David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (More Support in the Safety Net) Bill 2024 obviously seeks to increase the maximum rate of Commonwealth rent assistance by 10 per cent, or some $9.40 a week. While any increase is welcome, this obviously doesn't come close to what is needed. It also ignores two consecutive years worth of expert advice from the independent Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee. Last year, the EIAC recommended that the government increase the rate of CRA to reflect the long-term reduction and its inadequacy and reform its indexation to better reflect rent paid. While the Albanese government made much of its decision to raise CRA in last year's budget, the $30-per-fortnight increase in the minimum rate was wholly inadequate in the face of skyrocketing rents and fails to deliver on the committee's recommendations. As the committee pointed out, since 2000 the impact of rents growing faster than the rate of CRA has led to the maximum rate of CRA for singles falling, as a share of average housing costs from nearly 50 per cent to just above 30 per cent. The Henry tax review in 2009 recommended linking the maximum rate of CRA to the 25th percentile of paid rents in capital cities. This would represent an increase of over 190 per cent in the maximum threshold and an increase of 206 per cent in the maximum CRA payment.

While things like the Henry tax review and many other good pieces of work by committees and experts that the government commissions to do reports often gather dust in some corner of a minister's office, this is urgent for so many Australians. More and more Australians are starting to ask why we're not seeing the government, in a meaningful way, address the growing wealth divide in this country and rising inequality, including rising intergenerational inequality. This year the EIAC's top two recommendations were to substantially increase JobSeeker and related work-age payments, as the increases in last year's budget were inadequate, and to improve the indexation arrangements and increase the rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance.

According to PropTrack average rents have increased 11.8 per cent since 22 June last year. That immediately wipes out any gains from this increase. In some areas it's even worse. Rental unit prices in Sydney and Melbourne have gone up by 19 and 17.5 per cent respectively over the last year. There are 1.2 million Australian households in rental stress. The vast majority of people receiving the payment continue to pay rents above the maximum amount of Commonwealth Rent Assistance—CRA. This means that CRA is not adequately addressing the additional costs faced by renters on government payments. As well as being the right thing for a wealthy country like Australia to do, it also costs the government far less to keep people in safe, secure housing now than dealing with an ever worsening homelessness crisis.

Again, I would like to come back to the bigger question around housing in this country. What is housing for? Is housing something that everyone in our communities should be able to afford and should have access to—a roof over their head and somewhere to call home? We know that it is fundamental to human flourishing. I would say that everyone in this Senate wants the communities they represent to be able to flourish. Yet when it comes to housing we're not willing to actually go after the root causes of the issues that we're seeing around this country.

When you look at housing availability and affordability, and a tax system that sets housing up not as something that should be affordable and accessible as a human right but rather as something that's an investment vehicle. That's how our tax system is set up and it's working exactly as intended, where if you're a first-home buyer and you turn up to an auction, chances are there will probably be an investor there who will outbid you. Investors get all sorts of tax incentives to do that. They can negatively gear their fifth, sixth, seventh investment property.

We have a system where it is arguably easier to buy your second home than your first. That has to change, and that's not going to change by having a grab bag of policies that are all doing $20,000 here, $10,000 a year there, $30,000 over five years. We've got to start to go to the root cause of the cost-of-living crisis and address housing in a meaningful way. All options should be on the table and we have to be able to talk tax.

We also need to be looking at our social security system. I believe we should be proud to be a country that chooses to have a safety net, that chooses to say to people, 'We actually have systems in place to look after you when you need support,' because we're an incredibly wealthy country and I think most people would agree with the egalitarian ideal that Australians hold dear, but that we're seeing fray and under increasing pressure as we kick the can down the road regarding serious reform when it comes to housing and to our social security system.

