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

To be clear, I'm well aware of the other measures that the government has taken. However, the government's own hand-picked Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has stated that income support payments, in their view, should be increased at least to 90 per cent of the pension. This goes nowhere near that. I also appreciate that the minister has said that they themselves have been on income support. I would suggest to the minister that it hasn't been recently.

What we know is that income support has not increased much beyond indexation for far too long. We have one of the lowest income support payments in the OECD. We had hundreds of submissions and advocates telling the government that increasing income support above the poverty line is the single biggest thing you can do to assist people in this country—the three million people in this country who are living in poverty, the one in six kids in this country who are living in poverty—and the Labor opposition went to an election telling people that no-one would be left behind.

So, again, I ask the minister, is it the view of the government that people on income support should still be expected to live below the poverty line?