity of fuel into the future and who will be affected by the resulting price increases. The maps show, in a visual form, where people are living. When you look at the application of those maps to our cities, you can see how difficult it is for the most disadvantaged and poorest people to access transport if they cannot afford fuel. Either they have to spend more of their very limited income—and they have less disposable income because they are on a low income—or they become more isolated. Often, many of the people who live in these communities are unemployed. That is not always the case—and I am not stereotyping those communities—but that is the unfortunate reality. As they become more isolated it is harder for them to access work, training or education.

Household items and basic expenses like transport costs make up a huge proportion of the budgets of low-income individuals and families. Therefore, if you increase the costs of those basics you are making it even harder for people to survive. I need to put that in perspective in relation to poverty in Australia at the moment. We have just had Anti-Poverty Week in Australia, which highlighted some absolutely appalling statistics. An ACOSS report released in the run-up to Anti-Poverty Week showed that 2.5 million people are living in poverty in Australia. The poverty line ACOSS used, 50 per cent of median income, was $400 per week for a single adult and $841 per week for a couple with children. It was found that 2,548,496 people—13.9 per cent of the population—were living below the poverty line. There were 602,604 children—17.7 per cent of all children—living below the poverty line. For those on income support, 41.1 per cent of people on social security payments were living below the poverty line, including 55.1 per cent of those Newstart allowance, 50.6 per cent of those on youth allowance—in other words, half the people on youth allowance—and 47.2 per cent of those on parenting payment, the vast majority of whom would be single parents. Those figures do not include the additional single parents who were dumped onto Newstart under the Gillard government's measure to move grandfathered single parents onto Newstart. Further, those living below the poverty line included 48 per cent of people on disability support pension; 24.8 per cent, nearly a quarter of people, on carers payment; and 15.7 per cent of those on the age pension. Of the unemployed, 61.2 per cent of people were living below the poverty line. A third of Australians who were classed as the working poor lived below the poverty line and were from households where the main income was from wages. Overall, from 2010 to 2012 poverty had increased by nearly one per cent, going from 13 per cent to 13.9 per cent.

Some states have higher poverty rates than others. Tasmania has a poverty rate of 15.1 per cent. The rate varied in the regional areas of Tasmania. It was much higher in the regions than it was in Hobart. The poverty rates in other states were as follows: Queensland, 14.8 per cent; New South Wales, 14.6 per cent; Victoria, 13.9 per cent; Western Australia, 12.4 per cent; South Australia, 11.7 per cent; and ACT and the NT, 9.1 per cent.

The groups most at risk were women, children and older people; sole parents; those born overseas; people with disabilities; and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. ABS data does not include information to accurately measure the poverty rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. However, the 2011 HILDA database showed that 19.3 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were living in poverty, compared with 12.4 per cent of the wider population. These are the people who will be most at risk from increasing prices—those people who spend more of their income on basic essentials.

We can look at this measure in the context of other measures that are proposed in the budget. The government did some modelling before the budget, and a couple of weeks ago the income inequality inquiry heard that the government, in doing their figures, used the model that NATSEM developed. Both the government modelling and the NATSEM modelling quite clearly show that the budget will disproportionately hit the most disadvantaged. A much higher percentage of their income will be affected. The government's budget measures, as they knew very well before they brought them in, will most significantly hit the most disadvantaged.

This hit to the bottom line for those on the lowest income, those living in poverty and those most disadvantaged, has to be borne in mind when we are considering this issue. It will layer on top of all those other measures. The most vulnerable includes sole parents, the majority of whom are single mothers. They have been progressively hit by decreases in their income from the Howard government's cuts to single parents and from the Gillard government's changes which dumped them onto Newstart, which had perverse outcomes on their ability to find work, on their ability to maintain a connection with work and on their incomes. It had perverse outcomes for some people because they were on Newstart instead of the parenting payment single, if they found work their income went down; so there was more incentive not to increase the number of hours that they were working. If you look at the way that cuts in previous budgets and the petrol tax layer on single parents, you start to see that it has a significant impact on people's ability to survive and people's ability to raise their kids.

We need to look at this in the context of the growing inequality in this country. I think I have said in this place before—I certainly have said it in other forums—that there is some dispute around the margins about how much inequality has risen, particularly in view of the global financial crisis. It is agreed that inequality is rising and it has risen over the last three decades. We need to look at what that does to our community. A number of well-researched and articulate papers have been written on this issue. Well-known academics Richard Wilkinson of the London School of Economics and Kate Pickett of the University of York show that issues such as health, violence, lack of community life and mental illness are all likely to occur in societies where the rate of inequality is higher.

