Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We've had this debate quite a few times now in this chamber, and the talking points don't seem to change. The Liberals get up and say the best form of welfare is a job. Labor gets up and says, 'Yes, we should raise Newstart,' forgetting that it went to the election with a policy of simply reviewing it. What stays within this space is a kind of strange pantomime that we see, as each side trades talking points with each other. Meanwhile, out there, beyond the walls of this place, people are hurting—particularly disabled people, who have, since 2012, when the Labor Party amended the impairment tables in relation to the disability support pension, been driven onto the Newstart payment in droves and have sat there, below the poverty line, struggling to get by.

The reality is that there should be no shame in requiring income support in this country. God knows, the wealthy and the powerful and the privileged are quick enough to come for what they believe is theirs at every opportunity. I'll take this moment to remind folks who during this debate have expressed concerns about the cost of income support to the budget bottom line that we just spent $144 billion, over the next decade, on tax cuts with no evidential basis as to a stimulatory effect upon the economy. Meanwhile, we've got something like Newstart increases on the table, where even Deloitte Access Economics—hardly a progressive think tank—agrees that it'll increase the budget bottom line by $4 billion and create 12,000 jobs. The time is now.