Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support Bonus) Bill 2012. This bill seeks to introduce a new tax-free, twice-yearly income support bonus for recipients of certain income support payments. The bill would amend the Social Security Act 1991, the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999, the Farm Household Support Act 1992 and the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 to create a new income support payment. The bill comes out of a package which the Prime Minister announced with much fanfare called Spreading the Benefits of the Boom. The boom in question obviously is the mining boom. It was intended that the Spreading the Benefits of the Boom would be paid for by the MRRT, of which there has been a little discussion of late.

The Prime Minister's press release of 8 May last year said:

The Benefits of the Boom package will be funded by re-directing Minerals Resource Rent Tax revenue intended for the company tax cut.

We know what happened. It turned out to be something that we have become quite accustomed to, and that is another policy failure.

The Treasurer, Mr Swan, told us that the bill would raise $2 billion over the 2012-13 financial year. We now know that in its first six months the MRRT raised $126 million. It took a lot of effort and a lot of time to actually find out what the MRRT raised. Until very recently we have had an absolutely farcical situation where the government said that the Australian Taxation Office telling the Treasurer how much money the MRRT was raising would be a breach of the law because it would disclose to the Treasurer the identity or details of an individual taxpayer, being a mining company in this case. We were further told that, if the ATO did give that information to the Treasurer who then released publicly how much money the MRRT raised, he would be breaking the law. That was always completely erroneous because Australian tax law specifically provides for the ATO to have the capacity to give the Treasurer tax information where that is necessary for the Treasurer to discharge his duties. The tax law further provides that the Treasurer can release details of revenue to the public in a circumstance under which it might identify a particular taxpayer where the public interest benefit outweighs privacy considerations. The law is very clear on both those points so it came as no surprise to this side of the chamber when the government finally relented and released the revenue details for the MRRT.

We know why the government were hiding behind the fig leaf of some supposed advice that they could not release the information without breaking the law. It was because of the acute embarrassment that they would experience admitting that this tax, which was intended to raise billions and billions of dollars, had in fact raised little more than $100 million. It was one of the most farcical situations I have ever seen.

I cast my mind back to my days working for a former Treasurer—the last Treasurer to deliver a budget surplus in Australia. I could not imagine him saying to the Australian Taxation Office: 'Don't tell me how much money each and every tax has earned. No, don't tell me. I know you are about to tell me, Mr Tax Commissioner, but please do not tell me. Whatever you do, please do not tell me how much money this tax has raised.' Can you imagine Mr Costello doing that? I do not think so. He would want to know exactly how much money each and every tax raised. It is one of the most farcical things I have ever seen in this place.

Coming a close second was a doorstop that Mr Swan did in Queensland last week just after he returned from his latest international foray. Mr Swan enjoys spending as much time away from Australia as he possibly can these days, for understandable reasons. Mr Deputy President Parry, I would like to read to you what Mr Swan said in relation to the MRRT. He said:

… it just so happens that it's politically inconvenient that in the second half of last year commodity prices crashed and that had a dramatic impact on revenues and that occurred more generally. But these are the facts of life that responsible economic managers take into account.

I just want to read that again. He said:

… it just so happens that it's politically inconvenient … commodity prices crashed … impact on revenues …

Politically inconvenient is the criteria that Mr Swan applies to this tax and to his determination about the policy efficacy of his MRRT. He views it through the prism of politics. He does not say, 'The failure of the MRRT to raise revenue is a failure of forecasting.' He does not say, 'The failure of the MRRT to raise much revenue is a failure of me, the Treasurer, in designing the MRRT.' He does not say that the MRRT's failure to raise significant revenue reflects on the competence of the government of the day. He does not say that the MRRT's failure to raise revenue makes a complete farce of the Spreading the Benefits of the Boom policy package, of which this legislation is a part. He does not say that the failure of the MRRT to raise significant revenue means that the government has spent money, in many cases money that it does not have, in delivering parts of the Spreading the Benefits of the Boom package. He did not say any of those things. He did not make any of those observations, which would have been quite appropriate to make. The only observation he makes is that it is politically inconvenient. It is quite extraordinary that that is the Treasurer's summation of the MRRT policy failure.

