Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

As colleagues know, the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (More Support in the Safety Net) Bill 2024 proposes to increase the maximum rates of Commonwealth Rent Assistance by 10 per cent, which equates to about $1.30 a day for some renters. Wherever you look in Australia at the moment, people are getting smashed by what's become known as a cost-of-living crisis but is in fact a cost-of-existence crisis. And this is existential for many Australians, whether it's getting price gouged at the supermarket checkouts, whether it's paying your power bills, whether it's paying school levies or whether it's paying transport costs. Everywhere you look, prices are going through the roof.

Unfortunately for many people, their wages or their income support payments are not keeping pace. That means that many people are having to make really difficult and close-to-impossible choices about how to spend their money. Do they pay the power bill or do they put food on the table for their children? In the inquiry into supermarket pricing, which the Greens established and led, we heard horrendous evidence. We heard from a single mum down in Tasmania about how she would skip meals in order to feed her kids. This is the lived reality for many people in our country at the moment.

What we get from Labor is not a response that is commensurate with the scale of the challenge facing millions of Australians. We get a response that is designed to address the political difficulty that Labor finds itself in. So, rather than actually responding in a way that meaningfully helps Australians who are getting smashed by a cost-of-living crisis, we get a response that is designed to help Labor out of a political problem. That's not good enough. As Senator Waters said, we want Labor to be better than this. We want the government to be better than this, and millions of Australians want the government to be better than this. We want them to be better than this marginal assistance they're giving to an extremely small number of people rather than having significant and structural assistance that they could offer to large numbers of people.

What would that look like? Perhaps Labor could start by putting dental health and mental health into Medicare. That would actually be something meaningful that they could do to help people who are getting smashed by a cost-of-living crisis. The other thing they could do is raise income support. The poverty that so many Australians are living in and are being condemned to is because of political choices that establishment parties in this place make every day, every week, every month, every year, every parliament and every electoral cycle. These are choices that the political establishment makes to condemn people to poverty.

It's a woefully inadequate response from a Labor Party that was formed to look after people doing it tough and to look after working people. The inadequacy of Labor's response is one of the reasons that Senator Allman-Payne, on behalf of the Australian Greens, is seeking to amend this legislation to raise the rate of income support to $88 a day, which would bring it above the poverty line. I'll confidently predict what's going to happen here, and that is that the Australian Greens amendment will be voted down. It will be voted down not just by the Labor Party but by the Liberal Party as well—the political establishment again. The political duopoly in this place, the Coles and Woolworths of Australian politics, will again get together and make a deliberate, informed decision to condemn hundreds of thousands of Australians to living in poverty. That's what's going to happen here today, tomorrow or whenever this comes up for a vote.

Labor is going to do this despite the fact that they're very happy to spend hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade on a tax cut overwhelmingly for the top end. This is despite the fact that they're prepared to spend hundreds of billions of dollars building nuclear submarines that will make Australia a less safe place. They have money for war machines. They have money for tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the top end. They claim they don't have money to lift people out of poverty. Actually, the reality is they do have money to lift people out of poverty. They're just choosing not to spend it.

You can't eat a budget surplus, and yet we get mutual back-slapping from Labor folks in here and in the House of Representatives. Treasurer Jim Chalmers was slapping himself on the back when he announced the other day that the budget surplus is actually going to be bigger than what Labor predicted in the budget, as if that was a good thing while people are starving in this country, while people are being condemned to live in poverty and while the rate of homelessness is rising in Australia. You can't eat a budget surplus. That budget surplus is clear evidence that the poverty that so many Australians are living in is a political choice. It's a political choice made by the establishment parties.

