Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I've got the speakers list in front of me, so I know what was supposed to happen. Anyway, I do take my hat off to you for holding the government on your shoulders for that last 20-odd minutes.

In acknowledging the Governor-General's address outlining the Morrison government's program, we couldn't help but notice the lack of any serious plans to tackle the major challenges facing this country's future. Witnessing the 18 May election you could be forgiven for thinking that the Liberals' entire message consisted of a big old-fashioned scare campaign about Labor's policies, or at least their misleading representation of our policies. I can't really think of one positive policy this government can hang its hat on and say, 'This inspired Australians to return us for a third time.' It was really a triumph of fear over hope, and they campaigned on fear because this government has nothing else left.

Over the past six years they've gutted our Public Service, sent our 21st century National Broadband Network back to the Stone Age, failed future generations on climate change, overseen the lowest wages growth in history and brought the economy to the brink of recession. They couldn't campaign on their record, because their record has been abysmal on just about any measure. And they couldn't campaign on future policies, because their tax package was the only major policy they had. With the bulk of their campaign platform already implemented, those opposite are now faced with the task of running the country for another three years, with no plan for the economy, no plan for wages, no plan for the energy market, no plan for climate, no plan to fix our schools and hospitals after the damage they've inflicted on them, and no plan to tackle the housing and homelessness crisis facing Australia. This government's plan consists of two things: (1) implement the tax package that was ticked off in the first sitting week and (2) the hidden agenda they have now revealed, after the election, which is to attack the union movement.

Among the myriad failures this government has overseen, I'm going to use my contribution in this address-in-reply today to highlight one, and that is the growing inequality in our society. To make matters worse, the latest Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia, or HILDA, survey found that living standards have gone backwards. The HILDA survey finds that real median income in 2017, the latest year of the survey, was lower than when the Liberal came to office in 2013. I particularly want to highlight, as a senator for Tasmania, how the inequality in both wealth and income affects my home state disproportionately.

Before I do this, let me address the two-word phrase that this government raises: every time we talk about inequality, every time we talk about fairness, they accuse Labor of engaging in what they call 'class warfare'. They've taken our advocacy for what is a core Australian value—the fair go—and turned it into a negative. Their use of the phrase class warfare is utterly disingenuous, and it's insulting to imply that Australians are inciting some kind of conflict when they call on the government to do its job by ensuring that their basic needs are met. There should be no controversy over the idea that every Australian should receive the essential government services they need to stay sheltered, warm, fed, healthy and educated—nor should it be controversial to expect those who have the means to pay for those services and still live a very comfortable life on their remaining funds to do so. Yet those opposite, through their rhetoric, have been very successful in making fairness seem like a vice and greed a virtue.

The irony of their use of the phrase 'class warfare' is that it's actually the Liberals who are engaging in class warfare, but they're doing it on behalf of the wealthiest Australians as well as their mates in big business. It's especially ironic because they throw the class warfare tag at Labor in the course of waging their own class war. It's rhetoric designed to persuade Australians to accept the policies they put forward to widen the wealth and income divide and to reject the policies we put forward that are aimed at reducing the gap.

The Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, says that if you have a go you'll get go, and this underlines the philosophy of the Liberals perfectly. It basically espouses the economic philosophy of conservatives: that wealth is a reward for hard work; anyone can succeed provided they earn their success. It's a variation on former Treasurer Joe Hockey's 'lifters and leaners' quote but expressed in less controversial terms. Consistent with Mr Hockey's declaration about lifters and leaners, the flip side of Mr Morrison's statement is that when you do not succeed in life then it's your own fault—not society's, not the governments, but yours. Contrary to this view, the reality is that many Australians have been having a go for years and are not receiving the just reward for their effort.

I believe there are a number of reasons Labor lost the last election, but our advocacy for fairness was not one of them. I still believe the fair go is a core value of Australians, yet one to which those opposite do not subscribe. I expect few Australians would consider it fair and reasonable that the one per cent of wealthiest Australians own more combined wealth than the bottom 70 per cent or that the two wealthiest people in Australia own more wealth than the bottom one-fifth of the population. That's just two individuals with a combined wealth of around five million of their fellow Australians.

The wealth and income gap in Australia is getting worse, and it's getting worse at a time when families struggle to make ends meet, when young Australian struggle to afford their own home and when three million Australians, including 700,000 children, are living in poverty. Thousands of children living in poverty in one of the wealthiest countries in the world is a situation that I find utterly obscene. What makes this especially obscene is that this government has consciously adopted policies which have made the situation worse, especially in my home state of Tasmania.

