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

This is Anti-Poverty Week, when we pay attention to issues of poverty in this country. The aims of Anti-Poverty Week this year are to strengthen public understanding of the causes and consequences of poverty and hardship around the world and in Australia and to encourage research, discussion and action to address these problems, including action by individuals, communities, organisations and government.

A lot of what I'm going to talk about tonight is the actions that the government needs to be taking to address poverty. I think there are a number of community organisations doing some really essential work, and I will be talking about the outcomes of some of that work during my talk as well.

As far as we in the Greens are concerned, far too many people in this country battle daily with poverty and the impacts of poverty and inequality. Living in poverty has significant negative effects on people's physical and mental wellbeing, on societal cohesion and stability and on economic growth and productivity, to the point where we have seen industry and business talking about its impacts and the need to address the issues around poverty.

Currently, there are 2,990,300 people—that's 13 per cent of our population—living below the poverty line. That's after taking account of their housing costs. Of those, 731,000 are children under the age of 15. In fact, 17.4 per cent of all children are living below the poverty line. People who rely on social security as their main source of income are particularly vulnerable to living in poverty and hardship, with 57.3 per cent of people on income support living below the poverty line.

And there are some particularly vulnerable groups in that cohort of people. Fifty-five per cent of people receiving Newstart allowance are living in poverty, 51.5 per cent of people receiving parenting payment are living in poverty, 36.2 per cent of those receiving disability support pension are living in poverty, 29.3 per cent of people receiving carer payment are living in poverty and 13.9 per cent of those living on the age pension are living in poverty. These are not just statistics; these are real people living in poverty.

On Sunday the Australian Council of Social Service released a report titled A future for all children: addressing child poverty in Australia. Remember that 17.4 per cent of all children are living in poverty. It found that Australia's child poverty trend is heading in the wrong direction. It is absolutely essential that we address this issue and change it. Poverty has a devastating impact on children and their wellbeing. The report found that children and young people deprived of food, clothes and other materials have reduced engagement with school, sometimes due to hunger, shame or being excluded or marginalised. It impacts children's development, education and eventually employment opportunities.

The Salvation Army 2017 report on children in families from a little bit earlier this year included a total of 1,495 children across 638 households and found that more than half experienced severe deprivation and went without five or more essential day-to-day items. The top 10 items that respondents to this survey could not afford for their children related to connectedness, education, social participation and basic nutrition. For households with children aged 17 or younger, nearly two in five could not afford fresh fruit or vegetables every day and nearly one in four could not afford three meals a day. Approximately one in five could not afford medical treatment or medicine prescribed by the doctor. Nearly one in three could not afford a yearly dental check-up for the child. Half could not afford to update school items, and 56 per cent did not have money to participate in school activities. More than half—55 per cent—could not afford a hobby or other activities for the child. Almost three in five respondents could not afford an internet connection for their child.

We must address child poverty as a priority. The ACOSS report finds the federal government could reduce child poverty by committing to reduce poverty by at least 50 per cent by 2030 in line with the Sustainable Development Goals. I was so pleased this afternoon when the Senate passed the motion calling on the government to commit to reducing poverty by at least 50 per cent by 2030. ACOSS also talks about increasing the Newstart allowance, including for single parents—and I'll come back to that issue—establishing a single-parent supplement that increases as children grow older and they cost more to support; indexing the working-age and family payments to wage movements as well as prices; improving employment and training programs for single parents, including career counselling and vocational training; guaranteeing secure, affordable housing, including working with state and territory governments to abolish no-cause evictions; and restoring two days of weekly subsidised child care to make sure it's available to parents not in paid employment. These are excellent ways to start addressing issues around poverty and child poverty in particular.

I just want to focus on single-parent households for a minute or two because these households are particularly vulnerable and have faced perverse tightening of their income support over the last five years. The latest research from the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales found that single parents receiving Newstart allowance are unable to afford a minimum healthy standard of living. At $544 per week, that includes Newstart, the family tax benefit and rent assistance. The social security payments fall short of a minimum budget by $132 per week.

Absurdly, social security payments for single parents fall as their children grow older and become more expensive. Anybody who has brought up teenagers knows how expensive they are. The ACOSS report found that when their youngest child turns five, family tax benefits drop by $23 per week. When their youngest child turns eight, the parent is moved from the parenting payment onto the lower Newstart allowance, cutting the family's income by another $85 a week—an issue some people might think that I have spoken about ad nauseam in this chamber.

In 2016, the unemployment rate amongst single parents was 14 per cent, more than twice the national unemployment rate of six per cent. This reflects the challenges faced by single parents to find child care, retrain and find a job that is family friendly.

The social safety net is failing to address poverty. Not long ago I also outlined how far behind the Newstart payment is in terms of allowing people to get out of poverty. I remind the chamber that the University of New South Wales recently released their report, Budget Standards: A new healthy living minimum income standard for low-paid and unemployed Australians. This report outlined just how far Newstart is falling behind the norms. The report found for those out of work and reliant on Newstart allowance, the safety net provisions fall short of budget standards estimates by $96 a week for a single person, $58 a week for a couple with one child, and $126 a week for a couple with two children.

