Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (More Support in the Safety Net) Bill 2024. I'd like to endorse the comments that have been made by my colleagues and, in particular, that very moving contribution from Senator Steele-John just now.

I wish that we had an actual safety net. It's a bit of a misnomer, really, that this bill is even entitled 'more support in the safety net' because there are more holes in that net than there is net. It doesn't have to be that way, and we could be making a different decision today. We could be choosing to end poverty in what is a very wealthy nation, by comparison globally. That's the sort of government that I thought people voted in, and I think that's the sort of government that people want. So why are we not having that debate today? Why are we once again seeing the bare minimum of an improvement from this government? They talked a really big game, and people signed up for that.

Once again, it's an inadequate response to the scale of the problem. This is becoming like a broken record. We see it with disability funding; we see it with funding for frontline services for domestic, family and sexual violence; and we see with child care. There's not enough being done to address the need in the community. Why? Who said it was okay for a government to let down its citizens? Nobody voted for that.

People can't believe that there's one in six children living in poverty in this country. I can't believe that, and I can't believe that any government, no matter what colour they are, might let that stand and might instead choose to fund property investors with $165 billion over 10 years in capital gains and negative gearing perks—perks for people who don't need the help—to accumulate more and more homes, as if a house was an investment rather than a human right. That's the decision this government has taken, along with $11 billion a year for big coal and gas companies for accelerated depreciation and cheap diesel—tax write-offs for big coal and gas on the public purse. Money is found for big coal and gas, but there's not enough money being found for poverty. Then there are the nuclear submarines. Tens of billions of dollars is being found for weapons of war that we think make everybody less safe, and yet the government can't find the money to increase JobSeeker to above the poverty line.

I'm absolutely astonished that this is the situation we're in, and I'm really deeply disappointed that this government can't find the money to do what's right to help people, yet they're finding the money for those other things that aren't helping anybody, that are making us less safe, that are cooking the planet and that are making the housing crisis worse. What a deeply disappointing insight into the priorities of this government.

The bill increases the maximum rates of Commonwealth rent assistance by 10 per cent—that's $1.30 a day. Every renter I speak to tells me that their rent has gone up by more than the average of $40 a week, and that is the national average that it's gone up. In some places, in my home town, it's far worse. Our national average increase is 8½ per cent. Depending on what suburb of Meanjin—or Brisbane, as it's also known—you're in you might be up for 12 per cent of a rent increase. Yet this government is giving you $1.30 a day. I'm sorry, but that is just an insult. I'm sure it will be welcome because, yes, it will help, but it won't touch the sides of the rental increase that people are facing. It just shows an absolute lack of understanding of the scale of the problem. How can you see those figures, know what the need is, and still choose to not meet that need? I genuinely don't understand.

It's the same thing with the increase in the payment rates for recipients who've got an assessed partial capacity to work up to 14 hours a week. You're helping folk there, but you're helping 0.5 per cent of people on JobSeeker. What about the other 99.5 per cent who deserve to live above the poverty line in what is a very wealthy nation? Likewise, the change to the carer payment that evens out the work you can do. That's great, but you're not increasing the hours that people can work. It's fine to even that out over a month rather than looking at it on a weekly basis, but why not actually increase that amount so that where people are able to work they're not penalised for doing so.

This is a woefully inadequate bill from the government and these changes will not make a dent in the poverty crisis or the cost-of-living crisis we're in. What should be done, and what my colleague Senator Allman-Payne will be moving to do, is to increase the base rate of JobSeeker to above the poverty line. We'll vote on that, and I'm just flagging that my heart will likely be broken by where people will vote on that, but I urge people to really reconsider their party's position and to vote to support lifting JobSeeker payments to above the poverty line.

Why is it only the Greens that are asking for that? We've actually reached a level of insanity and cognitive dissonance in this building when people don't think it's the right thing to do to vote to support the base rate of JobSeeker to above the poverty line. Currently it's at starvation payment levels. Millions of Australians are living in abject poverty, and we have a bill to move less than a per cent—half a per cent, as I mentioned before—onto a slightly higher payment is not a solution; it's actually a cruel insult.

We know income support is so inadequate that people can't cover their basic needs. We know that's compounded by a housing crisis. The cost of living is already impacting everybody in this nation and the cost of groceries is astronomical. We have people who can only shower once a week because they can't afford the hot water bill—and it's a really cold winter because the climate is going crazy because this government keeps giving public money to coal and gas to make the climate crisis worse.

As well as people who can only afford a hot shower once a week, there are others who can't buy essential medication. I've just been at a breast cancer event, and want to give a shout out to Rachelle from So Brave which is supporting young women who suffer from metastatic breast cancer. The medical bods say, 'You're too young to get cancer,' but legions of young women are. I heard from a widower that he and his family couldn't afford the treatment; sadly, his wife is not with us anymore, and they couldn't afford the treatment to help her. I reflected on this bill. So many people are facing that choice. So many people are having to go without medication and medical support that is essential for their wellbeing because this payment is not enough and because this government is not doing enough to fix it.

