Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Di Natale has refused to recognise the architecture of what Labor originally put forward in its election commitments, which the coalition has left us a complete absence of.

Moving on from renewable energy, there is a great deal more at stake in this bill. We have secured amendments that support those in our community who are vulnerable. It was of great concern to us, and continues to be, that the coalition has attacked those on low incomes. So we have in this bill secured amendments to protect pensioners, single parents, carers, people with disability and people who have lost jobs—even those due to government cuts. These amendments secured by Labor protect the vulnerable in our community. Those who are disadvantaged should not bear the brunt of the fiscal cuts being made by the government. Our nation is only as good as how we protect those most in need.

It has been critically important that we have secured amendments that maintain energy supplement payments for Newstart recipients and pensioners. We made clear throughout the election campaign that the government had not given us the opportunity to properly scrutinise what they had put forward during the campaign. Once we saw the detail, it was clear what impact these changes would have on the most vulnerable in our community. Our amendments protect these low-income households and secure that small amount of money for the future.

If the removal of the supplement had gone ahead, it would have pushed those people on the very lowest incomes in our community even further below the poverty line, affecting more than 2.2 million people. If the government's full abolition of the energy supplement had passed parliament, those already on low incomes would be hundreds of dollars worse off a year: a single mum on Newstart, $220; a pensioner couple, $550 a year; and a person with a disability, $350 a year and carers as well. We are very proud and pleased to have secured the continuation of these payments, ensuring that people do not have a reduction in their income and we will continue to fight for low-income earners.

We have advocated for children, families and dental care in this package. We have opposed the government's removal of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule.    When in government, we introduced the Child Dental Benefits Schedule in response to overwhelming evidence about the poor state of children's oral health in Australia The program provides eligible children with $1,000 of dental services every two years and has been proven successful in improving the oral health of children around the country.

Our National Partnership Agreement on Adult Public Dental Services has funded dental treatment for 400,000 people. The government's plan to axe these programs and introduce its own child and adult public dental scheme is simply not as good as Labor's scheme. Families and children will be worse off. I understand that the government may want to continue to proceed with its changes to this package, but they are off the table and we will continue to fight those changes. Such a package would see millions of children forced onto long-term public waiting lists and prevent families from choosing their own dentist. The government's scheme would only allow eligible patients to be seen once every 17 years and even longer for people in rural and remote areas. It is simply not good enough. The scheme will also allow states and territories to charge a co-payment. Again, when you look at the expense of dental care, again, it is simply not good enough. It would have a disproportionate impact on those already at risk and on those who are already likely to have poor oral health: people on low incomes, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the elderly, people with disability, young adults and students, and sole parents and their children. The impact of poor dental health on these groups is immense. Twenty per cent of adults on low incomes experience severe impacts on quality of life due to oral health conditions, compared with 7.5 per cent of adults on higher incomes. I can tell you that from the time when I left the Senate, when my income was reduced—and I was still on a moderate income—the frequency of my visits to the dentist declined. I am now in a position to afford to have visits again. So for families who are on very, very low incomes and who are living off Newstart, this scheme is critical to them.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population has 2.3 times more untreated tooth decay than non-Indigenous people. Public health dental patients are more likely than other people to have dental decay. These figures are incredibly concerning. We must do everything we can to address the oral health of people in need. It is expensive, and it is an expense that many families simply cannot afford. We must ensure that these families have access to dental services regardless of their financial situation.

So we have yet another example of the Liberal government expecting everyday Australians to reach into their pockets and into their bank accounts for health care. We saw it with their attacks on Medicare with the rebate freeze and with the GP co-payment and now we see it again. So we will continue to stand up to the Turnbull government's plans on dental care which, indeed, will put more financial pressure on vulnerable Australian families. We are very pleased to have negotiated those things out but we will continue to fight the government on this agenda.

We have negotiated amendments to the bill that ensure people in psychiatric confinement who are institutionalised for serious offences continue to receive social security payments. This is critical because our vulnerable need to be protected in times of need. The changes would have had a disproportionate impact on Indigenous Australians. As the Aboriginal Disability Justice Campaign reminded us with their advocacy on this issue, there are nine people detained under mental impairment legislation in the Northern Territory and all of them are Indigenous. More than half of those detained in New South Wales and one-third of those detained in Western Australia are Indigenous. When the Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 was referred to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee, these changes which were originally put forward were overwhelmingly opposed, in all but one submission, from organisations such as the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, Mental Health Australia, the Australian Human Rights Commission and the Australian Association of Social Workers.

The changes in this bill before amendment were completely inequitable. They punished those who require social security, on the basis of their conditions, their impairments—many of them are not even criminally responsible for their actions. They would also have had long-term impacts. They would have created a cycle of dependency and institutionalisation causing long-term financial hardship to people in institutions and, in many cases, to their dependents. For example, just because you are in an institution does not mean that you do not need to pay rent elsewhere and it does not mean that you do not have a need to go out into the community and pay for things such as food and clothing. It was ridiculous to take these payments away from people.

We are pleased that, in putting forward this package, we have been able to put forward other measures, some of which have been difficult but which protect the bottom line. They involve changing family tax benefit part A for those who earn over $80,000. This is a saving of $1.96 billion at the same time as drawing a line under harsher cuts to family payments. We have done that to secure the energy supplements for the most vulnerable in our community. Thanks to Labor, single parents and teenagers will now no longer be worse off under this bill. Thanks to Labor, a family with two young children and with an income of $50,000 will no longer be worse off under this bill. Labor will continue to oppose the government's cuts to family payments, pensions and allowances. We have delivered more in savings over four years than the $5.997 billion first proposed by the government, while working to protect the most vulnerable.

The bill before us today, with amendments negotiated by us, puts us on the path to fairer budget repair. There is a long way to go, and this package is only a part of the solution. I call on the government today to support the rest of Labor's savings package, which would deliver more than $8 billion in budget improvements over the forward estimates and more than $80 billion in budget improvements over the medium term.

We have negotiated with the government to develop fairer measures that will improve the budget bottom line. We are committed to continuing to do so, but Labor will not compromise on our values. We will continue to stand up for vulnerable Australians. We do not believe that pensioners, people with disability, carers or vulnerable jobseekers should be forced to do the heavy lifting of budget repair, particularly while the Turnbull government is spending $50 billion on a tax cut for big business and the banks. We have the right priorities when it comes to repairing the budget. There is a better and fairer set of measures because of Labor's constructive approach.