Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

You have said you're simplifying these payments. Now, I understand that you're trying to argue that people don't need to reapply if they're already eligible as jobseekers. But the simple fact is that your schedule, amended or unamended, does away with the whole category of bereavement as a separate category; it rolls it into a jobseeker allowance. It seems reasonable that the expectation there would be that people are actually jobseekers. The simple fact is that this is the social safety net for people who are bereaved. It's not that they're necessarily looking for a job. It is simply that they are without a job at that moment in time precisely because they are bereaved. They don't have access to other employment entitlements that see them through that period of bereavement.

Question agreed to.