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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by Senator Brandis to questions asked by Senator Siewert today relating to legal aid and DSP.

The reason I ask is because of the large number of people on the disability support pension who are being reviewed and either moved off the DSP altogether and, more particularly, moved on to Newstart. I am sure everybody in this chamber is aware that Newstart is a significantly less amount of money than the disability support pension.

I would like to put this in context: if you look at ACOSS's latest poverty report, which is October 2016, it talks about the large number of people with disability who are living below the poverty line. The figures are 510,900 adults with a disability and a further 328,100 people with a disability that included a core activity limitation who are living below the poverty line. When you kick people with a disability off a disability support pension and on to Newstart, you provide yet another barrier to employment because you are kicking them even further into poverty.

A number of people have been appealing the decision to kick them off the disability support pension to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal—the AAT, as it is commonly called. I am told there are an escalating number of people who are appealing and an escalating number of people who need legal aid to deal with the process. I am told there is a growing demand—which is why I asked the question today—from people requiring legal aid to help them and support them through the AAT process. I will be waiting with eagerness for the answers from Senator Brandis to the questions I asked today about the number of people appealing through the AAT. Hopefully, that will contain both tier 1 and tier 2 level appeals and also the figures around legal aid. When you bear in mind the decline in funding for legal aid and the increase in the number of people who are appealing being dropped off the disability support pension and put on to Newstart, you will have an idea about whether they are being adequately represented.

To go back to the issue in the broader context: we already know we are seeing an increase in inequality in this country. If you look at the figures, we are getting up to nearly one million people with a disability who are living below the poverty line. Poverty is clearly a barrier to employment. But then if you look at the number of people with disability who can find employment, Australia is one of the worst performers in the OECD in terms of people with a disability finding work. At the same time that the government is seeking to cut back on the mobility allowance—for example, for people with disability trying to do Jobsearch—you will see that that is even further hurting people with disability. If you look at the number of complaints that the Australia Human Rights Commission gets—I ask this question regularly—disability complaints continue to be the highest number of complaints. And guess what tops the list in the form of disability discrimination complaints that the Human Rights Commission gets? You guessed it: complaints around employment and discrimination for people either trying to find work or those in the workplace.

So if the government says that they are trying to kick people off the disability support pension because they are trying to encourage them into the workforce, those people are already trying to find work. They face huge barriers to work. By kicking them off, the government is increasing inequality in this country when we know that Newstart itself is already way below the poverty line and that people on Newstart are living in poverty, and people on the disability support pension are also living in poverty. The government is worsening that situation by kicking people off the disability support pension and putting them on to Newstart.

It is time this government stopped picking on people who are trying to survive on our 'safety net' and started looking elsewhere to raise funds, which will not increase inequality. If they looked elsewhere, at the wealthy end of our community, they would actually decrease inequality in a number of ways and, at the moment, they are intent on increasing it. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.