Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the matter in the letter that, in fact, I put in for this matter of public importance. This week is Anti-Poverty Week. We've heard overwhelming evidence of the level of poverty in this country. But before I articulate that evidence I'd like to go to this notion of inequality in this country.

Just recently, the Productivity Commission released a report that has, in fact, been widely misinterpreted—some unkind people would perhaps say misquoted—in terms of what it does and doesn't say about inequality in this country. Some in the media have used it to say that inequality in this country isn't an issue. But, if you bother to look into the detail of the report, you will see that it talks about the fact that, despite all those years of economic growth, we have not seen a decrease in the number of people living in poverty. We also see that some of the facts in there are being misquoted and glossed over to misinterpret the level of inequality that does exist. I will come back to some of those issues shortly. But, of course, what goes hand in hand with inequality is poverty, and, given that this is Anti-Poverty Week, I thought it was important that we look at some of the issues and facts around poverty in this country.

ACOSS has just released its latest report and, in fact, Dr Cassandra Goldie was down in the Press Club today talking about the report that they have just released, giving us an up-to-date picture of poverty in this country. The report was done by ACOSS and the University of New South Wales. It points out that Australia is rated as the second-wealthiest country in the world but we still have over three million people living below the poverty line, including 739,000 children. It finds that those experiencing poverty at the highest rates are those on youth allowance, at 64 per cent, and Newstart, at 55 per cent. The poverty rate for people on Newstart has risen by 17 per cent in the last 16 years. The highest 20 per cent of income earners are receiving more than the lowest 60 per cent combined. I'll repeat that: the highest 20 per cent of income earners are earning more than the lowest 60 per cent combined.

Most people below the poverty line, 53 per cent, rely on the social security system as their main source of income. We're seeing that the poverty rate for sole parents has risen from 35 per cent in 2013 to 59 per cent in 2015, which is a large increase of 24 per cent in just two years. I'd like to give some context to that figure. In 2006, the Howard government started moving sole parents from parenting payment to Newstart once their youngest child turned six. People who were here in this place at the time will remember that the Greens spoke long and hard, and voted, against that measure, and I have been pursuing it ever since. At the time, the parents who were on parenting payment single were grandfathered. In other words, they weren't shifted over to Newstart. But, in 2013, 80,000 sole parents—the previous group that were grandfathered—were moved by the Gillard government off parenting payment single and onto Newstart.

Can you see the correlation with the very steep increase in the number of sole parents living in poverty by 2015? It was a 24 per cent increase, because those grandfathered single sole parents were moved off parenting payment single to Newstart in one fell swoop, sending those people into poverty—hence my claim that both the opposition and the government have neoliberal policies that drive people into poverty and increase inequality. Foodbank released their latest report on their work on Sunday, and they found that there had been a three per cent increase in the number of people experiencing food inequality. To put some figures on that, that's four million people in the last 12 months experiencing food insecurity, and the most common cause of that was low income.

In my remaining time I want to address this issue of inequality and the misinterpretation of the Productivity Commission report. The report clearly demonstrated that people are living in poverty, that there is inequality. If you look at the detail in the Productivity Commission report, the 'damned statistics' can actually be misleading, showing that all income quintiles are supposed to have increased. But if you actually drill down and look at what happened particularly in those lowest levels of income, where it is claimed that inequality was reduced, it was for age pensioners. That's because the Rudd government, after a concerted campaign by the Greens to increase the age pension, did increase the age pension, which basically instantaneously lifted the income of age pensioners and addressed some of those issues around inequality. But that masks the rest of the people who are stuck on income support payments that leave them below the poverty line, such as those on youth allowance and Newstart, neither of which have had an increase since 1994. Those people are still living in poverty. It increases inequality for those people because they have not had that increase.

So it shows that government intervention can impact very significantly on income support payments. The mistruth that the government speaks—that people on Newstart don't need an increase because the Productivity Commission said that inequality's not such an issue—are wrong: a significant increase in Newstart of $75 a week will significantly impact on people living in poverty and inequality and will start addressing that issue. Look at that report. Read the details of the report. (Time expired)