When it comes to the standard of living, Tasmania has a number of indicators which lag behind the other states and territories. This makes Tasmania and Tasmanians particularly vulnerable to rising inequality. For example, average weekly earnings in Tasmania are the lowest of any state or territory. The last figures from November 2018 show Tasmanians having average weekly ordinary-time earnings of $1,399, or $206 below the Australian average. Median income data for the greater Hobart area also shows that our capital lags behind all other states and territory capitals on this measure.

Because Tasmanian incomes are low by national standards, our state is impacted more than any other by the record-low wages growth overseen by this government, and it's grossly unfair that growth in the wages of workers, particularly the lowest paid, are being far outstripped by growth in the economy and company profits. The tax cuts passed by the Senate will provide Australia's lowest paid workers with some relief, but more needs to be done. Not only does the government continue to sit on their hands while wage growth stagnates but they are actually making the situation worse. At a time when wage growth is at historic lows, you would think a government with an ounce of common sense would acknowledge that there is a need to restore the balance when it comes to the bargaining power of workers and businesses, yet this government's response is to launch another assault—one in a long series of assaults, I might say—against the trade union movement with their so-called ensuring integrity bill.

They are also doing nothing to ensure that minimum wages provide a decent standard of living. Labor went to the election with a policy of making the minimum wage a living wage. Surely all Australians, even those opposite, see merit in the principle that a full-time minimum wage should be sufficient to provide a reasonable standard of living and that every full-time worker should be able to at least afford the essentials in life. The economy is meant to benefit all of the people, not just the government's mates, yet this Liberal government has overseen six annual wage reviews and at no time in those six years have they supported a real increase in the minimum wage. Instead, they have provided a multitude of arguments against real increases.

This is the same government that has stood by and allowed 700,000 workers in retail and hospitality to have their penalty rates slashed. These are some of Australia's lowest paid workers, who rely on penalty rates to make ends meet. By the time the cuts are fully implemented on 1 July next year, some workers will be worse off by up to $26,000 a year. Despite members of the government telling us that cutting penalty rates creates employment, not one new job has been created as a result of these cuts—not one. This is a fact that has been conceded by the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia. This demonstrates evidence put to the Fair Work Commission that the theory that cutting penalty rates would generate employment was flawed.

Given the weight of evidence that these penalty rate cuts have failed to achieve their intended purpose, why does the current government insist on doing nothing to reverse them? The only possible explanation is that they are putting the profits of business ahead of the needs of the workers who rely on penalty rates to pay the rent, pay their electricity bill or feed and clothe their children. Their indifference towards the situation of thousands of Australia's lowest paid workers is deplorable.

It's bad enough that the Morrison government is overseeing record low wages growth, but now they're also preparing for an assault on workers' retirement savings. The Prime Minister has failed to rule out supporting a growing movement from his backbench to scrap the scheduled increase in the superannuation guarantee to 12 per cent. Mr Morrison used weasel words to dodge the question on Sky News recently, saying:

… it's not the Government's intentions or plans to change what's legislated at this point in time.

Note the words 'at this point in time'.

Recent analysis shows that there is a massive gap between the retirement savings of workers and what they need for a comfortable retirement. This gap is even worse in Tasmania, which in 2015-16 had an average superannuation account balance of $129,000 compared with the national average of $188,000. An increase in the superannuation guarantee is badly needed, but Mr Morrison's recently announced review of superannuation appears to me to be setting up the government for a backflip on these scheduled increases. The government needs to rule this out unequivocally and immediately.

I want to now turn to some of Australia's poorest people: jobseekers on the Newstart allowance. The Newstart allowance is currently $278 per week, which just under $40 a day. A number of politicians regularly get asked by the media whether they could live on $40 a day. Who in this place could honestly put their hand on their heart and say that they could? After all, former Deputy Prime Minister Joyce claims that he can't even live on his parliamentary salary. I notice that a number of government ministers have dodged this question when it was put to them. Instead, they respond by saying, 'Newstart is a transitional payment.' It may be a transitional payment for some jobseekers, but in this country we have around 165,000 long-term unemployed—that is, people who have been unemployed for more than 12 months.