The Liberal and National parties are going to vote against the Australian Greens amendment that would lift large numbers of Australians out of poverty because they're hoping they'll be in government at some stage soon and they're going to want to pat themselves on the back for a budget surplus, if they can deliver one, which I have to say historically they haven't been that good at. At the moment JobSeeker, one of the income support payments we provide in Australia, is a starvation payment. We've got millions of Australians living in poverty. We've got people who can't find a job—not through any fault of their own, I might add, but because the system is designed to keep a number of people out of work, because that's what helps keep wages down. The reason that the neoliberal parties, the establishment parties, in this place have designed a system to keep wages down and to use an unemployment rate in order to do that is that that's what corporate Australia asks them to do. Why does corporate Australia ask them to do that? It's because it protects the profits of the big corporations.

Colleagues, there has never been a time in Australia's post-colonial history when the share of this country's economy going to profits has been so big and the share of this country's economy that goes to wages—that is, to people—is so small. Think about what that means. This is a mass transfer of wealth from the bottom end to the top end. Everywhere you look along the wealth spectrum, the people who are doing it toughest are being hit, and the people at the top, the wealthiest Australians, are making out like bandits. Then you get bipartisan support from the establishment parties for tax cuts that overwhelmingly favour the top end. Colleagues, if you can't hear the social contract creaking under your feet, you are simply not paying attention. It used to be that we could say to young people in this country: 'If you study hard and if you work hard, you can lead a good life. You can buy a house. You can have the things you need to lead a dignified life.' That part of the social contract no longer applies.

The big class divide in this country is now whether or not you own property. Whether you or your parents own property is now the prime determinant in somebody's economic future. It's all very well for those of us who sit in this place. Most of us own property. If we don't, most of our parents own property, because we're the privileged ones in here. It's all very well for us to ignore the terrible, difficult circumstances that are facing young people at the moment. Most of them don't own property and are renters watching their rents go through the roof. Or, if they do own property, they've bought it recently, and they're watching interest rates go through the roof while they're being price gouged at the supermarket checkouts and transport costs are going up. They have to find money to pay for their kids to go to state schools when public education should be free. It's not an easy time for young folks. They have to watch their climate breaking down around them because neither of the establishment parties in this place can actually divorce themselves from the interests of fossil fuel corporations and logging corporations. They have to watch ecosystems that actually support all life on this planet, including human life, crumble away under them, and in comes Labor with legislation like this that's marginal at best.

We've got people in this country who don't shower every day because they can't afford to pay for hot water. We've got people who are not going to a dentist because they simply can't afford it, and their teeth are rotting out, when dental should be covered under Medicare—because, the last time I had a look, the inside of your mouth was part of your body. But, because of political choices made in the past by establishment parties, dental visits are not covered by Medicare. People can't afford dental care. They can't afford to shower every day. They're eating less healthy food than they used to because they're getting price gouged by Coles and Woolworths at the supermarket checkout. A third of Australian households are struggling to put food on the table. People can't afford to go to a GP; they can't afford essential medication. What do we get from Labor? Next to nothing. Some renters are going to get $1.10 a day out of this legislation, when average rents are going up by about 40 bucks a week. The housing system in this country is broken. It's fine if you own property, as long as you didn't buy it recently. If you've had property for 10 or 20 years, or if your parents have got property—especially if you've managed to pay down a fair bit of any debt associated with that property—things are looking okay for you. What about the people who haven't been able to buy into property? What about the people who are still renting and who are aspirational property owners? The future is not looking so bright for them.

If the Labor Party were serious about acting on the cost of living, this bill would include the No. 1 recommendation from academics, peak bodies, leading economists, experts, emergency support providers and Labor's own hand-picked economic advisory committee. That No. 1 recommendation is raising JobSeeker and the youth allowance above the poverty line. That's what we should be doing. We need a strong social safety net and a livable wage, and we need to raise Centrelink payments above the Henderson poverty line.

We are a wealthy country, colleagues, and we could make a political choice to ensure that no-one lives in poverty in this country. Instead, the choices we make keep large numbers of Australians trapped in poverty and trapped on income support payments that don't even come close to meeting their basic needs. So it's time for the establishment parties to do the right thing. This legislation nowhere near approaches the ballpark of doing the right thing. Labor needs to do better. Millions of Australians want you to do better, and the Greens are demanding that you do better.