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

I rise to contribute to this debate on the motion moved by Senator Gallagher, which relates to our economy. I'm particularly focused on elements of the motion around Australians who are struggling with stagnant wages, with wage growth stalling even further, and point (d) in particular:

the Government does not have a plan to boost wages or growth in the economy.

It is clear that the government doesn't have a plan to boost wages or growth in the economy. In fact, many people feel very excluded from our economy, and that's why I want to focus today on the issues around Newstart.

The previous speaker from the government was just speaking about Newstart and was having a go at a number of us on this side of the chamber, saying that we don't really know what we're talking about, in terms of the need to increase Newstart, because—didn't you know?—most of the people on Newstart are also getting other payments. Well, let's just have a little look at that. Let's look at what most of the people on Newstart are getting in additional payments. There's the energy supplement. Guess how much that is, folks? It's $8.80 per fortnight. You can buy yourself two cups of coffee a fortnight on your energy supplement. You can live it up when you're on Newstart! Let's look at rent assistance. For a single person, it's $138 a fortnight. If you add on Newstart, do you know what you get per week? If you get those two most common additional payments, you get $318.25. Do you know what the poverty line is? There are arguments about what the poverty line is, but if you take it to be half the median household income, it's $426.30. That's the poverty line. What are you getting if you're lucky enough to get Newstart, the energy supplement and the maximum rent assistance? You're getting $318.25. You are still more than $100 a week below the poverty line. So, please, government members, do not try to lecture us about the inadequacies of Newstart. If you really care, go out and talk to the people that are trying to live on Newstart and then you'll know what their life is like. You'll know what it's like to live below the poverty line. So, please, get over yourselves and don't keep up this absolute nonsense that all these people on Newstart are so lucky because they get all these other payments. Yes, they might get a few additional payments—the whole $8.80 per fortnight from the energy supplement. When they say most people get additional payments, that's the payment they're talking about: the extra cup of coffee a week. And you've got to be careful where you spend that, because if you're buying in Perth you can pay over five bucks for a cup of coffee. In Perth you can't even get a cup of coffee for your $4.40 a week extra from your energy supplement.

One of the ways that we can stimulate the economy is by increasing Newstart. We know that the report by Deloitte Access Economics, which was released in 2018, was based on a $75 increase to Newstart. That increase has been proposed for some time, but, because the government has failed so consistently to increase Newstart, ACOSS is now calling for an increase of $95 a week to meet cost of living increases. But if you look at the Deloitte Access Economics analysis of the positive impact of raising Newstart and the impact it would have on the economy—even based on a $75 increase; and, as I said, as the cost of living has increased, so too has the need to increase Newstart even further, to at least $95—it's very interesting.

I must say that people were constantly talking to me or phoning our office and saying that the $75 wasn't enough. We're now getting people ringing and saying that $95 isn't enough. I acknowledge that $95 will not take us to the point I was just talking about, which is making sure that Newstart actually takes people above the poverty line. It's quite clear that $95 won't do that. I was actually using a fairly low level for the poverty line there, so, even using that level, you can see that $95 would not take a single person above the poverty line, even if they had all those other supplements.

But what Deloitte Access Economics found was that by investing, by $75 a week, in those people who are trying to survive on Newstart you would lift the Australian economy by $4 billion. This has a lot to do with the fact that when you're living below the poverty line and you actually get an increase then you spend that money straightaway to meet your costs of living, to make sure you're paying your bills, to make sure you can actually feed your kids, to make sure you can send your kids to school with lunches. And that's what surveys have consistently found—that parents sometimes are not able to send their kids to school with lunches, and parents on Newstart in particular are frequently going without food themselves. So, if you're a single person or you're trying to raise kids on Newstart, you will be investing that money in your wellbeing and your family's wellbeing. In other words, you're spending it straightaway. That's automatically injecting money into the economy. We know that people living below the poverty line will spend those extra dollars to make sure they're looking after the essentials, such as food, heating and housing—spreading it throughout the economy.

