Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I didn't get a chance to speak to the last lot of amendments, but I'm very happy to speak to these amendments and the Greens' support for these amendments, which allow for voluntary income management for people who find income management to be of value to them. I've spoken to people for whom indeed that is the case. I've heard many stories and many examples of people who say that it's a useful thing for them to have, so we are happy to support that.

There is a very big difference between choosing to use something as a tool that helps people—when a person individually chooses to say, 'This is going to be helpful to me in terms of managing my finances,'—and having income management forced upon people with absolutely no choice. We're very happy to support this, but we reiterate that big difference between voluntary income management, choosing to be able to use this, versus having compulsory income management forced upon people, blanket across the board, which is still the case. As the opposition have just stated, there is going to be ongoing compulsory income management in far too many places across the country, despite the fact that it has been shown to fail. It does not work. It does not address the social problems that it is aimed to address. There has been so much research that shows that in fact compulsory income management could even have a negative impact. Recent research has shown that it has a negative corollary with birth weight, for example. For all of the talk about the value of the cashless debit card in a compulsory way, the evidence for it just does not stack up.

What we need to be doing, as well as having one voluntary tool like this one, is give people much more support, particularly to people who are living on inadequate income support. We need to increase the rate of income support. So many of the problems that so many people around this country have in managing their income, if they are living on income support payments, is that it is just far too little. It is way below the poverty line, and the impact that has on people is absolutely dire. Such people just cannot afford to eat three meals a day, even two meals a day. People cannot afford to pay the rent. People cannot afford to put clothes on their kids, to put shoes on their children's feet. People can't afford medication. In fact, people can't afford to go off and see medical practitioners if there is a gap fee involved. We need to tackle the fundamental issues that are at play here, and increasing the amount of income support to above the poverty line is an absolutely fundamental part of that.

We had evidence of this during the COVID lockdowns, when the rate of income support was doubled. There was absolutely wonderful research that showed that so many people were able to get their lives back on track, were able to participate in the workforce, were able to pay to get their washing machine fixed, were able to pay to get their car back on the road, were able to go off and have their medical problems treated because they had enough money to live on.

We will support this measure that says, yes, here is one tool that people might find useful, but it needs to be put in the context of all of the other things that need to be done. The fact that the government is choosing not to do them is a choice. Keeping people in poverty is a political choice.

We would urge the government, as well as taking measures like this one, to give people the ability to opt in for income management, to take all of the other factors that need to be taken and, in particular, to raise the rate of income support so that people are no longer living in poverty.