Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the anger and frustration of the community following the recent reporting on robodebt. It is beyond the pale for proponents and architects of the scheme to wheel themselves out as victims. It is symptomatic of a broader sickness in our media and our political culture that the perpetrators of robodebt can bank on their reputation being laundered while the victims are still coming to terms with the tragedy of the scheme.

Robodebt happened because of a political and media culture that punches down on income support recipients. It was a crude mechanism that thrived on criminalising people on income support. This is a culture that dehumanises people on income support on the one hand while humanising people like Kathryn Campbell on the other. We mustn't pretend that protections are in place to stop it happening again, that the dormant hate and classism that created the culture in which robodebt thrived has gone away. JobSeeker is still a poverty payment. There is still no limitation on debt recovery. And for-profit employment providers still make millions out of exploitative schemes like mutual obligations. An entire system that treats income support recipients like this must be abolished.

Australia's Commonwealth Public Service would certainly have strength and integrity and accountability but that means nothing if they are still hounding income support recipients for debts. More training and more staff do not address the fundamental issue that our social security system is punitive, unfair and traps people in poverty. All the structures that enabled robodebt to happen are still in place and, until we have real leadership from parliament, from the government, from the public sector and from the media, we run the risk of history repeating.

I also want to draw the government's attention once again to Israel's ongoing genocide against Palestinians. Israel's actions not only in Palestine but in Lebanon and the region more broadly are fundamentally destabilising. Today we woke to news of an indiscriminate attack widely attributed to Israel that has wounded almost 3,000 people and killed at least nine people, including children, and that is just today. Every day, Israel has murdered more and more civilians in indiscriminate attacks, yet we get a mild tut-tut from the government, with a side of more F-35 fighter jet parts to go with it.

Even worse from the Liberals: this morning when Senator Paterson was asked whether it was appropriate that the attack killed a young girl, he backed in Israel and said that it is not his place to pass judgement. How far removed from basic human morality do you have to be to shrug off the murder of children? Where is the outrage? You would hope that Australia would sanction Israel's leaders and haul the ambassador over the coals, but, instead, he is free to walk around the halls of this parliament and get chummy with Labor and the LNP. It is sickening. Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians and it is killing civilians across the region. Labor, sanction Israel, stop the two-way arms trade and support the people of Palestine.