As Catholic Health Australia have noted, 65 per cent of those in the lowest income groups report long-term health problems compared with just 15 per cent of our wealthiest groups. In other words, greater inequality will have more of an impact, for example, on our health services. As is so often the case, those already facing challenges are among the first to be affected by bad policymaking, and they feel the effects the hardest.

One of the key conclusions of a report by the International Monetary Fund's research department on the topic of inequality in February this year titled Redistribution, inequality, and growthis that:

… lower net inequality is robustly correlated with faster and more durable growth, for a given level of redistribution.

It said:

It would still be a mistake to focus on growth and let inequality take care of itself, not only because inequality may be ethically undesirable but also because the resulting growth may be low and unsustainable.

As they are saying, it is not only ethically undesirable to force the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our community to live in poverty and increase inequality but also bad for the economy. The government are proposing another policy that adversely impacts on the most vulnerable and on those living in poverty, and they keep saying that they are doing it in the name of economic growth and repairing the budget bottom line, but even the IMF say that increasing inequality reduces productivity. Christine Lagarde has made other very strong statements about the impact of inequality. The government say, 'We are all about economic growth; we are all about improving the economic bottom line,' but their policies, which will inevitably increase inequality, will have a negative impact on productivity and on the economic bottom line. It is a false economy to put in place measures that impact on the most vulnerable and increase inequality, because, as the IMF is now pointing out, it has an impact on productivity. You will not increase the bottom line. The government keep talking about a better future for their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren. You will not achieve that if you continue to increase inequality, which is what these measures will, in the long-term, lead to.

As the St Vincent de Paul Society pointed out:

Inequality does not affect everyone equally: those who suffer the most are more likely to be Indigenous Australians, older and younger Australians, people experiencing illness, refugees, and women.

The St Vincent de Paul Society also noted the discrepancy between Australia's average full-time income of around $1,500 per week and both the full-time minimum wage of $622 per week and the inadequate rate of Newstart at just $249 per week. They suggest that up to 13 per cent of Australians live in a household with an income of under $20,000 per year. If you compare the average full-time income of around $1,500 a week to people trying to struggle on Newstart, what do you think is the proportional impact of increases on the basic costs of living? The most significant impact is on the most vulnerable in our community.

The Greens have four key pillars. One of those key pillars is social justice. We cannot consider policies outside the prism of what impact they have on the most disadvantaged in our community. It is very clear that we have a huge poverty problem in this country. The government keeps putting blinkers on; they think that you can just increase economic and everybody will be lifted up. They float the boats. That is clearly not true. People get left behind: 2.5 million people are getting left behind in this country with the full-steam-ahead government putting in measures that hit the most vulnerable first. In fact, the measures are demonising of the most vulnerable people on income support. It is punishing them instead of taking a supportive, inclusive process, which will only lead to more negative outcomes for our community.

Before I finish, in the next couple of minutes, I do need to address the comments that Senator Seselja made about the impact of the petrol tax and the fact that the Greens and the Labor Party, when they were in government, imposed the carbon tax and that it was not working. Well, that is not true. It was working, and you need to give these things time to make sure that they are. So, for a start, he is wrong. Then he says, 'Oh, there's no compensation and they didn't care about the poorest.' Well, that is not true. There was a compensation package, because people were aware of it. I take great offence that he would suggest that the Greens were not caring about the most vulnerable in the community. I think it would be fair to say that the Greens, and certainly myself, are in here day in and day out talking about the impact of government policies on the most vulnerable in our community, on families, on single parents, on age pensioners and on people on disability support pension. For him to say that we ignored that is completely not true. He knows that very well. He knows that there were things built into the clean energy package that ensured compensation for families and ensured that the most vulnerable were assisted. He knows that it was a comprehensive package.

I am thoroughly sick of the government trying to suggest that it was a pack of nonsense; it simply was not. Senator Seselja knows that. It was a well constructed package that very clearly thought through the impacts on families and on the community, and compensation measures were put in place. A simple Google search, if Senator Seselja had not been paying attention when the debate was happening—because I know he was not in the parliament at that stage—would have shown him that those measures were in place.

The fact is that we have a growing poverty problem in this country, we have a growing inequality problem in this country, and we need measures to be put in place that actually address those systemic problems. Please listen to the IMF, and it is not that often that the Greens quote the IMF. The IMF said that growing inequality is bad for the economy. Beyond that and very, very importantly, it is bad for the community and it is bad for people. It increases health problem. It increases community issues. As the IMF said, 'It is not ethically desirable.' We need to have policies in place that actually do not impact on the most vulnerable in our community.