This legislation was framed against the backdrop of trying to curry favour through putting particular amounts of money in particular voters' pockets. It was purely driven for electoral politics. It was, I am sure, also driven by a concern that Australians were starting to feel the impacts of the carbon tax on their cost of living. That is the genesis of this particular piece of legislation. It is pure, naked, electoral politics and nothing else. But there is one positive about this piece of legislation that is before us. It does give us the opportunity to reflect on the Spreading the Benefits of the Boom package. It does give us the opportunity to reflect on the minerals resource rent tax and the revenue that it has not raised.

It was curious to note that some on the other side of this chamber spoke about the need to close loopholes in the MRRT. There are not loopholes in the MRRT. The things that are referred to as loopholes in the MRRT are in fact specific design features of the MRRT. They are features designed by Ms Gillard and by Mr Swan. You cannot blame the Australian Treasury or the Australian tax office for this particular piece of work because officials with relevant expertise were excluded from the negotiations. This was done directly between the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and a number of mining companies. You cannot blame the mining companies as, I guess, they saw a pair of suckers come along and thought, 'Well, what's in the best interests of our shareholders?' You cannot blame them.

The people who are meant to be looking out for the public interest are the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. They failed comprehensively to do so. For that reason, and for those I have outlined, the opposition will not be supporting this bill.

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

On the surface of things you would think that the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support Bonus) Bill 2012 is great because it puts a bit more money in the pockets of those on Newstart, but when you look at it—and it is supposed to be about sharing the benefits of the boom—you see that they only get an extra $4 a week. This is a cohort of people, nearly 600,000 Australians, who are living more than $130 a week below the poverty line. You can understand why they are not dancing in the streets with getting an extra four bucks a week. In Perth that will not buy you a cup of coffee.

If the government were serious about helping those who are struggling to survive—and it is a struggle to survive when you are on Newstart—they would be doing something more than the $4 a week. This is a stunt to make it look as if the government care about the most vulnerable in the community. It is not genuine support for those that are struggling on income support. The government has transferred single parents and their families onto Newstart when their child turns eight. Is the child supposed to be cheaper when it turns eight? Is it suddenly easier to look after your family? They have dumped over 100,000 single parents and their families onto Newstart, lowering their income by up to $60 to $120 a week. The $4 is a drop in the ocean compared to the slug they have just taken. Of course, the Greens will be supporting this bill because to deny people living in poverty even a small boost would be wrong.

We are very disappointed that the government thinks this is the solution to those hundreds of thousands of Australians who are struggling to survive below the poverty line. The government seems content with this dog-eat-dog approach to the most vulnerable members of our community—those who are continuing to fall through the cracks—because $4 a week will not stop that fall. It does not take them out of poverty; it does not help put food on the table. Since the government announced this, they have had another indexation of Newstart that is not indexed in the same way as aged pensions and other pensions and does not keep up with the true cost of living. In fact, six months after I lived on Newstart for a week I compared the basket of goods and they had gone up by $7. Indexation did not go up by that much for those people living on Newstart. The $4 they are getting a week now does not keep up with that increase in the cost of living.

This is not the action of a government that cares for its community or cares for the most vulnerable in that community. This is an extra $210 a year that will be paid in twice-yearly instalments. Those living on youth allowance and trying to study are trying to live at $170 below the poverty line, because they receive $42 less than those trying to survive on Newstart. This shows how out of touch they are if they think this is going to go anywhere near addressing the huge financial difficulties of those living on Newstart. Only the Greens are actually prepared to help look after the most vulnerable members of our community. We know that Newstart needs to be increased and that is why I have introduced a bill to increase Newstart by $50 a week. Although that does not fully address the gap between Newstart and the poverty line, it does at least give a meaningful additional payment to those struggling to survive. I will be introducing another bill to address the government's cuts to single parents that will provide a supplement to all of those single parents trying to survive on Newstart, because, of course, the Howard government's welfare-to-work changes, brought in in 2006, moved single parents—other than those who were grandfathered—onto Newstart, and it is those parents who are doing it even harder than those trying to survive on parenting payment single.

