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

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance on the government's broken promise to bring cost-of-living relief in the budget. Energy bills are rising, rents are rising, the cost of food is rising—we are in a cost-of-living crisis. It seems everything is rising except for income support payments. These are still way below the poverty line, with JobSeeker at just $48 a day. It is people on income support who are most impacted by the cost-of-living crisis, who need cost-of-living relief and who have been failed by this government in the budget. How does the government expect people to pay the bills, pay the rent and feed themselves on $48 a day? The reality is: people just can't, and they aren't.

Last week I had the privilege of visiting St Mary's House of Welcome in Collingwood in Melbourne—a community hub where anyone is welcome to come for lunch, for a shower or to charge their phone. What I saw is that the face of homelessness is changing. St Mary's is seeing more people than ever before, including young people and families. Many come to grab a meal to take home to their families because they simply cannot afford fresh fruit and vegetables anymore. The work that St Mary's does is incredible, but they rely on donations and they run on the smell of an oily rag, and with the cost of living rising they are feeling the pressure from increased demand.

We should not be relying on organisations like St Mary's to do the heavy lifting and to be supporting our community. Inadequate income support payments force people to live in poverty. But poverty is a political choice, and it's a choice that this government made in the budget. We can blame the cost-of-living crisis all we want, but the government has the power and it has made a choice. What its choice needs to be is to acknowledge that as the cost of living continues to rise, income support payments need to rise too. We need a guaranteed liveable income of at least $88 a day for all income support payments. We need to end mutual obligations—which do nothing to help people find work—and we need to remove unfair restrictions on who can access payments to ensure that everybody has got enough to cover their basic needs. Only with a guaranteed adequate income will we really tackle the cost-of-living crisis for those who are feeling it the most, and see income equality so that places like St Mary's aren't expected to keep on picking up the pieces.