Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This month is Disability Pride Month, and so I want to go straight to what the Social Services Legislation Amendment (More Support in the Safety Net) Bill 2024 means for disabled people across the country.

First of all, we see in this bill a complete failure to increase the disability support pension above the poverty line, leaving so many disabled people trapped in vicious cycles of poverty, fear and pain. So many of us have said so clearly that there is an urgent need to increase the disability support pension because it is damn expensive to be a disabled person. The additional costs are huge. The barriers are massive. In Australia, we have one of the highest disability unemployment rates. In fact, 50 per cent of us are unemployed or underemployed. So, if we have to then fall back on a disability support pension that's below the poverty line, that places us in extraordinarily stressful and unnecessarily difficult situations.

This bill also fails to remove the discriminatory income partner test that traps disabled people in abusive relationships and prevents us getting married. Let's just let that sink in. The disability support pension and the policies which this bill fails to change mean that, in 2024, a disabled person is not only prevented from getting married—because, if they get married, they will then be placed in a dynamic of financial dependency—but also deeply disincentivised from partnering up at all because, if they partner up at all, they lose access to the DSP or the DSP is substantially reduced. That is absolutely unacceptable. It is one of the key reasons why disabled people are so often the subject of family and domestic violence at wildly higher rates than what we see in the broader community. It is time for marriage equality for disabled people in Australia. These are discriminatory policies that are unacceptable. They are ableist. They must end. This bill was an opportunity to end them, which the government has failed to seize.

The bill also provides a tiny increase to rental assistance. For some people it's $1.30 a day, as has been mentioned in the course of this debate. Let's be really clear: the entire Australian community is struggling with the housing crisis right now, but if you are a disabled person that struggle is so much more difficult. In my home state of WA, the City of Perth has one of the lowest vacancy rates in the world, meaning that anybody there trying to get a place to live is faced with an extraordinary challenge. If you are a disabled person on the DSP, can you guess how many rental places there are in Perth that would be affordable for you? Zero. In response to that, the Labor government said, 'Well, here's $1.30 a day.' It's just an insult. If you are a carer in Australia, performing those vital and often under-recognised roles in our community, when it comes to the carer payment, there is nowhere near the increase that is needed to support carers in this cost-of-living crisis.

We have a bill debated in Disability Pride Month that presented the opportunity for the government to address some of the key discriminatory policies—the key ableist policies that exist within our social security system. This bill was an opportunity to end the discrimination faced by disabled people in relationships—the policies which trap us in financial dependency and open us up to abuse. This bill was an opportunity to bring in marriage equality for disabled people in 2024, and the government has failed to take it. This bill was an opportunity to increase the carer payment to the levels needed to support carers during this cost-of-living crisis, and the government has failed to take it. This bill was an opportunity to increase the disability support pension to a level that would mean that disabled people were able to live free of poverty, and the government failed to take it.

This bill was an opportunity to ensure that disabled people might actually be able to afford somewhere to live—that there might be one property that they might be able to rent. Maybe we could do the 100 per cent increase in metropolitan Perth. Maybe we could leap from zero rental properties in Perth that are affordable for somebody on the DSP up to one? 'No,' says the government, 'we shan't address that in this bill.' They say that in Disability Pride Month, and you wonder why so many disabled people look at this government and feel anger, frustration and betrayal. To have the power to end these issues in your hands and do nothing is a disgrace. To create a dynamic where disabled women, disabled men and members of the queer community are unable to enjoy getting married because to do so would mean that they would be financially trapped with that partner—to have the opportunity to do something about that and simply not act is disgraceful.

I commend Senator Allman-Payne for her work in relation to this bill and her tireless advocacy for those members of our Australian community who are so deeply struggling during this cost-of-living crisis, particularly those members of our community who struggle with financial insecurity while also doing the work of educating the kids of Australian communities. There are so many teachers right now, as Penny has so often shared with me, who go to work, burn themselves into the ground while trying to do right by the kids in their classrooms, come home, look at the balance sheet for the month, look at the bills they've got to pay and are struggling to make the sums add up. That is not okay in Australia right now.

I also make the observation that, in terms of the framing of this bill and the framing of the social services system in Australia, there is a need for a fundamental transformation in the way that politics engages with the social security system. Poverty is not the result of moral failing. Having to go into debt and having to ask your friends for help are not things which people are subjected to because there is something inherently wrong with them. Poverty is a political choice.

The cost of food and housing in this country is a disgrace. The fact that government after government has allowed the situation to get this bad is a disgrace. People are struggling to eat. That is not okay. That demands the most urgent response. We do not see that in this bill. What we see is fiddling around the edges—a dollar here, a dollar there—but no actual engagement with the structural changes needed, let alone the increases needed to mean that people who rely on supports will be able to live free of the fear of where the next meal will come from. No mother, father or family member in this country should have to ask themselves that question.

Until we reach that goal, until we reach that place, our work here is not done. We must be driven by a deep sense of urgency. Every night that somebody goes to sleep hungry and every family that is put under strain because they don't know how they'll pay the power bill or the rent—that is on this place. The Liberal Party and the Labor Party could join the Greens in doing something about that. The power is here to end that experience for people. All that is required is the political will. The Greens are here within this space ready with that political will. Not only is poverty a political choice but the continuation of poverty is a political choice. Any one of you in this place can choose, at any moment, to join with us to end it.