Newstart and youth allowance are particularly woefully inadequate. It is absolutely time that the Newstart and youth allowance rates were increased. Otherwise, we are going to be condemning families to live in poverty and fall further and further behind. I urge the government to commit to at least halving poverty by 2030 and to increase the Newstart allowance.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I also rise to speak about an issue that is of utmost importance to our nation, especially this week, Anti-Poverty Week. Today, on the United Nations International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, despite economic growth, we continue to see the number of Australians living in poverty in our nation rise. In 2003-04, according to the Social Policy Research Centre, 11.8 per cent of Australians in our nation lived in poverty. In 2014, that number rose to 12.6 per cent. In 2016, ACOSS released a report indicating that poverty has risen again to 13.3 per cent of Australian people—that's 2.9 million people living below the internationally accepted poverty line.

The international United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child says that children have the right to 'a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development'. These statistics mean that there are too many children in our nation failing to meet that basic test. Family payments and Newstart should at least cover the basic costs of children in a family. They should be adequate enough to cover food, housing, education and health. Sadly, too often in our nation they do not.

It is clear this government either does not understand or does not believe in the right of children in our nation to live free from poverty, and we can see this in its relentless cuts to social security in our nation. The Poverty in Australia report released by ACOSS and the Social Policy Research Centre in October last year showed that people on income support, particularly those who were unemployed or sole parents, had higher rates of poverty than the rest of the population. Over the last decade the rates of poverty among single parent families increased, with around 29 per cent living in poverty in 2013-14. And that number was even higher for those on a parenting payment, at 51.5 per cent. So you can see here that we've got single parents who are the working poor in our nation. Indeed, 51.5 per cent of those on parenting payments are living in poverty.

Earlier this evening I met with representatives from Foodbank Australia, who made obvious to me the ramifications of this level of poverty in our nation. They told me that the number of people who are regularly food insecure—that is, people who can't afford to put food on the table on a regular basis—has increased by up to 60 per cent from previous figures. Two out of five of those food-insecure families have dependent children, and most of those children are under the age of 12. Because there is simply not enough food to go around, 65,000 people are turned away from Foodbank services.

We keep hearing from the government that the social security system in our nation is out of control and unaffordable. But do you know what is unaffordable in our nation? What is unaffordable is nearly three million Australians living in poverty in our nation. There are more than 730,000 children in our country living in poverty. That is what is out of control. There are 65,000 people a month being turned away from emergency relief services. That is what is out of control. In the long-term, it's this kind of poverty that is unaffordable.

Research by the National Council for Single Mothers and their Children found that, since 2005, social security payments for children have in meaningful terms been reduced. For a single parent with no private income and two children over the age of eight, policy changes since 2005 have left those families more than $5,000 a year worse off, 17 per cent of their household income worse off. What we have had from the other side is continued attacks on these families. Those opposite froze family tax benefits for two years and are now looking to continue to cut payments to single parents undertaking study and extend waiting periods—and who knows what else is still to come.

There is only one job in our nation for every 10 jobseekers, and what we have from those opposite is no plan to tackle unemployment. Instead, we've got a $65 billion tax cut to big business that is supposed to trickle down and create the jobs that these families need. But there is no plan that actually simulates employment for these people. What we also know is that child care is more difficult and less affordable than ever. These attacks are hurting real people in our community. They are attacks on families and they mean more than just numbers for the government's bottom line. What we're talking about here is parents who can't afford fresh fruit and vegetables and parents who skip meals, as Foodbank told us today. It means mums and dads have to make a choice: do they put fuel in the car or food on the table?

It means kids missing out on going on school excursions, buying equipment for school, participating in sport and participating in basic social interactions and activities. It means people being unable to afford medical treatment or dental check-ups.

When the government attack people on welfare—when they imply that people somehow aren't doing enough to get a job and are not doing enough to earn money—they're actually attacking the children in these households and taking away the resources that they need and their parents need within that household. Changes to social security most often impact those families who are already most disadvantaged in our community. They are families who are already relying on organisations that provide emergency relief, like Vinnies, the Salvation Army, Anglicare and migrant resource centres, just to get through the week. We know that in 2014-15 the government ripped nearly $270 million from frontline social services. So, while the government are attacking families, reducing the money they have to care for their children, they are also ripping money from the services they need in order to live.

The fact is, though, that we can reduce poverty. It has been done before. Prime Minister Bob Hawke made a commitment to this nation 30 years ago that no child would be living in poverty. He was ridiculed for that in time, but the simple fact is that the commitments made by the Hawke-Keating governments reduced poverty in our nation, and child poverty specifically, by 30 per cent. They did this through a range of really important reforms that focused on giving families what they need to raise children, including a supplement for low-income families to help meet the cost of living. They increased family payments to reflect the cost of children and linked family payments to wage growth to maintain pace with the cost of living and living standards. These reforms also included rent assistance. They expanded child care and improved fee relief. The reforms also meant more education and employment support for single parents. These are the kinds of things that belong in a real plan to attack inequality in our nation.

So today, as part of Anti-Poverty Week, I want to reiterate the right of children in our nation to live free from poverty, just as Bob Hawke, our former Prime Minister, said.