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

At the request of Senator McKim, I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

Poverty and homelessness disproportionately affect women and are compounded by gendered violence, with single mothers and their children particularly vulnerable.

The upcoming Budget must scrap Stage 3 tax cuts and instead fund measures to support those most at risk, including by raising the rate of income support, investing in social housing, and extending Parenting Payment Single.

In recent weeks, we've seen reports from ACOSS and analysis by Anti-Poverty Week confirming that poverty and homelessness are disproportionately impacting women and children. This is a crisis, and it demands an urgent response. We know that women make up more than 60 per cent of those relying on the lowest income support payments. We know that women and girls made up more than 60 per cent of clients of homelessness services last year. We know that rental prices are skyrocketing and that the fastest-growing group of people at risk of homelessness is women over the age of 45. Across the country, people are living in tents and cars. And we know that all these risks are compounded for women and children leaving abusive relationships. Women are given an impossible choice: stay in an unsafe home, or leave and put themselves and their kids at the mercy of a system of inadequate support, stretched DV services, housing shortages and punitive income tests.

I spoke last week in support of the bill to help close the gender pay gap in workplaces. As I said at the time, that is critical, but it's only one piece of the puzzle. We cannot address economic inequality without looking beyond work and reviewing our approach to income support, to housing and to unpaid care work. The JobSeeker rate is too low. Austudy is too low. Pension rates are too low. Parenting payments are too low. In a wealthy country, there is absolutely no excuse for keeping income support below the poverty line, and there is certainly no excuse for keeping the most vulnerable in poverty while offering tax cuts to the wealthiest Australians.

At a forum last week, we heard from single mums struggling to make ends meet. Brave mums Jacinta, Aradia and Angela talked about how, for each of them, their already strained budget was stretched to breaking point once their youngest child turned eight. At a time when it's getting more expensive to feed kids, to meet their public school fees, to pay for sports, and to pay for braces and basic health care, that's when single mums are getting punted from parenting payment single onto the even lower JobSeeker rate, losing around $200 a fortnight. This could mean missing a rental or mortgage payment. For Angela, it meant possibly losing her home and genuine fear that she would not be able to keep a roof over her kids' heads. It could mean putting off their own doctor appointment to make sure the kids can eat. For one mum, her own disability needs took second place to make sure her disabled son could get the help he needed. It could mean putting further study on hold because they need to take on extra shifts to make ends meet. For Jacinta, further study would have helped her get higher-paid work, but she had to defer completing the course for years after the drop in income support made it impossible to continue.

I was encouraged to hear Sam Mostyn say that the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce has advised the government to focus on the needs of women in the most precarious situations. They should start by reversing the terrible decision of the Gillard government to cut off parenting payment single when kids turn eight. Doing so would cost $1.4 billion, a fraction of a fraction of the stage 3 tax cuts and the AUKUS spending, but it would be life-changing for 500,000 single mums and their kids. Cost-of-living rises, housing shortages and the ongoing national crisis of gendered violence demand urgent action.

The upcoming budget is the government's chance to start turning this around. Raise the rates, restore parenting payment single, invest in housing, fully fund frontline domestic violence services, scrap the stage 3 tax cuts and the billions for submarines, and fund the things that will actually help the people who need it.