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

Asking questions and getting good answers to them is incredibly important for the workings of this Senate and the workings of the parliament. It is incredibly important for transparency. It is incredibly important so that the Australian public can have some understanding of the rationale behind decisions that are being made.

This week is budget week. The budget is all about choices. The budget is all about making one decision rather than another decision. Actually having some transparency so that you can work out why these decisions have been made is critical to see whether these are good decisions for the country, or to see, indeed, whether they are decisions that have been made after lobbying by various vested interests. That's why it's important to be asking questions and to be getting good answers to questions. It is very legitimate for the Senate to be taking this time, to be focused on this, to be applying pressure and to be telling this government that it is critical that, when questions are asked, transparent answers are given with the detail that's required.

It's important when you see decisions to rip $74 billion out of the NDIS made in this budget. It is outrageous that it is the community of disabled people here in Australia who are being asked to take the fall. They are the ones that are having to suffer because of the decisions being made in this budget. If there was some good rationale—if you could be shown the government's workings to say: 'This money isn't needed. This is how it's not going to impact on services'—you might be able to trust them. But when you ask questions about it you get zero. You get silence. So it's pretty clear that the reason that $74 billion has been taken out of this budget is that the government has decided, 'The disabled community haven't got much political power, so they will just have to suck it up. This is outrageous, particularly when you put it in the context of other things that the disabled community and disabled people are having to put up with. We have had an absolutely paltry increase to the JobSeeker allowance of $2.85 a day, which won't even buy you a kilogram of potatoes or a loaf of bread.

There was no increase, however, to the disability support pension, despite the recognition that people on the DSP actually need more support, more funding and more resources to be able to live a decent life. There was zero increase to the disability support pension. People on the DSP are still in poverty. In my Senate committee's inquiry into the extent and nature of poverty in Australia and our inquiry into the adequacy of the disability support pension last year, we have heard the most heartbreaking stories from people on the DSP, as well as from people with disabilities who should be on the DSP, of the circumstances they are having to live in—not being able to pay the rent; not being able to afford food, let alone healthy food that's going to help them to stay well; not being able to afford their medications, which is critical. If you're on the DSP, it's for a reason. There are significant health costs. Some are not able to afford to go to see specialists to help them deal with their disability. With this government, these are the choices being made.

And yet at the same time the choice is being made to go ahead with stage 3 tax cuts. At the same time that we're ripping $74 billion out of the budget from the National Disability Insurance Scheme, there is $254 billion that is being given away to the wealthy. It's being given away in $9,000-a-year tax cuts at the same time as the people on the NDIS are having that money ripped away from them. Every single one of us in this place, every single politician, is going to get a $9,000-a-year tax cut. We're going to get an extra $25 a day in our pockets, compared with the cuts that are being made to people with disability and the cuts that are being made to other people who are struggling to get by. These are the choices that are being made.

We absolutely need to have transparency and accountability to show up how inadequate and how wrong these choices being made are. We need to know the rationale for not increasing payments above the current rates. We need to know the rationale as to why the petroleum resource rent tax is only going to bring in an extra $3 billion when it could bring in an extra $30 billion. That's right. Transparency and accountability are critical.