Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in the Committee of the Whole.

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek to make some third-reading remarks on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 6) Bill 2014 and to point out that, although the Labor Party may try to put across the image that this bill and these measures are the more benign elements of the dreadful budget cuts, they are not benign, and they will have an impact on people with disability, on students, on families and on single-parent families. It is disingenuous for people, in the comments that have been made in this chamber in their contribution to this debate, to act as if these measures are not going to negatively impact Australians. People on disability support pensions are having the portability of their pensions reduced from six weeks to four weeks. Now that is going to have a significant impact on people with disabilities.

It only raises $5 million, so this is not about money. This is about demonising and punishing people with disabilities. There are also the measures that force people under the age of 35 with disabilities to be reassessed and to apply penalties, the ultimate sanction of which is to drop them off income support—some of them will be dropped onto Newstart while others, if they miss a compliance requirement, may be dropped from income support altogether—and all of this is in the face of reports that are showing growing youth unemployment. A NATSEM report, released just yesterday and reported on in the media today, shows just how hard it is for younger Australians to find work in a tightening employment environment. These are young people with disabilities who face many barriers to work, whose futures are being threatened by this reassessment process against new eligibility criteria and who will be dropped into Newstart. They will not only be living with a disability on a reduced income but also with more compliance requirements to find work in an area where it is already hard for people who do not have the same barriers as people with disabilities have to find work.

In an estimates spillover hearing last week, we heard about what some of those barriers to employment are. Those barriers include: people without the necessary skills, they do not have job seeking skills and they have other barriers, such as transport and accommodation. All of these things particularly apply to people with disabilities, such as access to transport and formal skills—often people with disabilities have had trouble accessing the necessary training, education and support. So this bill does put in place measures that significantly impact on people with disabilities. It also impacts on students with the changes to the relocation allowance, and single parents are being hit yet again around the issues to do with freezing of the indexation on assets. So this bill will significantly hurt Australians. None of those measures from the budget that cut access to income support are benign; they are cruel and they demonise people, particularly people with disabilities, particularly single parent families who have been repeatedly hit with these measures.

So the ALP, to be clear, has combined with the government to pass measures that will cut funding to families, students and people with disabilities and single parent families. I do not want any Australians to think that these measures are somehow benign because they are not. They are the prelude to the other budget cuts that this government wants to make in the face of growing inequality and a tightening employment market that will make it even harder for young people, single parent families, people with disabilities and families to struggle to survive in the current climate. That is what these measures do.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.