The bill I will be introducing will provide a supplement of $40 to all single parents, which will help those who are already struggling to survive on Newstart as well as that new grandfathered group that has been moved onto Newstart. It will also address the issues around the taper rate for single parents. The government says, 'We dumped over 100,000 single parents onto Newstart to help them, to encourage them, to find work.' We know that is a fallacy. We know from the mothers who have told us how they are struggling. We know it is even harder for them on Newstart as they struggle to keep ahead. Those who are already working are losing even more money than those who have not yet managed to find part-time work. We also know that cohort of people are the people who are on income support who are working the most—up to 50 per cent of those single parents who are on parenting payment single are already working—and yet NATSEM was reported in the media on Saturday as finding that single parents keep less per hour because the taper rates on Newstart if they are moving from part-time to full-time work. In other words, they are worse off if they are on Newstart and they are trying to work full time.

We know that up to 30 per cent of those who are using Foodbank services and other emergency relief services are people on income support and are single parents. You can bet your bottom dollar that those are the single parents who have already been moved onto Newstart and just cannot make ends meet when they are trying to raise a family and find work on the measly amount that Newstart pays. Since single parents have been moved onto Newstart, I have heard account after account of the ways people are struggling to survive on Newstart. Let me read some examples from mothers who are struggling to survive and raise their family on Newstart. This is one mother's story:

My heart is for my children. Do they not have a right to be parented by me? Do they stop needing me when they turn eight? There is no-one else to care for them when they're sad, sick or frightened. How can I be in two places at once? If I am at work I am worrying about my children, not focussed on work. At home I worry about finding the money needed to provide for my family. I am in a no-win situation.

Here is another one:

Dear federal government,

I am a single parent. My son has turned 12 last September. I fulfilled the commitment of studying, working since 2008 and I have continued to be eligible for parenting payment single. Since the change of legislation on 1 January 2013 I have been plunged into despair because of the demands on me—homemaker, financier, cook, cleaner, home maintenance repairs and car costs. The pressures of looking for full-time work are impossible for me. It is negatively affecting my ability to parent my son. Trying to manage everything with less money is a Mount Everest of burden on my shoulders and my son's wellbeing is bad. He is feeling my pressure. You must change the legislation back and give more, proper support to single parents and mothers and fathers with children of all ages.

Another mother says:

I am unable to plan! I will no longer be able to register my car!! Buy new tyres!! Replace light bulbs!! Buy new shoes!! Purchase head lice treatment! House and contents insurance, pay debts, let my daughter go to birthday parties as I can no longer buy presents. Unable to sleep!! I DO WORK in part-time employment. I DO study a full-time course. I volunteer at my neighbourhood house community school.

I have received hundreds and hundreds of emails and letters from parents expressing similar concerns.

I have an example of a parent who was sick and could not make her interview at Centrelink. Her payments were cut because she could not make the interview. Her Centrepay payments were not met, therefore her rent was not paid. She has been made homeless. That is how Australia cares for its most vulnerable members of our community—by plunging them into poverty, making them unable to support their children and unable to pay their rent and making them homeless. That is not the sign of a caring community.

We know that those on income support are living below the poverty line. We know they make up a large number of the people that have to access emergency relief services. We know that their children are living in poverty. We know the lifelong effects that poverty has on those children's chances. We know from Anglicare’s When there's not enough to eat report that children are going to school hungry or being withdrawn or not sent to school because parents cannot provide lunch. When children do go to school hungry, it is not a good situation to be learning in. We know that, if you cannot learn and you do not learn and do not get a good education, that lowers your job prospects into the future.

It is not as if we do not know what impact poverty has on children’s lives and their lifelong chances. Yet this government thinks that $4 a week will fix that. This is a joke. It is a cruel joke on the most vulnerable members of our community. This is not sharing the benefits of the boom. If we were sharing the benefits of the boom, we would be making sure that we were supporting the most vulnerable Australians and caring for the most vulnerable Australians, because that investment not only helps now; it helps those families' long-term prospects and futures. An investment now is an investment for the future. An investment through a proper mining tax would properly share the benefits of the boom. If we were not more interested in keeping the big miners happy and keeping money in their pockets than we are in the most vulnerable members of our communities and the children that this government says it cares about, we would be investing a lot more than $4 a week in these families. These families are struggling to survive on Newstart, which is more than $130 below the poverty line.

Single parents who have been just managing to survive have been plunged into circumstances where they cannot make ends meet. They cannot make ends meet on Newstart. And $4 a week is nothing but show from this government: 'Look—we're sharing the benefits of the boom. We are putting money into parents' pockets.' Well, they are not. They put $4 in and took between $60 and $120 a week out. How is that the sign of a caring government? How is that sharing the benefits of the boom? It is not. Making children homeless does not share the benefits of the boom.

