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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister representing the Minister for Social Services to a question without notice I asked today relating to income support.

For a government that has said, in a previous contribution, that they want to change lives and that they're helping those who are doing it tough—well, that seems to include everyone except those people on income support, because every person in this country who is on income support is living well below any measure of poverty. In his answer, the minister gave no commitment to raising income support above the poverty line, no commitment to act on the royal commission's recommendation to legislate a six-year limitation on debt recovery and no commitment to release the sealed section of the report of the robodebt royal commission.

This is a betrayal of every person in this country who is on income support and every person who was harmed by the actions of the government departments that implement our income support scheme. The minister said that the government is taking a comprehensive and systematic approach. I would say that you're taking a comprehensive and systematic approach to keeping people in poverty. Rather than abandoning people on income support, the government needs to listen to them.

There are thousands of people in this country who are forced by this government to continue to try and survive on a poverty payment. One of those people is Kerry. Kerry sent me an incredibly difficult story about her experience on JobSeeker, which I will partly relay to the parliament. Kerry says: 'Ending up on JobSeeker was not my goal, but here I am living below the poverty line and struggling every day. I have, during this time, applied for so many jobs and interviewed for some of them, but I'm still unemployed.' She says, 'At 54, being interviewed by much younger people, it's futile, despite my broad range of skills and qualifications, because ageism is real.'

Kerry goes on to say: 'The horror stories that you hear about job search providers are alarming. The hoop-jumping is dehumanising and petty. I have a reasonable one, thankfully, but the pressure to meet these obligations when I still haven't been able to recover or grieve, when resources are limited or non-existent and when I'm feeling like I'm the criminal, is hard.' She says: 'Being on JobSeeker and not eligible for rent assistance, because I have a mortgage, means I'm paying 80 to 85 per cent of that payment just on my mortgage. The hits keep coming.' She says, 'Some of us have just been screwed over by systems that are not fit for purpose, and then they push us into other systems that also aren't fit for purpose.' She says, 'It feels like we're being pushed to not exist and being forced to shrink and cower while waiting for meagre crumbs of those who congratulate themselves on surpluses.'

I agree with you, Kerry. In a rich country like this, the fact that three million people and one in six young people are living in poverty is an utter disgrace. Poverty is a policy choice, and it's a choice that both Labor and the coalition have made again and again. This government needs to listen to the voices of the people who live on income support payments. It needs to listen to the voices of people who have direct contemporary experience of living in poverty.

Robodebt was a scheme that was written by people who weren't on income support—people who developed a scheme that punched down and destroyed lives and, in some cases, took lives. It's time that the government listened to the people whom their policies actually affect. We need to raise the rate of income support to well above the poverty line and end mutual obligations, and we need to get it done now.

Question agreed to.