Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very happy to continue on this very important matter of public importance. At the outset, I want to comment on the two proceeding contributions. As always, the contribution from Senator Stoker was as dry economically as you can get—there is nothing to see here; there are no problems here; it is all sweetness and roses. Nothing could be further from the truth. Senator Siewert, at least in the short time I've been here, has been consistent on this platform. She has been consistent on the social platform of equity and opportunity for people who find themselves unfortunate enough to be attracting either Newstart or the myriad of other social security payments. She has carried that challenge right throughout the several parliaments that I've been a part of. I don't want her to be on her own in this argument, and I don't think she is on her own in this argument.

When you look at the statistics, in South Australia, as you may well be aware, Mr Acting Deputy President Bernardi, the statistics are simple and clear. There are 65,558 South Australians on Newstart, and we can look at where those people are. We know that Spence has 11,687 people on Newstart, the second-highest number in Australia, with only Lingiari, an electorate I'm sure my colleague Senator Dodson is well familiar with, having a higher number of people on Newstart. If you look at the seat of Grey, 9,382 persons are on Newstart. You can start to dig into this detail, and I'll go through South Australia. In Barker there are 6,804. In Kingston there are 6,590. Interestingly, in the metropolitan seat of Adelaide, there are 6,462. In the seat of Makin there are 5,951. In the seat of Hindmarsh there are 5,909. In Mayo there are 4,566. In Boothby there are 4,443. In the seat of Sturt there are 3,758.

There isn't a state or territory or, indeed, a federal electorate in Australia that doesn't have a reasonably large component of people on the Newstart system. We heard from the Hon. Mathias Cormann that it's a transition payment. But if you dig into that it is not true. There is a growing proportion of people who are on it for over 12 months. They're on $555-odd a fortnight if they're a single person. That is impossible. I don't even think we should be asking ourselves whether you could survive on $40 a day, because clearly 98 per cent of the community would have no hope of meeting their obligations in respect to shelter, food, public transport and the wherewithal for their children at that level. It's just impossible. In fact, the real question is: what level of support are people getting from family, friends and charities to allow them to subsist on that contribution? And how big is that growing proportion of people who are just falling out of shelter?

They're living in cardboard boxes on Swanston Street. They're sheltering in parks. I'm fond of a bit of exercise in the morning and it's not unusual, when you walk through a park in any city in Australia in the morning, to see people sleeping in it because that is the only place they can go. It may be the only safe haven they've got because the value of Newstart will not allow them a roof or shelter. We are not doing enough in this space. I don't know what the fiscal answer is or whether it's the suggestion by Senator Siewert and others of a $75 increase. I'm not sure that would make a huge difference, but I am sure of this: the parliament should be looking at the fundamental aspects of this, the underlying causes of this, the geographical spread of this.

Take Lingiari. If you're at Docker River or Lajamanu or Peppimenarti or Yuendumu, no-one is going to start a business up there tomorrow and offer you a job. That ain't going to happen. There is limited opportunity for employment; there is limited opportunity for training. These people are routinely thrown off Newstart because they didn't go to a job interview. Well, you can't go to a job interview that's not there! I well remember an estimates hearing with the secretary of Human Services saying how they stop people's payments and how they transacted this policy. I said, 'What do you do?' and they said, 'We write them a letter to say they haven't complied, and within 14 days their payment will be stopped.' I said, 'That's fine. The only problem I have is that the last time I was at Yuendumu I never saw any letterboxes, so where do those letters actually go? Do you know that they actually get to a person who is able to read it, comprehend what's going on and respond or are you just using some governance and due diligence process that turfs people off? Is it that, when they don't have any money and they've starved for a couple of days, they'll find someone who can interpret for them and you'll probably get a reaction? Is that what you're doing?' The answer was, 'No, Senator, we're not doing that.' The processes and the administration of the system for people who are so far behind the eight ball need to be looked at.

Senator Dodson is correct. We want to know who the beneficiaries are in this system. If an inordinate amount of tax dollars are spent in this area, how much is spent on governance, compliance and due diligence? Are people getting an income out of supplying the Indue card, or whatever the card or the flavour will be? Are people making money out of the administration of a deficient system? I have the very quaint view, I suppose, that perhaps government should look at private equity for some solutions. We can't keep doing the wrong thing. We can't keep doing the same thing and getting the same result. That's madness. We need to look at things in a much more innovative way. Are we able to break cycles of poverty, desperation and subsistence living with a different way of doing things? We all read widely and we get reports, and we know there are different ways of looking at this problem. We don't appear to have moved anywhere from: 'They appear to not be doing the right thing, so let's punish them.'

I am disturbed that, when you go a social worker in a Centrelink office, they will openly and honestly list the things that should be done to enable people to move to proper attendance at job interviews and have a chance of a successful interview. If their teeth are gone or their teeth are not repaired, they can't open their mouth, they can't smile or they can't talk properly, you're really asking a lot of someone to go to a number of job interviews. If they are suffering some psychosocial disability which is not being treated, it's going to be very difficult to move those people forward.

A person sticks in my mind. He was on the phone for 40 minutes in the Centrelink office. He took the phone and started banging it on the counter until someone came and interacted with him. The interaction he needed was some assistance for a bus fare to travel to Melbourne for his grandfather's funeral. The system we have is: 'Do not speak to a real person. Go to a computer, go to a phone and wait and wait and wait. I think the transitional arrangements are such that a lot of people don't wait; they go away, and they're counted as victories. The issue still remains. We really do need to do a whole lot better in this space.

I return to South Australia. In the seat of Spence there are 11,687 people who are on Newstart and youth allowance. That is an absolute disaster. That's almost 10 per cent of the federal electorate. If that's not an issue that should challenge every member of parliament, I don't know what is. And each one of those people would have friends and relatives—mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts—so there is a broad community knowledge of this. But the community is doing the right thing; otherwise we would see many more problems.

I think it is incumbent on this chamber and the other chamber to really lift our game in this space and to take a leaf out of some of our new senators' speeches. Why don't we work on what's possible across the chamber? Why are we engaged in political pointscoring on the most vulnerable in the community? I think it's a real tragedy and I'm deeply saddened by the fact that we do seem to pointscore over people who are in dire straits and need a leg-up, not a handout.