Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I rise in support of the Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2017. This legislation continues the efforts of the government to generate savings in response to the legacy of debt and profligate spending left by the previous failed Rudd and Gillard Labor governments. This includes their ridiculous legacy of expensive and unnecessary school halls, deadly pink batts that caught fire, the NDIS black hole and, of course, who could forget the multibillion dollar technological dinosaur of the NBN—all designed to grab headlines.

I also take this opportunity to congratulate the government on its decision to split the omnibus savings bill into its logical component parts. This is exactly the course of action advocated by Pauline Hanson's One Nation, and I am pleased to see that the government listened to us. Pauline Hanson's One Nation was very concerned that a range of disparate legislation was being clumsily bundled together and presented as a fait accompli to the Senate. This approach was entirely contrary to the spirit of parliamentary democracy. Separating savings bills to allow each measure to be considered separately makes sense, and I am very pleased that the government has recognised One Nation's argument to this effect and has shown its respect for the crossbench by amending its legislative program accordingly. I know that I speak for other crossbench senators when I say that we are grateful that the government has listened and acted in accordance with the wishes of the crossbench. This is real democracy in action.

As a strong supporter of Aussie working families, Pauline Hanson's One Nation strongly supports measures to help families cope with cost of living pressures, as part of which we support responsible changes to social services legislation to make income support for families sustainable in the long term, not just now. That is exactly what this bill does—making responsible savings to protect families in order to allow income support where and when it will be most needed.

This bill seeks to achieve savings of $2.4 billion over the 2017-18 period, increasing to $6.8 billion over the following years. These are highly necessary savings. The Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2017 reprises three components of the former government's omnibus savings bill, namely: firstly, maintaining income-free areas and means test thresholds for certain payments and allowances at their current levels for three years; secondly, automating the income stream review process to allow improvements in the accuracy of income support payments; and thirdly, reductions in customer debts and appropriately extending waiting periods for the parenting payment and youth allowance for a person who is not undertaking full-time study and who is also not a new apprentice.

This bill also includes a new schedule to maintain current family tax benefit payment rates for two years at their current levels from 1 July 2017. As the minister has previously noted, this measure will not cut family tax benefits payments and will also not increase fringe benefits tax payment rates to offset the phasing out of family tax benefit supplements which was contained in the previously proposed social services legislation amendment. These are very modest and very necessary savings measures. They build on the efforts of the first omnibus savings bill which passed the Senate on 15 September 2016 and achieved $6.3 billion in budget savings.

In waiting to speak in support of this bill, however, I have had the I have had the misfortune to listen to the self-righteous and hypocritical cant emanating from the Greens and their Labor puppets. What absolute rubbish they speak! Just as Labor, the former party of the workers, is in lock-step with the industrial vandals, the Greens, in their efforts to abolish workers' jobs in coalmining, forestry and power generation, so too we see them here doing their very best to undermine even the government's modest efforts to balance the budget and to focus welfare to families in need.

No party stands up for working Aussie families like One Nation. Only Pauline Hanson's popular nationalist party stands unapologetically behind coalminers, loggers and power station workers, whilst the Labor Party, which was originally formed to represent those people and their union, the CFMEU, stab them in the back. We do not trade away worker's penalty rates for corrupt union kickbacks and hookers for union bosses. To think that those opposite and their glorious leader have the nerve to try to claim that the government and One Nation are somehow responsible for the Fair Work Commission's decision to reduce penalty rates on weekends when they themselves have already sold them to the highest bidder. Let us not forget that the Labor Party froze family tax benefits A and B, that Labor lied when it claimed that One Nation supported cuts to pensions, and that Labor lied with its despicable 'Mediscare' campaign during the last election—