But the Deloitte Access Economics report also found that it would create 12,000 extra jobs in Australia. By spending that money, we can generate 12,000 extra jobs and then of course address the issues around employment. I just heard Senator Hughes talking about all those extra jobs the government's generated. I'll come back to that in a minute, but today it was reported that 1.2 million Australians were underemployed last year, and this problem is likely to get worse. With the stupid way that we measure employment in this country—and quite frankly it is stupid—you're counted as employed if you've got a job for an hour a week. How ridiculous is that? So, quote all the figures you want, but we know, from this data, that at least 1.2 million Australians are underemployed.

I just heard claims made about the people who have come off income support. It was a claim that over 100,000 people had come off income support. At the last estimates we identified 104,000 people who had been breached through the government's flawed targeted compliance framework—up to three demerit points, and then they get reviewed. The government keeps saying that people aren't penalised when they get a demerit point. In fact, they are, because their payments are suspended. When I asked how many of those are reconnecting, the government finally admitted that 104,000 people had not reconnected. And when I asked what had happened to them they said, 'Oh, we just assume they've got a job'—which is not fair to assume at all, because we know there are a lot of people who are dropping out of the system. Fortunately some of this data does show up when we look at the Community Development Program, which is targeted mainly at First Nations people in remote communities. But from that the data for the jobs generated and the data for the people who have come off income support don't match. In other words, there are people who are not accessing income support and are making do with support from their family. So, you cannot assume that those 104,000 people have gone into work. And I'm very concerned that they have in fact come off income support when they were suspended and haven't reconnected and now are finding other ways of trying to exist, including support from their families.

You would think that in the midst of figures like this, with so many people who are underemployed or unemployed, the government would jump at the chance to create these extra jobs as well as inject money into the economy that would get spent straightaway, therefore boosting the economy. We argue that investment in Newstart is not only investment in people and community but also an investment in boosting our economy. A stronger economy means that the government can raise extra taxes, and it's postulated that they could earn up to a billion dollars extra in taxes by making sure that we are boosting the economy.

Boosting income support payments would also have a positive effect on our health and social services budget, because we know that unemployment and poverty are linked to poorer health outcomes, including poorer mental health outcomes and chronic disease. Inadequate payments contribute to housing insecurity and homelessness. Increasing Newstart would also have an impact on the not-for-profit sector by reducing the need for people to rely on food relief, emergency services and frontline services. We know that income support payments are one of the main drivers of poverty in this country. As I have just demonstrated, by keeping Newstart at a level that is way below the poverty line the government continues to trap people in poverty. And as we know from the Australian Council of Social Service report released just at the end of last week, 3.24 million people are living in poverty and 774,000 children are living in poverty. We know that we can help those people by increasing Newstart. We can help their wellbeing and also help them actually find work. We know from the research that poverty is a barrier to employment. By increasing Newstart, you address people's economic wellbeing, you address their social wellbeing and you assist people to find work. So it has this extra impact as well.

Imagine what a $95-a-week increase to Newstart would provide for our economy and to people who are living on income support in terms of helping them to not be trapped in poverty. There is no doubt that keeping Newstart low acts as a barrier to employment. The current rate of Newstart and related payments does not cover basic living costs, let alone the additional costs of looking for work, such as internet, transport and clothing. And we all know that it's now absolutely essential that you have a phone and the internet when you're trying to find work, in particular because the government is driving people to the digital platforms through compliance requirements and through Centrelink. The ongoing stress and struggle to make ends meet can detract from job search activities and undermine health and wellbeing, further undermining people's employment prospects. If we give people an increase in Newstart, we help people live with dignity and we help them to increase their chances of finding work.

I really want to touch on the issues around people living in rural and regional areas, because we know that poverty is at a higher rate in those rural and regional areas. David Tennant, CEO of Shepparton FamilyCare, noted that the low rate of Newstart is:

… devastating rural and regional communities, where unemployment was widespread, and had become a structural level of poverty almost impossible to escape.

He said:

It's just a bizarre, slightly cruel conundrum that we're requiring people to go to government funded agencies to get emergency relief, when what really should be happening is they're paid a respectful amount of money that they can constantly survive on.

Last year, the National Rural Health Commissioner also explained how people in rural and regional areas have worse health outcomes, again demonstrating the fact that we need to make sure that we are enabling people to live on an adequate payment. We need to raise Newstart by $95 a week, which will help our economy and, most importantly, help people live with some dignity.