Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 6) Bill 2014. Almost five months ago Labor announced that it would support those measures in this year's budget that represented sensible savings. The government had the opportunity to pass those sensible savings all that time ago. But instead this government has continued to push their cruel agenda of pension cuts, leaving young people without any income support for six months and cutting family tax benefits.

The bill we are speaking about today will improve targeting of the family tax benefit by reducing the primary earner income limit to $100,000 a year. Labor supports this type of targeted support. It ensures that the support goes to those who need it most. What I and my colleagues cannot support, however, are the cruel measures that will disproportionately impact on the most vulnerable in our community—cruel measures that expose the government's intention to target those in Australia who have the least. This will have the effect of increasing the divide between those who have and those who have not in modern Australian Society.

This government has delayed the opportunity to bring in these sensible savings because they are still intent on imposing on Australian people the changes proposed to family tax benefits. The cuts proposed will make it harder than ever for Australians and Australian families to pay their bills and meet their financial obligations.

Here in the Australian Capital Territory over 31,000 families currently receive family tax benefit A and B to support them to meet their financial responsibilities that come with raising children. These families will be significantly worse off under the government's proposed changes. Family tax benefit A and B support low- and middle-income families to meet the costs of raising their children.

The overall impact of the combined cuts to these supports is that a family on an average income of $65,000 a year will be $6,000 a year worse off. That is a cut of almost 10 per cent. The magnitude of this cut will significantly impact the ability of the family to maintain a level of wellbeing that is somehow—and I do not know how this would happen—be 'free from financial stress'. In effect the changes will cause greater financial stress on thousands upon thousands of families that I represent.

This government has delayed the opportunity to bring in sensible savings because they are still intent on forcing families whose children are over the age of six to lose these benefits altogether. Around 700,000 families across Australia will lose their support payments once their child turns six years old under changes to the eligibility age. These benefits were designed to assist families who need it by giving them support while their children are young. Labor believes in a targeted welfare system where support goes to those who need it most. That is why we support the targeting of the family tax benefit B by reducing the primary income limit from $150,000 a year to $100,000 a year, but we do not support slashing family tax benefit end of year supplements, the ceasing of indexation to family tax benefit, and the cutting of families from the family tax benefit part B when their youngest child turns six.

Prior to the election Mr Abbott and his liberal colleagues stated that, 'We must reduce the cost of living pressures on families.' However, these changes to family tax benefit part A and part B do exactly the opposite. They increase financial pressures on low and middle income families. They do not reduce the cost of living pressures on families; they make it worse. This is just one of many a broken promises made by Mr Abbott and the Liberal Party with the sole purpose of getting elected. These promises were made. They have now been broken.

The government has delayed the opportunity to bring in sensible savings because they are still intent on targeting single parent families. They want to index the parenting payment for single parents to CPI instead of male total average weekly earnings. Over time this will leave 2,500 vulnerable families here in the Australian Capital Territory $80 a week worse off than they are currently. It will greatly increase the gap between the wealthy and those doing it tough in our community. This measure is almost the perfect example of how this government has chosen to disproportionately target the people in our community who have the least. It is those with the least who will hurt the most.

The government has delayed the opportunity to bring in sensible savings because it is still intent on implementing draconian measures that will leave young job seekers with no financial support for six months. It says it is helping unemployed Australians into work. It claims to be helping unemployed youth into work. But we know and young people certainly know that by stripping young people of any financial support for a six-month period the government is pushing them into poverty.

The impact of this one policy will be far-reaching. It will seriously affect the social and emotional wellbeing of those young people. I know that in this place the links between poverty and mental illness are well known. Apart from the detrimental effects on the wellbeing of young people, there will be a social and economic impact from supporting those whose emotional wellbeing is hit hard. This is because of the terrible circumstances that young people may then find themselves in because of the elimination of the safety net for this group. Obviously, there will be additional costs, perhaps on our health system, which will be left to pick up the pieces from young people whose lives have fallen apart as a result of this disgraceful attack on their ability to survive when they need support the most, as young people finding their way in the world.

Young people at extreme risk as a result of these changes are those leaving out-of-home care. In Australia there are more than 35,000 children in out-of-home care—that is, in foster care, kinship care or residential care. These young people are already facing enormous difficulties, being forced into supporting themselves at a very young age. They have often experienced abuse or neglect prior to entering care, compounded perhaps by poor in-care experiences. While most young people acquire the skills to transition into independent living over a long period of time with the support of parents or family, this is often not the case for out-of-home-care leavers. Leaving this group of young people with no income support at such a critical time will significantly impact on the outcomes for these young Australians. I am gravely concerned that this impact will be universally negative and that problems will be specifically created for young people in this circumstance. As I mentioned before, they are the young people with the greatest need of income support at that period in their life.

