David Shoebridge (NSW, 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, and I'd like to acknowledge and endorse the words of my colleague Senator Allman-Payne. In doing this, I also acknowledge the work of former Greens senator Janet Rice, who was an extraordinary champion of raising the rate, and the work of another former Greens senator, Rachel Siewert, who I don't think spent a moment in this place without trying to lift people out of poverty. I acknowledge the work of those three extraordinary, powerful women from the Greens team.

This bill makes the most incredibly tiny changes that were outlined by the Albanese Labor government in the 2024-25 budget, a budget that put billions aside for nuclear powered submarines and billions more aside for a bunch of weapons systems like frigates, attack helicopters and missiles. It put billions and billions aside for war, almost all of which goes to offshore international and multinational arms dealers, and then gives people who can't pay the rent, who are struggling on Commonwealth rent assistance, $1.30 a day. I think what was most offensive about that was that the Labor Party pretended that that was meaningful.

Because these people are living in such obscene poverty because of decisions by the Labor Party and the coalition, $1.30 a day might actually be meaningful to some of them. It might mean the loaf of bread that they couldn't otherwise afford from the discount-bread rack that they're able to put in an otherwise empty shopping trolley. To that extent, it may actually be meaningful. But how can a government suggest it's meaningful when they've got a $368 billion nuclear submarine project, when they're giving tens and tens of billions of dollars to fossil fuel companies to stuff up the climate and when they refuse to tax the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of gas exports sucked up by political donors to the Labor Party, like Woodside and other international global fossil fuel companies? A government that's doing that can't pretend it's meaningful.

The bill also proposes to increase the JobSeeker payment rate for recipients who have an assessed partial capacity to work between nought and 14 hours per week. That's going to impact about 4,700 people, the government tells us. I think that's a fraction of one per cent of the people on JobSeeker. Again, they trumpeted that as though that was something meaningful. I'm sure, for those 4,700 people, it may be that tiny little bit of additional income that slightly reduces the obscene poverty they live in, but it's the same government that's giving $368 billion for nuclear submarines. It's the same government that's giving tens and tens of billions of dollars to international arms dealers for crap we don't need to kill people that we've never met. It's the same government, and they pretend it's meaningful.

The other change is a very small change to the carer's payment that means recipients can work for up to 100 hours over a four-week period, rather than 25 hours per week, and still keep their payments. That is letting people actually, in part, work their way out of obscene poverty. It's a rule that has had to reverse more than a decade of cruelty towards carers because of a decision of a former Labor government to toughen the test and make it harder for carers, which has been overturned now by this government. That's hardly a handout; it's just letting people work some of their way out of the worst poverty. That's what that does.

We're not going to oppose any of those changes, but what we're going to highlight is just how appallingly inadequate this is. These changes won't make a dent in poverty. They won't address the cost-of-living crisis; they don't even pretend to. In fact, in many ways the inflation that we've seen since these things were announced has eaten up the rental assistance. The increase in rents since these things were announced has eaten up the increase in rental assistance.

The key point that this all comes back to is what Labor has refused to do. At the centre of this Commonwealth scheme is a basic payment for those people who can't work or can't find work. It is a base rate that is guaranteed to keep people in grinding poverty. Labor could have lifted the base rate of income support to above the Henderson poverty line. They could have done that, but instead they chose nuclear submarines, weapons of war, handouts to the fossil fuel companies and to let their big donors like Woodside get off without being taxed for the sale of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of gas offshore. That's what Labor chose.

When you look around the country and you see people who can't afford rent, basic groceries or to keep the power on, who get frightened about turning the heater on on a cold night in Canberra or turning the air conditioner on on a blisteringly hot day in Townsville—if they have an air conditioner—and who can't afford to go to the pharmacy to get their medicine, how can you not be offended by a government that sees all that and, in turn, does this? It's an insult to millions and millions of people who are struggling to get by.

Right now JobSeeker is a starvation payment. That's what it is. It's basically a starvation payment, and millions and millions of Australians are living on a basic starvation payment in abject poverty. A bill to move less than one per cent of those jobseekers onto a slightly higher payment is not a solution. There would be a better word for it and that would be 'cruel'. It's actually cruel. Income support is so inadequate that people are making decisions like showering once a week because they can't afford the hot water. Others are not buying essential medication for themselves because otherwise they couldn't afford it for their kids. And we know that about one in three Australian households are struggling to put the food on the table that they want to feed them and their kids. Think about that for a minute.

