Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (More Support in the Safety Net) Bill 2024. This bill implements the woefully inadequate changes outlined in the budget in social services. This bill will not even touch the sides of the cost-of-living crisis being felt most acutely by people on income support payments.

JobSeeker is a poverty payment. With rents soaring and grocery prices going through the roof, people on income support are increasingly hungry and homeless. A bill that moves less than one-half of one per cent of jobseekers onto a slightly higher payment isn't a solution; it's a sick joke. It's a special kind of cruelty to force people into poverty, tell them you're doing everything you can to help them and then offer a payment increase that is so small they will barely notice it. This higher payment, which only 4,700 people will now be eligible for, still falls over $200 short of the disability support pension. Instead of taking actual leadership, the Labor government has resorted to rearranging deck chairs. We are being asked to take seriously a minute increase for a very tiny group who in any sane system would be on the disability support pension.

Rather than investing money in measures to provide people with a liveable income, Labor continues to force millions into a punitive, privatised mutual obligation system that enriches for-profit job providers and allows them to make life-and-death decisions about the poorest people in the country. It's a total sham, and it's appalling. The increase to Commonwealth rent assistance that this bill will give effect to amounts to $1.30 a day which, in the face of unrestricted rent increases, barely touches the sides of a runaway crisis.

More and more people are being forced into homelessness. My office in Gladstone is directly beneath the department of housing service centre. On most days, we have people walking into reception immediately after they've just been told by the department of housing that there's nothing that can be done for them. They come in for help because they're desperate. I want to thank my staff who deal with these desperate people every day. It is hard and draining work. The government tells them that they can't help. Charities and community organisations are overstretched. Even with income support and rent assistance, there's still nothing affordable for these people in the private market. They're young people. They're old people. They're white. They're First Nations. Many of them come in with kids. None of these people deserve a life of housing insecurity—waking up every day in the park, in a friend's garage, on a friend's couch or in their car—wondering, 'Is today the day I'll finally find a place I can call home?' The line between having a home and having no home to go to has never been thinner.

If Labor was really serious about tackling the housing crisis, it would phase out the massive tax handouts for property investors that are denying millions of renters the chance to buy a home and it would invest the savings in a mass build of public housing and coordinate a rent freeze and a cap on rent increases. We have a Prime Minister who once said JobSeeker should be increased. That's a fact. He said that people shouldn't be in a position where they can't afford to live. Well, there are millions of people in this country who can't afford to live—and it's getting worse. People are getting pushed to the brink and, instead of doing the one thing we know will help, we have a Treasurer crowing about a surplus and responsible budget management.

Here are some facts for Labor. More than three million people in Australia experience poverty. That's right now, today. Over a third of all households are experiencing food insecurity. This is hunger. This is skipping meals. This is buying less nutritious food because it's cheaper than healthier options. I want Labor to really pay attention to this. In 2019, 30 per cent of all suicides in Australia were by people receiving the disability support pension and what we used to call Newstart. When income support payments increased during the pandemic, the suicide rates of people on unemployment payments fell 37.4 per cent. If I were the Treasurer of a wealthy country like ours, this is what would keep me up at night, not whether I could manufacture a fake budget surplus so News Corp can give me a gold star. In a cost-of-living crisis, a surplus isn't an achievement. It's money left on the table. It's money that could have gone to lifting millions out of insecurity, misery and desperation. Labor's surplus is an unmitigated moral failure that doesn't even stack up economically.

One in six children in Australia experience poverty. Again, this is right now. It's today. This means kids turning up to school with an empty stomach and going to bed hungry at night. In my last decade of work as a teacher before I entered parliament it was clear that a growing number of families in the community where I worked were falling deeper and deeper into economic insecurity and poverty. I had students coming to school hungry and nodding off at their desks because they were running on empty. I had kids who couldn't get their homework done in the evenings because their parents literally couldn't afford to keep the lights on. I had senior students who were struggling to keep up with their assessments because they were working several nights a week and on weekends to supplement their family's income. I had students who were unable to engage in the curriculum because they couldn't afford a laptop or a home internet connection. We were forced time and time again to cancel more and more excursions because so many parents and carers just couldn't find the $10, $20 or $30 to cover the cost of an excursion.

For years now, experts, advocates and people with lived experience of poverty have been united in one single call: raise the rate. The government's own Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee, chaired by a former Labor minister, no less, has recommended for two years running that the single best method for tackling the cost-of-living crisis and alleviating poverty is to substantially raise the rate of income support. The Liberal controlled cost-of-living inquiry has heard overwhelmingly in submission after submission that the single most effective way to tackle the cost-of-living crisis is to raise the rate of income support payments. UnitingCare Australia said:

… government-administered income support rates need to be increased, to ensure recipients have the means to cover their daily expenses and overcome poverty.

Headspace said:

In order to provide adequate support for those in need, income support payments, including JobSeeker and youth allowance, need to increase above the poverty line.

Sacred Heart Mission said that the solutions to alleviating this crisis are clear and available and that:

Raising income support payments to a liveable level above the poverty line would be the single greatest factor in poverty reduction in Australia.

Homelessness Australia, the Community Housing Industry Association and National Shelter jointly said:

Any meaningful impact to alleviating housing stress for lower income households must also include a permanent increase in the level of income support beyond the current inadequate routine indexing of pensions and payments.

These are the voices that Labor continues to ignore.

The Sex Discrimination Commissioner referred to rising income support as a preventative measure, saying it will stop homicides. We've seen hundreds of prominent women and non-binary people from across the community, union, business and academic sectors and civil society call for a substantial increase to JobSeeker and youth allowance as a matter of critical economic security. The Greens believe that the current social security safety net cannot be described as "decent" nor safe. Keeping people in poverty on JobSeeker and youth allowance is a fundamental issue of safety. It's not just the Greens saying this. We have wall-to-wall support across community organisations, advocates and people who are currently living in poverty.

We need to be very clear about what the budget surplus represents. It represents a decision by Labor in the middle of a poverty crisis to refuse to spend public money—our money—on helping the people who need it the most. As Greens we are not going to stand in the way of the tiny increases being put forward in this bill, but we want to be absolutely clear that this is not enough. For this season, I foreshadow that we will be putting forward an amendment to lift the base rate of JobSeeker and other income support payments to $88 a day, above the poverty line. If Labor decides to vote against this, then it will be clear for everyone to see that it is their decision and their choice to prioritise a surplus over the safety and health of our community. It will be their choice of poverty rather than action. Let's be clear that poverty is a political choice.

We've got a government that is willing to give tax breaks to the wealthy, to give tax breaks to property speculators and developers, to pay billions for submarines that we will never see and to give subsidies to fossil fuel corporations, yet they can't bring themselves to raise the rate of income support above the poverty line. People living on income support payments deserve to live a life of dignity, to put food on the table and to afford to put a roof over their head. No-one deserves poverty. In a wealthy country like ours, it is pure madness that Labor—I repeat that—that Labor are keeping people trapped on payments that don't cover their basic needs. I'll say it again: poverty is a political choice. The Greens have long fought for a strong social safety net and a liveable wage that would raise all Centrelink payments above the Henderson poverty line. We will continue that fight alongside the numerous organisations, advocates and people on income support, who, to this government's shame, are still having to campaign for no-one to be left behind.