Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I find it hard to believe some of the contributions and some of the answers that we've received to our questions today about what is, in actual fact, confronting Australian women at this time. I also find hard to believe not only the tone-deafness of the answers that they've given us today but their inability to hear the reality—to see and understand the reality—of what is happening to Australian women right now in the course of this Morrison crisis that's been inflicted on us—I do mean the Morrison recession, but it's a crisis of great proportion because there is no adequate response. For example: before the recession, the Central Coast, which is in the electorate of Robertson, where I live, had the highest underemployment of unskilled female workers in the entire country.

They have not been noticed. They have not been heard. There is no response. Despite putting us in debt as a nation to the tune of $1 trillion, those women's needs remain unanswered. These were women at the front line of the aged-care crisis and the front line of the pandemic, and the government has now turned its back on them. Women on the Central Coast of New South Wales lost work hours much faster than men, they were 50 per cent more likely to stop looking for work than men and they are suffering more significantly than men. You'd think a government would know about these things. You'd think the government would have some plan in their response, in their budget, to that reality. Data from the New South Wales Parliamentary Library shows us that employment growth slowed to a trickle while more people than ever were leaving the coast to commute for many hours for jobs. That's the reality before these guys got to the pandemic, and it's so, so much worse now.

Senator Rennick mentioned the union movement, and I want to stand firmly with the SDA union and other great union leaders who are the only voices standing up for workers, who are much maligned by this government. As they said, this is a blue budget for a pink recession. There is totally inadequate support for women. Two hundred thousand women who work in accommodation services, food services and the retail trade sector all missed out on JobSeeker due to its design flaws around casual employees. They're suffering, their families are suffering and, of $1 trillion that is going to be racked up as debt for this country, there is no relief in sight for those women.

The number of women on JobSeeker has jumped by 124 per cent over the past 12 months, surging past their male counterparts in August. What does it mean for the women who end up on JobSeeker? Let me give you a little bit of the flavour of what it was like for an amazing woman who gave evidence to a committee hearing that we had in Launceston at the end of 2019. This is the kind of Australian woman this government is leaving behind. Her name is Debra and this is what she said:

I've worked a total of 35 years for Australia, and my last position was for 22 years. I've worked 30 of those 35 years in factory work so it was physical labour and your body can only take that for so long. In 2016, I was made redundant. The factory I worked at closed in November of that year, and I was made redundant in July. I went to Centrelink to be told that I had to live on my redundancy for 18 months, which I did. After that they put me on Newstart.

The equivalent of Newstart is JobSeeker. Debra went on to say:

So to say that going from a paid job to Newstart is a shock to the system is a bit of an understatement because budgeting is impossible. There's just no money to budget. There's just not enough money to go around.

I've followed all the instructions from Centrelink and my job provider to the letter. I've had my payments suspended five times so far this year due to no fault of mine, and that's stressful. … When you get a text message—actually, on Wednesday I reported and, when I got to the end of my report, it said: your payment has been suspended. So I had to get out of that, ring my job provider and ask, 'What's going on?' It just happens all the time…

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My medical scripts cost about $80-plus a month. I've used all my redundancy. I have very few savings left. Frankly, I'm scared about what's going to happen to me when my car rego and my insurance et cetera come in because there are no savings left—that's what I've been living on. I mean: am I going to have be forced to live in my car? It makes me very sad, and it's demeaning when our Prime Minister says that Newstart recipients are a blight on the Australian economy.

That is the Mr Morrison who created the budget that we saw on Tuesday night. That is why Australian women are being left behind, because he simply doesn't care. (Time expired)