These attacks on young people come on top of cuts to services such as Youth Connections. Youth Connections has provided services that have been highly successful in Canberra and across Australia in helping young people transition into work and education. It is my observation that the Abbott government clearly does not accept or understand the barriers that some of our youth face in trying to find work or in engaging in education. Rather, they choose to paint young people as leaners, who have been benefiting somehow from an age of entitlement. The language used by this government and the changes to social security that it seeks to impose on young people show a profound lack of respect for young people who, against all odds, have been able to pick themselves up and find their way from school to work. It was Youth Connections that, through several evolutions, often provided this bridge for them, that helped them through this extraordinarily difficult time of everybody’s life. It is not just young people living with disadvantage, but that is where we need to target it. Those services have been cut. Combined with the social security changes, this is a travesty for a generation of young people. As a senator for the ACT, I am deeply concerned about how the young people in my electorate will be affected by these unfair and heartless policies. Like my colleagues, I will not sit by and watch members of this government force members of my community into poverty and homelessness.

The government has delayed the opportunity to bring in sensible savings because of their intent to target older Australians as well. The change in indexation of the age pension to CPI will considerably lower the income, in real terms, of older Australians over time. Furthermore, the government is increasing from 67 to 70 the age at which Australians will be eligible for the age pension. This will be the highest age for pension eligibility in the OECD. By the time these hardworking people are able to retire, their available pension will be significantly lower as a result of these changes. If the government's proposed legislation succeeds as it currently stands, self-funded Australian retirees will also lose out. A single retiree whose income is below $50,000 a year will no longer receive the seniors supplement. This supplement was designed to help this group of people pay bills such as rates and motor vehicle registration. Labor strongly opposes these measures, which will negatively impact older Australians.

People living in my electorate, the Australian Capital Territory, are being targeted on all fronts. Not only will they feel the effects of the cruel cuts to pension payments and to families, the reduced support for pensioners and the changes to income support that will leave young people with nothing for six months, a large number have already been affected by the government’s decision to slash 16,500 Public Service jobs, the majority of which have come from Canberra. Now young people across the territory who lose their job or who have even more difficulty in finding work may find themselves in a situation with no income support to rely on. Those above 30 who lose their jobs will be welcomed to unemployment with reduced family tax benefit payments and support pensions that do not keep up with the real cost of living.

Territorians from all sectors will be touched by this government, by Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey's cruel budget. While my colleagues and I, as I have said, are happy to support sensible savings, we cannot support these attacks on each and every pensioner in this country by effectively cutting their pensions, cutting a staggering $449 million over five years from the pockets of people who can least afford it. We cannot support the attacks on families across Australia through the dramatic decreases proposed to family tax benefit A and B and the removal of eligibility for this support for families whose youngest has turned six. And we cannot support the attacks on young Australian job seekers by removing income support for people under 30 who cannot find employment.

We have fought the government's attempt to impose these cruel measures and we will continue to fight for justice for all Australians. We do so in the context that these measures are not necessary, that they are the product of a contrivance in this year's budget, where we saw the Abbott government pretend that there was some kind of budget crisis. We know, not just because we understand how our budget works but because those with the expertise—many esteemed economists—have called the government out on their claim that a budget crisis required such draconian measures, that that is not true. What we see contained in these bills, beyond the sensible savings that we have indicated we will support, is an ideological attack on those most in need in our society. When you look at who is affected by these cuts, you see they are an attempt by the government to reshape where taxpayers' money is expended, away from those most in need.

For someone who has been a member of the Labor Party for a very long time, this is unfathomable, but I think there are many Australians out there today asking the question: where in any of the conversations leading up to the last election did the then opposition, now the Abbott government, give an indication that they would take these steps? The fact of the matter is they did not. They said the opposite. They said they would fight for and protect families' ability to afford the cost of living. In fact, they made a virtue of it, attacking us, the then government, for putting a price on carbon. Not once did they say, 'We're going to make it harder for families to cope with the cost of living.' They wore it as a badge of honour that an affordable cost of living was theirs to protect. And yet, now that they have been elected, we see a new agenda, an agenda brought forth in the budget, an agenda that seeks to take support away from those most in need.

When you look at this budget, you see it targets low-income families, young people—who are traditionally in one of the hardest phases of life, that transition from school to work—and pensioners, for whom the cost of living is a daily assessment as they manage meagre budgets with rising costs around them. These are the three groups that we are dealing with in this group of bills that the government still have before the parliament, regardless of their knowledge of our sustained opposition to them. They seek to bring forward these agendas yet.

In conclusion, I would like to remind those participating in and listening to today's debate that we are dealing with a government who made no declaration about these cuts before the election. Here in the ACT, my constituents feel particularly vulnerable because the cuts are coupled with a reduction in employment across the Public Service that, again, has no rationale. It is an ideological attempt to shrink the Public Service by percentage points, by job numbers, not by function, not by seeking efficiencies. We are bearing the brunt of that, at a time when our young people will not be able to find support and our older people will not be able to meet their obligations because, as the cost of living rises around them, their pensions will not rise to the degree that they otherwise would have. And we will see low-income families on family tax benefit A and B lose thousands of dollars a year. That loss of thousands of dollars a year was nowhere in last year's election campaign. Nowhere did I see, 'And we're going to target low-income families, school leavers and pensioners with cuts,' on a fabrication of a budget that somehow needs some dire work. That budget myth has been put to bed, and now we need to put this unfair legislation to bed. I urge those opposite and anyone else in this chamber to reconsider their position in supporting such draconian cuts. From Labor's point of view, we will remain steadfast in continuing to oppose those unfair measures and in that way represent those who I know are looking to the Labor opposition to prevent these harsh measures being imposed upon the Australian community.