One-third of Australian households are struggling to put food on the table, and I welcome the recent change of heart by the opposition to get onboard with my colleague Senator McKim's proposal to break up the supermarkets and try to bring the cost of food down in that regard. I hope the government decides to join. Maybe the whole parliament could work together to actually address the cost-of-living crisis and the cost of groceries. It would be a wonderful outcome for the Australian community if the parliament were to actually address the need in the community, rather than offering the lip-service that people seem to get.

I want to also highlight the fact that increasing JobSeeker is a women's safety measure. We know that so many women and their children—sometimes with their pets—are choosing between homelessness and staying in violence. The lack of financial security and the lack of an adequate JobSeeker support payment is further condemning people who are trying to escape from violence, who are already in a very difficult situation with nowhere to go because there's a housing crisis. Frontline family, domestic and sexual violence services are underfunded, and the shelters are full. But those people are being forced to choose between homelessness and violence, and they don't have the financial security they need because they are not getting JobSeeker support that is above the poverty line.

This government says it wants to end family violence within a generation. I applaud that noble aspiration, vague and inadequately funded though it may be. If you really want to end violence against women and their children within a generation, raising JobSeeker is crucial. Women need the ability to escape violence and have a liveable wage and a liveable support while they're unable to be in other paid work, because they're in a situation of life or death and they're doing what's necessary to protect themselves and their families. So JobSeeker is a gendered issue and an issue of women's safety.

I commend the fact that my colleague will be moving to lift the rate of JobSeeker to above the poverty line. If this government and the opposition were serious about acting on the cost of living, this bill would have included the No. 1 recommendation from academics, from experts, from peak bodies, from leading economists, from emergency providers and from Labor's very own hand-picked economic advisory committee. Remember them? You didn't really listen to what they suggested, which was to raise JobSeeker and youth allowance above the poverty line.

We will keep fighting for that strong safety net—and for it to be an actual safety net, not riddled with holes—and we will keep fighting for a liveable wage that would raise all Centrelink payments above the Henderson poverty line, but we don't want to be fighting for that on our own. We want the parliament to unite to actually fix the entrenched and growing levels of poverty in this country that these policy settings are delivering. We know that poverty is a political choice. We know that as a parliament we could be choosing to end it—not just reduce it, but end it. Why is that choice not being made by a majority of people in this chamber and in the other place? I'd love an answer to that; I genuinely don't understand why it's not being made. No-one deserves to live in poverty. In a wealthy country like ours, it is sheer madness that you're keeping people trapped on payments that don't cover their basic needs.

I would like to share with the chamber some of the powerful and persuasive comments that have been made by various support organisations in the sector. The Antipoverty Centre, which does outstanding work, says:

Welfare recipients are tired of being told the pennies we are thrown will somehow hold back the crushing weight of housing and other living cost increases we are dealing with.

ACOSS, another outstanding organisation, whose advocacy has been relentless on this issue, says:

The extension of the higher rate of JobSeeker for people who cannot work more than 0 to 14 hours will support 4,700 people—not even half a percent of the more than one million people receiving JobSeeker and related payments unable to afford food.

And:

Based on median rents, private renters receiving JobSeeker or Youth Allowance will still be in deep housing stress because their base rate of payment is so low. Even with the increase, they will be paying half of their income in rent alone.

Anglicare says:

Boosting rent assistance is only a band-aid solution that won't have the same impact. Just two weeks ago, our Rental Affordability Snapshot found that a person on JobSeeker could only afford three rentals out of 45,000 listings. That was with the highest rate of rent assistance. Tonight's increase—

They're talking about this bill—

adds just three additional rentals across the entire country.

So, six affordable rentals in the country for someone on JobSeeker. How is that statistic not landing? How is this government—and the opposition, who I am expecting will oppose our amendment to increase JobSeeker to above the poverty line—making that active decision to permit only six affordable rentals in the whole nation for someone on JobSeeker? Raise the rate, people!

What is it going to take for you to understand that the scale of the problem is beyond imagining, beyond acceptable, and that you've got the ability to fix it and you're still choosing not to? It's very challenging. It's actually very upsetting. I wish you were better, and I think the country wants you to be better, too. More than three million people in Australia are currently experiencing poverty—one in six children; that's over 760,000 children living in poverty. The current rate is below all poverty lines used in Australia, not just the Henderson one that I referred to earlier. We know that a quarter of single parents are living in poverty. We know that most of those are women and we know that many of them have escaped family and domestic violence, and some of them didn't escape with their lives. Thirty-six per cent of households have experienced food insecurity in the last 12 months. That's a 10 per cent increase on the year before.

So this problem is getting worse, and the increase in JobSeeker that you're proposing today is woefully inadequate. We know that more than 2.3 million households are severely food insecure. We know all of this. So please vote for our amendment to increase JobSeeker and start to turn some of those statistics around. The country really needs it.