Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you! This report is one of the reasons why. The government set up a trial but set it up, as the Auditor-General's report said, in a way where it was not even designed to test scalability—whether or not it would work if you ramped it up further. This report has shown that their own assessment processes of the trial are completely inadequate. It makes me think that this is solely about the politics of punishing the poor and—what I hope is also a mistaken belief on the part of the government—that somehow there are votes in that. I'm not convinced that there are. People are wising up to the fact that continually kicking unemployed people, pensioners, carers and sole parents isn't going to keep delivering votes.

The other reason why this government doesn't really care about whether or not the trial is going to work in reducing harm in the community is what we've seen in the approach this year, when the Senate rejected the proposal to extend this trial into the Hinkler electorate in my own state of Queensland. This government immediately bowled up legislation to try and force that through. They then sent it to a Senate committee. Did those government senators go to the community and hear from the community directly about what their concerns were and why they believed it wouldn't work? The government held, frankly, what was a pretty derisory phone link-up with people on the other side of the country, packing three or four witnesses into a 30-minute timeslot. You couldn't get a clearer demonstration of their contempt for the local community, and I'd like to acknowledge the community's work in trying to get their views heard.

I went to Hervey Bay with Senator Siewert last year, before I ended up back in this place, to attend a meeting. The local people there, many of whom are on social security payments and on low incomes by definition, are working very hard to have their concerns put forward. That includes plenty of people who won't be directly affected but who know the damage that that does to a local community. They know how harmful the deliberate stigmatising of people on social security payments is. I had the inspiring experience, again just a few weeks ago, to go to meetings in Hervey Bay and Bundaberg. We had over 50 people at the meeting in Bundaberg on a Monday night. They were people from a range of different backgrounds and walks of life, and they had a lot of experience working in the community with people with substance abuse and gambling issues. They put forward all sorts of reasons why this won't work, but no government senators were there to listen. To those senators on the crossbench who will be the deciding voices on whether or not to put through this punitive measure to punish people in Hervey Bay and Bundaberg: take the opportunity not to do this to the people in that part of Queensland when the government couldn't even be bothered to turn up there and listen.

There was a very good submission by the mayor of Hervey Bay, George Seymour, a person with a background in working with young people and other disadvantaged people. He not only said why it wouldn't work but talked about how it would stigmatise his entire community unfairly and unnecessarily, purely for political point scoring purposes, by punishing the poor. The fact that this government has refused to listen is evidenced by this Auditor-General's report and by their own behaviour in the Senate committee inquiry. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.