As an incredibly wealthy country, we're saying to people, 'We have a social security system, but you'll be living below the poverty line.' Australia is a country where, whether we like it or not, to actually deal with things like inflation, unemployment needs to rise. We have to move past this rhetoric of lifters and leaners, and ensure that people who need the support can actually live above the poverty line. We saw what that did for singles and families doing it tough during COVID. All of a sudden, they didn't have to fret about how they were going to put food on the table. They didn't have to fret about the decision to go and see a doctor, to fill a script or to eat. They could actually look at how to get a job. What do I want to do? Is there a short course that I need to do? This is reinforced by expert advice saying that having a social security system that leaves people in poverty is actually an impediment to getting people back into work. This is costing us money in the long term. The government thinks it can save money by keeping people in poverty and by posting a budget surplus. But we're all going to pay at some point. We're already paying for that through people putting off health care, ending up in hospitals and people not having the services they need.

Not more than a few hours ago, we were talking about the lack of investment in community legal services. Many people may see that as the ambulance on the bottom of the cliff, but that is also part of prevention, of giving families, particularly young people,  the early access to support they need to break that cycle. Yet, we've got a government that talks a big game about not leaving people behind but then celebrates increasing payments to a level that still means people are living in poverty. And, yes, we'll hear the government talk about the pressures on the budget. It may be a valid point and one I'd be willing to entertain if we were looking at things like the amount of gas we export for free.

We're gifting our gas—the Australian people's gas—to multinationals to ship overseas and not pay petroleum resource rent tax and, in many cases, minimise their tax to less than one per cent. How is this a system that we're happy with? How can we, hand on heart, say to Australians doing it the toughest, to Australians who won't benefit from the tax cuts that we've heard the government crowing about this week, they won't benefit from that? What do we say to them about the fact that we're happy for them to live in poverty while we ship off our resources for free? INPEX, come and take our gas. You can send it offshore. Don't worry about the petroleum resource rent tax on that. Don't worry about your corporate tax. You can do some accounting where you carry forward your losses. That doesn't cut it. And that's what I hear from the people I represent here in the ACT. They want major parties to take this seriously.

We are squandering our resources. We're giving them away, and, at the same time, we're saying we can't afford to have a system of Medicare that's universal access. We hear people talk about universal access. What I'm hearing is that that is not the case. Look at the statistics. That is not the case. We need to do better. This myopic focus on the short term has to end. Let's lift our gaze. Let's start to consider the next generation. Let's stop externalising costs onto the health system and the criminal justice system, where we pay the cost, and think we're saving money by having a system where people are living in poverty on JobSeeker and youth allowance. We're saying to a whole group of young people in placement poverty, when they go to do their placements: 'From next year, there's a select group that we're going to help out. To the rest of you, good luck. If you didn't happen to be born to wealthy parents, we're sorry about that. You'll have to make a plan.'

We need to do better, and I urge the government to do better on this. You posted a budget surplus. There is a huge amount of money that we're just allowing to be shipped offshore. Do the right thing by Australians. Do the right thing by young Australians. This is possible. You have a Senate crossbench that is urging you to do better. We'd love you to raise the petroleum resource rent tax. We'd love to see you impose a windfall profits tax on companies that are making billions of dollars from the war in Ukraine and from the COVID pandemic. They didn't plan for those profits, and they didn't anything ingenious or special to deserve those profits. We've seen jurisdictions across the world recognise that and say, 'Actually, we're going to claw some of that back to deal with the problems we face.' Here in Australia, it's crickets from the major parties. They're very happy for these companies to walk away with billions and for us to turn around and say to people struggling to pay the rent, 'Here you go. Here's an extra $9.40 a week. We're doing a lot. We've got your back. No-one will be left behind.'

Let's move beyond this as a country. I would urge you to act in line with what Australians want. If the major parties don't act, then Australians will continue to decide to vote for people who are actually going to come into this place and put Australians and our communities first and, as a wealthy country, map a way forward that deals with these issues. On that note I move:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes that:

(i) the Bill increases the maximum rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance by $9.40 per week,

(ii) average rents across Australia have increased by 11.8 per cent since 22 June last year, completely negating the value of this increase to Commonwealth Rent Assistance; and

(iii) the increase in assistance will therefore fail to reduce rental stress in the Australian community; and

(b) calls on the Albanese Government to heed the consistent advice of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee, and the previous advice of the Henry Tax Review, to substantially increase Commonwealth Rent Assistance and to reform how the payment is indexed".