Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

who I believe is speaking next and will no doubt unleash a tirade of stereotypes, abuse and criticism on my fellow Queenslanders, and I would ask that she desist in interjecting and we will attempt to do the same on her vile views when she shares them with the public. I will continue.

The other misnomer that this card is based on is the assumption and the abusive stereotype firstly that it’s the fault of people receiving income support that they can't get a job and secondly that they're druggies or alcoholics. If there are concerns with addiction, why don't you help people with a health led response that actually addresses those addictions that might exist? But no—the approach is just a punitive income management approach that won't actually solve any of those addiction problems, where those problems do exist, and they are by no means universal. Most of the people on this card are single mums. Single mothers, in my view, are the hardest working group of people in this nation, and the reward that they get from this government is an inadequate amount of income support and now a paternalistic taking away of their dignity and their ability to make decisions on how to spend that limited amount of money.

This card punishes people for not having work, when what this government should be doing is creating jobs. I think the latest figure is that there are 13 people for every job available. There are 13 applicants for every single job going. This government washes its hands of job creation. I've heard them say numerous times that they think that's industry's job, but it isn't. You could be investing in positive infrastructure—to create jobs and solve other problems at the same time—like schools, hospitals and renewable energy. You could be creating jobs. Instead, you punish people without jobs, you try to claim it's their own fault, you do nothing to fix the predicament that they're in, and then you try and mandate how they can spend their limited money. It is out of touch in the absolute extreme.

This card is punitive, it's ineffective, it's discriminatory, it's paternalistic and it's racist, and this government won't even release the report that says whether or not it works, when all of the other reports that have been released say that it doesn't. And the minister had the audacity to confess that she hadn't even read the evaluation report that she spent $2½ million of public money on. It is absolutely outrageous. And now, five seconds before Christmas, they want to ram this bill through, in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of a jobs crisis, when they still haven't said what the final rate of JobSeeker will be and when they've condemned people on JobSeeker to poverty for so many years. It went for 24 years without getting a raise. It was under the poverty line, and, under this government, it would drop back down to beneath the Henderson poverty line. Rather than fix that problem, they're handing out tax cuts to the very rich and to big corporates and they're saying that job creation is not their problem. I cannot even fathom this government anymore. I would like to foreshadow a second reading amendment which stands in the name of Senator Siewert. I believe we may well speak to that. It has been circulated in chamber.