Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Ending Poverty in Australia (Antipoverty Commission) Bill 2023 would establish an antipoverty commission, as Senator Rice has said. An antipoverty commission in Australia is critical because it would provide parliament with independent and transparent advice on the causes of poverty in this country and on how to reduce poverty in this country. It would also provide advice on, for example, minimum levels for social security payments including JobSeeker, the parenting payment, the youth allowance, the age pension and disability support pensions.

The context for this bill is that last year the government established an interim Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee. The role of the committee is to provide independent advice to government on economic inclusion and disadvantage. The committee released a report in April this year, ahead of the budget, which put forward a suite of recommendations. Critically, the first recommendation was that the government commit to a substantial increase in the base rates of the JobSeeker payment and related working-age payments as a first priority. The committee suggested that increasing the rate to 90 per cent of the age pension would improve adequacy. This was ignored by the Labor Party during the budget, as they only committed to increasing JobSeeker by $4 a day, plus indexation.

We need to be very clear here that poverty is a political choice, and the fact that so many Australians—an ever-increasing number of Australians—are living in poverty is a political choice that's being made by the modern-day Labor Party, which prioritises a budget surplus over lifting people out of poverty; which prioritises hundreds of billions of dollars on nuclear powered submarines, in an agreement with the US and the UK that will make Australia a less safe place, over lifting people out of poverty; and which prioritises hundreds of billions—over $300 billion—on stage 3 tax cuts for the top end over lifting people out of poverty. Make no mistake: leaving people in poverty is a choice that the Australian Labor Party has made. They cannot cry poor while they are proceeding with Scott Morrison's stage 3 tax cuts and with Mr Morrison's thought bubble around the AUKUS deal with the US and the UK—hundreds of billions of dollars, collectively, on nuclear powered submarines that will make Australia a less safe place to live and on stage 3 tax cuts for the top end. Those are the priorities of the modern Australian Labor Party, which was formed to actually look after people who'd been economically excluded from the wealth of this country. Today, as people are struggling to pay their rents or make their mortgage payments, and more and more people are falling off the cliff into poverty or are at risk of ending up in poverty, the Australian Labor Party is making a political choice to ignore them and to prioritise things like stage 3 tax cuts for the top end. That's where we find ourselves today—an extraordinary circumstance, a circumstance that wouldn't surprise anyone if it were occurring under an LNP government but that ought to surprise and horrify Australians when it's occurring under an ALP government.

Ahead of the committee's interim report, the Greens introduced our Ending Poverty in Australia (Antipoverty Commission) Bill as an alternative framework for an independent advisory body on poverty. The features of our bill include an explicit focus on addressing poverty, a clear requirement for the development of a national poverty line, a requirement for the government to publicly respond to recommendations made by the independent commission, a clear requirement for legislated reviews of income support payments and of the poverty line, and an independent parliamentary committee that can scrutinise appointments to the independent body.

We want to make sure that it isn't just another body the major parties stack with retired ministers and former staffers. We need people skills, expertise and knowledge on poverty to guide policy, and we need people with lived experience of poverty to help guide policy that responds to poverty. For too long, people who don't have a job or who are living in poverty have been marginalised out of this debate, and we need to centre them in this debate and make sure that the platforms and the frameworks are in place so that people like us can hear from people with lived experience, including contemporary lived experience, about what it's like to live in poverty, because living in poverty is bloody hard—making choices about whether you're going to use your scarce financial resources to pay the rent, put food on the table for your kids, pay your power bills or pay your school levies. Those are difficult choices, and more and more Australians are having to make those choices every day as a result of an economic framework in this country that looks after the wealthy and allows the wealthy and the big corporates to make out like bandits and get away without paying their fair share of tax while more and more Australians are being ground into the dust of poverty.

We need to completely change the way that we share the fruits of our economy. Big corporations and the superwealthy should be forced to pay their fair share of tax so that governments can do more to offer cost-of-living relief to ordinary Australians. The Australian Labor Party are making a choice not to significantly increase the corporate tax rates and not to introduce a corporate superprofits tax or a wealth tax in this country, and as a result they say, 'Oh, we can't afford to put dental into Medicare, wipe out student debt or increase income support.' Well, of course they can afford to do those things, because they could, if they wished, put in place a corporate superprofits tax. They could, if they wished, put in place a wealth tax. They could, if they wished, walk away from the stage 3 tax cuts. They could, if they wished, walk away from AUKUS. They could, if they wished, end fossil fuel subsidies, where we are directly and encouraging the burning of fossil fuel using public money in the middle of a climate crisis. These are all choices that the Australian Labor Party is making, and how far they have fallen from their roots. Honestly, the people who formed the Labor Party in this country would be rolling in their graves at what their much-loved party has become, because, of course, Labor is here to deliver for a corporate agenda. Labor is here to deliver for the gas cartel. Labor is here to deliver for the coal industry in Australia. Those are the things that the Labor Party is here to deliver for—to approve five new coal projects in recent times in the middle of a climate crisis.

During this debate, colleagues need to understand that the Greens are putting forward a constructive step towards ending poverty in Australia. An independent body to provide advice to government on the issue of poverty is something we have long advocated for. Interestingly, successive governments have used the lack of a national definition of poverty as an excuse to keep people on inadequate income support payments. That is why we need a nationally agreed definition of poverty, one that takes into account different needs and contexts and one, critically, to which the government can be held accountable.

This bill does go further than the interim Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee and deliberately so, and it provides a clear framework for a robust and independent body to tackle poverty. The government is due to establish its permanent advisory committee on economic inclusion ahead of the next budget, and we will be using this bill as a blueprint for our deliberations on this legislation. It is absolutely critical that this parliament take the issue of poverty far more seriously than we collectively have in the past and it is critical that the government comes to the party here. We need to make sure that people with lived experience of poverty and people who are actually living in poverty have their voices heard. It is not good enough for them to be marginalised out of this debate and it is not good enough for this parliament to fail to put in place a framework that would provide them with a platform to have their voices heard. We should be hearing every day about the lived experience of the large and growing number of Australians who are in poverty. We are hearing some of them, for example, through the Senate inquiry process chaired by Senator Rice into the rental crisis in Australia. The stories are just heart-wrenching of people being ground into the dust of poverty by unscrupulous landlords, who see houses as an investment, an asset class, rather than as a home for people to live in.

I repeat again: housing minister Julie Collins said the quiet thing out loud on 7.30, when she said Labor regards housing as an asset and investment class. Well, that is what got us into the problem we are in. One of the primary causes of people being ground into poverty in this country is because houses have become an investment and asset class rather than places for people to make a home. That is the problem; that is Labor Party for you in a nutshell. Ms Collins said the quiet thing out loud on 7.30 and I was horrified but not surprised to hear it—