Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have an eerie sense of deja vu as I rise to speak on this bill. Already, less than 12 months after the election and 12 months after entering this chamber, I have already had a number of reasons to give speeches about the consequences of the dirty, dodgy preference deals between Pauline Hanson's One Nation party and her Liberal Party coalition partners. I have already had a number of reasons to speak about this. Not that long ago, in the debate about the ABCC bill, despite all their racist and xenophobic rhetoric about how everyone from overseas is a bad person and should be kept out, we saw Senator Hanson and her colleagues vote with their Liberal Party preference deal friends to make it easier for building companies to bring overseas workers on 457 visas onto Australian building sites at the expense of local workers. We saw Senator Hanson and her colleagues vote with the government only a few weeks ago to allow building companies to get rid of requirements in their enterprise agreements which would require them to employ more apprentices and give more young Australian kids a start.

This week we have seen Senator Hanson flag that she is going to vote with her Liberal Party coalition colleagues to support the cut to penalty rates that will hurt so many Australian families right around this country. And tonight we see Senator Hanson and her colleagues again buddy up with Malcolm Turnbull and the LNP, as we know them in Queensland, to cut income support to the most vulnerable families in our community.

As I have said on many occasions, Senator Hanson and her colleagues have done a fairly good job over the last few months of running around Queensland in particular, and all around Australia, holding themselves out as the only people who care about the battlers in our community. If you are poor, disenfranchised, worried about the future, worried about what kind of job you are going to have and worried about what kind of job your kids are going to have, Senator Hanson and her colleagues would have you believe that they are in your corner fighting for you. But, time after time after time, we see Senator Hanson and her colleagues come down here into Canberra, where they think they are out of scrutiny and away from what Queenslanders and other Australians can see them doing, and they get behind closed doors and do dodgy deals with their coalition mates to deliver cuts to the most vulnerable people in our community, the very battlers that they say they are in politics to represent.

Tonight is yet another occasion when we are seeing this from Senator Hanson and her colleagues. It is not enough for them to go after the penalty rates of low-income working Australians. It is not enough for them to go after apprentices on building sites who are just looking to get a start to their career. It is not enough to go after the working poor; tonight they are coming in here and going after people who are not even working and not able to earn an income, by cutting some of the vital social security payments that these families depend upon to be able to feed their kids and make ends meet.

We all know—it has become legendary—about the preference deals which were negotiated by Senator Hanson and her One Nation colleagues with Senator Cormann, Senator Cash and other members of the Liberal Party in Western Australia. What we are seeing tonight, again, is the pay-off for those preference deals. They stitched up a nice little deal where they would swap preferences and get themselves elected in Western Australia. But any of us who have been involved in a deal or a negotiation, whether it is about buying a car, buying a house or getting votes, know that you do not get a deal without getting something in return. Tonight we are seeing yet again what the Liberal Party is getting in return for giving preferences to One Nation, and that is support for legislation which is going to hurt the most vulnerable people in our community. It is an absolute disgrace that vulnerable people in our community should be hurt by Pauline Hanson's One Nation party and the Liberal Party as the price of preference deals. We do not know what preference deals are going to be struck by these parties heading into the Queensland state election, the next federal election or other state elections all around the country, but what you can bet your bottom dollar on is that the price of getting any of these preference deals into the future is going to be the continued support of Senator Hanson and her colleagues to get through disastrous, draconian legislation that is going to hurt the most vulnerable people in our community.

This afternoon, as I was getting ready to speak in this debate, I thought about someone I had spoken to who was thinking about voting for Senator Hanson at the last federal election. She was a very poor woman, just outside a very poor school in Rockhampton. She had dropped her kids off to school, and we had a bit of a chat to her about why she should vote Labor. She was telling us that she was actually thinking about voting for Senator Hanson, because she was really struggling to make ends meet, and she thought that Senator Hanson was the only person who was going to stand up for her. I said to her: 'Look, I understand why you feel unhappy and threatened by what's going on in society, and I understand why you can be tempted to vote for Senator Hanson, because she's saying all sorts of things that you might like, but you can bet your bottom dollar that, if she gets elected, she is going to sell you down the river. She is going to cut your social security, she is going to cut your wages and she is going to cut every benefit you get from the government, because she actually just doesn't care about poor and vulnerable people. She only cares about herself, her profile and keeping herself in parliament.' That woman was rightly sceptical; politicians say a lot of things during election campaigns. Well, wasn't I right? When I talked to this poor woman, who was clearly really struggling to make ends meet, wasn't I right that Senator Hanson was going to come in here, sell her down the river and sell out everything that she was promising to do for this woman? She is doing it again tonight.

Just briefly, let's think about what some of these cuts actually mean. First of all, the government, with the support of Senator Hanson, is going to freeze family tax benefits for two years. What that means in practice is that the family tax benefits that people receive from the government to help them make ends meet are not going to increase for two years. They are not going to keep pace with the cost of living increasing. Electricity bills might go up, the price of food might go up, the price of petrol might go up and phone bills might go up, but you are not going to get a single cent extra from this government and Senator Hanson to help you pay those increased costs.

We are not talking about wealthy families that are getting these benefits. There is a misconception out there in the community that it is wealthy or middle-class families that are getting these kinds of benefits. It is not true. There are 600,000 families in Australia who are getting the maximum family tax benefit A rate, which means that their household income is less than $52,000 per year. That is not a rich family, and they are not going to get any more money in family tax benefits from this government, with Senator Hanson's support.

The government is also, through this bill, going to freeze income-tax-free thresholds for single parents, jobseekers and students—again, no cost-of-living increase for any of these things—and they are going to extend the waiting period for parenting payments and youth allowance. So a single parent—a person, most likely a woman, whose family has broken up, who has custody of her kids and who is on her own—might in the past have been able to go to the government and get a parenting payment to get through, but she is now going to have to wait. What a kick in the guts for someone who has just gone through a family break-up! And who is making this happen? It is the LNP, the Liberals and the Nationals, with the support of Senator Hanson. How is that helping battlers? It is not; it is selling them out.

Even worse, these cuts are actually not needed. We already have the most targeted social security system in the world. This is not a bloated system going to waste; it is highly targeted at people who really need it. These cuts are not needed to pay for the childcare reforms that the government is putting through. Even childcare operators, who stand to gain from the childcare changes that are being made, told the Senate inquiry into this bill that the changes to child care have already been paid for. These cuts are not needed. They are not needed for budget repair. We all know there are other options that this government could be exploring if it actually wanted to bring in some more money for the budget. It could get rid of its $50 billion tax cut for big business. It could get rid of the negative gearing concessions that are available to wealthy Australians buying multiple investment properties. Why isn't Senator Hanson making the government take up those changes? That would be something that would actually help battlers. But no—she is in here voting with the government to hurt battlers and to take money off them.

In politics from time to time you have to pick a side, and I am very proud that Labor has picked a side, and that is the side of battling people, vulnerable people and lower income people right across this country. We are standing up for their penalty rates, and we are standing up for the minimal social security payments that they already receive. On the other side of this chamber, the Liberals, the Nationals and Senator Hanson have also picked a side. They are for big business and for rich people in this community. They are not for battlers; they are going to sell them out every day of the week, and this is another tragic example.