In my home state of Tasmania, the rate of long-term unemployment is 1.7 per cent. That is much higher than the national average of 1.2 per cent. This means that around 4,500 Tasmanians have been languishing for over a year on this so-called transitional payment. The state I represent also has a longer average duration of unemployment. It is around 71 weeks, as compared with the national average of 49 weeks. When it comes to Newstart, I urge those opposite to take up the policy of reviewing the payment that Labor took to the election. Those opposite are steadfastly refusing to even consider raising the rate, but the need for an increase is the only conclusion you can possibly reach if you acknowledge two very simple facts: (1) the rate of Newstart is too low to live on; and (2) despite any government's best efforts to get people off Newstart as quickly as possible, there will be people relying on it for more than a year. How can these people be expected to actively look for work when it's enough of a struggle to afford their basic living expenses?

I know that government members and senators understand that the rate of Newstart is too low, even if they can't bring themselves to acknowledge it. But, while acknowledging that Newstart is too low, there is also a need to address unemployment in my home state of Tasmania, which has lost almost 6,000 jobs in the last 12 months. Instead of taking action to address Tasmania's unemployment rate, which is the highest in Australia, the government has slashed 550 Commonwealth Public Service jobs from the state and threatens another 100 with its plan to privatise visa processing services.

Another area in which Tasmania is particularly suffering from inequality is homelessness and housing, as I outlined in a recent senators' statement speech. In that speech I pointed out that Hobart has become the least affordable capital city in Australia on the Rental Affordability Index and that there are over 3,000 Tasmanians on the public housing waiting list. We also know that 20 per cent more Tasmanians are now accessing homelessness and crisis housing services than were accessing these services two years ago. This government is severely lacking in plans to address the housing and homelessness crisis in Tasmania, or even Australia-wide. They capped the National Rental Affordability Scheme at 38,000 dwellings, and we're still not clear about whether there was a deal to cancel Tasmania's $157 million housing debt or when this will be implemented.

Another way in which this government has furthered inequality is through their savage cuts to essential public services. These are services which the more disadvantaged in society particularly rely on. I mentioned earlier the high rate of long-term unemployment in Tasmania, a situation that is exacerbated by this government's savage cuts to Centrelink. While jobseekers are struggling to get by on Newstart, they are also waiting for hours on the phone to Centrelink, or even getting a dial tone when they just want a simple query answered. Cuts to health hit a state like Tasmania most particularly hard, as we have, on average, an older population and higher levels of chronic disease. The emergency departments in our hospitals are in a state of crisis, with elective surgeries constantly being cancelled, while ambulances are ramping and staff are working double shifts to deal with the overwhelming demand.

Then there are the savage cuts to government schools. There's $14 billion that still hasn't been returned, even though the government fully restored the funding from the cuts to the independent and Catholic schools. This is fundamentally unfair when government schools serve a higher proportion of students with disability and from disadvantaged backgrounds. It is particularly unfair to Tasmania, which has a higher proportion of students enrolled in government schools when compared with the national average. Tackling inequality is not only a just and fair thing to do; it's also economically responsible.

As I pointed out in February last year when speaking on Labor's private senator's bill, the Productivity Commission Amendment (Addressing Inequality) Bill 2017, greater income equality leads to faster economic growth. This is the finding of analysis conducted by the OECD in 2014, backed up by Nobel prize winning economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz. The logic underpinning this is quite simple: those who have less money tend to spend a greater proportion of it. It isn't rocket science.

It is high time the Liberals accepted that their failure to address inequality has led to a situation where economic growth and consumption have slowed and Australia is teetering on the brink of recession. Yet, against the weight of the evidence to the contrary, the Liberals still subscribe to the outdated notion that you can create economic stimulus by looking after the top end of town. They still defend to the hilt the generous tax concessions that go to the wealthiest Australians while also defending their savage cuts to public services such as schools, hospitals and housing. They still conduct an all-out assault on trade unions when it is the union movement which is fighting to ensure that Australian workers, especially our lowest-paid workers, receive just reward for their efforts in driving the economy. And they still prioritise property investors over first home buyers. Why? Because those opposite have abrogated their responsibility for making Australian society more fair and equal. It is at the core of the Liberals' philosophy, and has been throughout the history of their party, that each individual is entirely responsible for their own success or failure in life. But we know that this is not true. My Australia is not one in which individuals clamour over and step on each other to get to the top of the ladder, and I have faith most that Australians subscribe to that view. The individualistic philosophy of those opposite could not be more at odds with Australian values. Australia is the land of the fair go. We believe in helping out people who have fallen on hard times and giving them a hand up when they need it.

We, on this side of the chamber, believe that inequality is an outcome of policy decisions and something that government has a responsibility to address. This is an enduring Labor value, and I can guarantee it would underpin the policies we bring to the next election. Those opposite may well call it class warfare, but we have another word for it: we call it fairness.