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

Last night, we watched the Treasurer, Dr Chalmers, and the Labor government deliver a budget that is going to give tax cuts of $9,000 a year to the wealthy—to billionaires, to everyone in this place—while there was absolutely zero in the budget last night for the millions of Australians who are struggling to survive on income support. This was a Labor government budget. What is the point of Labor? Poverty is a political choice, and last night, Labor showed they had made their choice. In this budget, they have chosen to give tax cuts to the wealthy at the cost of $254 billion over the next 10 years, rather than doing anything for the millions of Australians, including the one in six children in Australia, who are living in poverty. This is not complex. These are people who are absolutely struggling. Every day, millions of Australians are having to make decisions about whether they eat, whether they pay for their medicines or whether they pay their rent.

I recently spoke to one person struggling to survive on the JobSeeker payment who told me:

I'll be 63 in a couple of weeks. No one will employ me at my age I went food shopping the other day. For the first time in my life I contemplated shop lifting because I could not afford the food I wanted to buy.

My next door neighbour is older, an ex tradie, his knees and back are gone due to hard work, he is a year away from the pension, he is shoplifting food to survive, he is giving me some of it.

I have volunteered all my life but due to a bad motorbike accident that almost severed my right hand 10 years ago I have had to stop doing that.

I was a volunteer Wildlife rescuer

I have volunteered for

The Womens Hospital

The Childrens Hospital

Op shops

When I lived in a regional town I volunteered with

The CWA

The CFA

The SES

I have consistently put back into society and now I and many like me have been left behind on the scrap heap, forced to contemplate breaking the law to eat.

I would prefer my name remain anonymous as I don't want people to know that I'm considering stealing food, I don't want that "stigma" attached to me even though I'm living a stigmatised life while on Job Seeker.

Raise the rate and lower the retirement age. I'm tired

We are living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet people are forced to shoplift to eat and there are tax cuts that are going to give the wealthy $9,000 a year extra in their pocket. It was delivered last night in a Labor budget. The budget also told us that rents are increasing sharply and that electricity is going to go up 56 per cent. This budget does not cater for people who are just barely scraping by. It punishes people living in poverty. If this had been a Greens budget, there would have been different choices being made. It would have included a livable income guarantee, ensuring support was there for everyone who needed it because poverty is a political choice. We would have raised the rate of JobSeeker above the poverty line, to above $88 a day, abolished all punitive parts of our income support system and returned the provision of employment services to the Commonwealth. Our livable income guarantee would have sat side by side with the Greens' plans to build a million affordable homes, to increase wages and to reduce the costs of essential services like dental care and child care by making them free. We know this is possible if we're willing to make the billionaires and the big corporations and the very wealthy pay their fair share rather than giving them tax cuts. Instead we are going to be paying out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts.

Lifting people out of poverty can be done. We saw, during the height of the pandemic, the government double JobSeeker, raising it above the poverty line, and abolish all mutual obligations. During this time people were able to improve their lives and meet their basic needs, and their mental and physical health improved. Advocacy groups and people living in poverty have repeatedly called on Labor to raise the rate of income support, yet Labor has failed to listen. This budget has done nothing to improve the lives of the 5.1 million Australians struggling to survive on meagre income support payments.