In a country as wealthy as Australia, where billionaires are swanning about with tax credits and tax favours from the coalition and Labor, where gas corporations like Santos paid, I think, $16,000 in tax last year on billions and billions of dollars of revenue and genuine profit and where the billionaires and the fossil fuel corporations are having the time of their life, the response of the Labor government is to let them go on having the time of their life making billions and billions of dollars from the sale of public assets. We should remember that every cubic metre of gas, every tonne of coal, every tonne of iron ore and every tonne of rare earth that's sold were all public assets until they were granted to a corporation in a mining lease. They're all public assets. So they suck out all these public assets, they get billions of dollars in profits, many of them screwing up the planet at the same time with climate change, we don't tax them and then the government, in response, does this to people living in poverty. They pretend to be a Labor government. What does it even mean to be a Labor government if that's your policy platform?

The inquiry into this had hundreds and hundreds of submissions from prominent women, cultural organisations, unions, the organisations dealing with the poverty that Labor lets happen, food banks and community groups. To a person, except for the business groups, they said the same thing. Do you know what groups like the Youth Affairs Council of Australia, headspace, Foodbank, the Uniting Church, the Salvation Army, St Vincent de Paul, the Western Australia Council of Social Service, the Tenants Union of Tasmania, the Medical Students Association, community interest groups, Wesley Mission, the Sacred Heart Mission, First Peoples Disability Network, Homelessness Australia, the financial council in Victoria, the Settlement Council in Victoria, the Youth Affairs Council of Western Australia, the South Australian Council of Social Service, the NSW Council of Social Service—in fact, every council of social service in the country—and the peak bodies said to Labor? They said, 'Raise the rate.' That's what they said. They said, 'Raise the rate and lift people out of poverty.'

We can afford to raise the rate. It's about choices. An amount of $88 a day is hardly a king's ransom. It's hardly King Charles's ransom. An amount of $88 a day is just enough to live a life of basic dignity where you don't have to be anxious about turning the heater on when it's bloody cold, where you know that your kids are going to have enough to eat and where you can actually pack a school lunch and know that your kids are going to have something decent to eat at lunch. It's when you know if you need to get asthma medication for your partner you can afford it. That's what $88 a day means. It probably means you are going to have a really tiny flat somewhere on the outskirts of a city like Sydney, where I live, but at least you might have some housing security. That's what $88 a day means. That's what the Greens have been asking for, it's what millions of Australians have been asking for and that's what this bill fails to deliver. It comprehensively fails to deliver.

At the end of this debate, this bill will succeed and these changes will happen. The minority of people who are renting who are on Commonwealth rental assistance will get a bit over $1 a day. Some carers will be able to work a little bit longer. Some people on JobSeeker who have partial incapacity, about 4,700 people, will get a slight benefit. What will happen tomorrow after this bill passes? We will still have more than three million people in this country living in poverty. That's what will happen when this bill passes—more than three million will be living in poverty. That's about one in six kids in this country. It's about three-quarters of a million kids. They are in poverty today. They will be in poverty tomorrow after this bill passes. About a quarter of all single parents in this country who are trying to juggle work juggle work, kids, school and all of that, overwhelmingly women, will still be in poverty after this bill passes. The 2.3 million households—that's households, not individuals—living in severe food insecurity will still be in severe food insecurity after this bill passes. Some of the impacts of obscene poverty that we know are related to incredible housing stress—lack of food security, the deep anxiety that you wake up with every day when you are in deep poverty, suicide rates, mental ill health rates and some of the sequelae of that, like domestic violence and being unable to escape domestic violence—will still be here after this bill passes, because Labor seems to be comfortable with that—with being a country that does that. The Greens think Australia is better than this. The Greens think Australia should be a country where nobody lives in poverty, where kids can go to school and have lunch, where people can afford to buy the food that they need and where they have a house that is secure. That's what the bill doesn't deliver.