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

Minister, what do you say to these 8,145 single-parent families who have had their income support slashed from 1 July, who were living on a still not-adequate-enough parenting payment single but are now going to be in dire poverty? Almost none of them have got savings to fall back on. Many of them won't have family support. They are going to be struggling to pay the rent. People are going to be at risk of homelessness, and they've got three months of living on this JobSeeker payment before their income goes back up again. What do you say to them, to those families that are going to be in dire circumstances? When they come knocking on the door of an MP's office or when they're knocking on the door of the Centrelink office to say, 'Hey, I can't pay the rent; I'm about to be homeless,' what do you say to them?