Anglicare’s report found that 45,000 households using their services were unable to feed their families properly. Three-quarters of the adults participating in the study said that they had run out of food in the last three months and could not afford to buy more. In other words, they were going hungry. Seven out of 10 said they had cut the size of meals and six in 10 are regularly skipping meals altogether. These adults and their children are going hungry. Children who are hungry are often reported to be grumpy, upset, embarrassed or withdrawn. Often they have behavioural problems, struggle to pay attention at school and are isolated from their friends. Parents in the Anglicare survey described keeping their kids home because there was nothing to put in their lunch boxes or not letting them have friends come over after school because there was nothing to eat and share.

The Senate inquiry into the adequacy of Newstart agreed:

On the weight of evidence, the committee questions whether Newstart Allowance provides recipients a standard of living that is acceptable in the Australian context for anything but the shortest period of time.

We know that 62 per cent of those on Newstart have been on it for longer than 12 months. That is not a short period of time. How is $4 a week going to help these people? How is $4 a week going to help them pay the bills and manage to make ends meet? How is it going to help them pay the ever-increasing cost of rent? It is not.

Many, many people have been calling for an increase in Newstart—the Henry tax review, welfare groups like ACOSS, UnitingCare, the Salvation Army, economists and the Business Council of Australia. They are calling for at least a $50 a week increase in Newstart because Newstart is too low to live on. ACOSS reports that 25 per cent of single parents and their families live below the poverty line, and of course that data was from before single parents were transferred onto Newstart. There are almost 600,000 children living below the poverty line. If you are struggling to survive on over $130 below the poverty line, what do you think $4 is going to do for you? It is not going to be able to raise you out of poverty. It is not going to pay for school books, for the spiralling cost of food, for car maintenance and for the spiralling cost of utility bills.

It is not going to help you study, because if you are a single parent who has not started studying you might as well forget studying, because you are not going to get the education supplement either. You do not make the benefits out of transferring from part-time work to full-time work because of the government's transferring you to Newstart and the effect of the tapering rate on the payments that you can take home. You are in trouble every way you look.

And what is the government's response? Four dollars a week, because they would rather care for keeping big miners happy than those more than 100,000 single parents that have had money taken out of their pockets and those on Newstart, youth allowance and Austudy who are all struggling below the poverty line. On top of not being able to survive, they are also struggling with inadequate job services. Job service employment agencies are not meeting the needs of the long-term unemployed. They are not able to help people find work. Not one person on Newstart that I have spoken to does not want to find work. They face multiple barriers to employment, not the least of which is struggling to survive below the poverty line.

It is time that we paid attention to supporting the most vulnerable in our community. We will be supporting this bill, because of course every cent helps; but they need $50 a week at least, not a measly $4 a week. Ultimately this is about the sort of society that we want to live in. We want to live in a caring society, a society that cares for people, not in a dog-eat-dog community, which is what the government and the coalition obviously want to see. The coalition are not even supporting a measly $4-a-week increase. This is about people who have fallen on hard times. How we treat people is a sign of how caring our society is—how we treat single parents who are struggling to balance work and looking after their kids, the kids that are our future. Do we want to become a more caring society where we use some of the wealth of this country to look after those that are doing it tough, or are we going to attack them and keep them living below the poverty line, unable to support their children, unable to make ends meet and continuing that cycle of poverty? If we significantly support the most disadvantaged, it helps them and our community.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to make comment on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support Bonus) Bill 2012. As my colleague Senator Siewert has just said, it provides for a totally inadequate supplementary payment for recipients of Newstart, youth allowance, parenting payment, Austudy and Abstudy. A supplement of $210 a year, paid in two instalments of $105 in March and September, is completely and utterly inadequate and unacceptable. As my colleague has just said, $4 a week is a complete affront to the idea of equality of opportunity in Australia. Oscar Wilde once said:

… to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

That is precisely what the coalition are doing by saying they will not support it at all and what the government is doing by saying that $4 a week is enough.

I want to congratulate my colleague Senator Siewert for the huge amount of work that she has done in recent years to try and bring the absolute inequality that is going on in Australia to the public eye. She took on the Newstart allowance and, through trying to live on that allowance herself, was able to highlight all of the issues associated with trying to provide for transport, trying to clothe and feed a household and trying to pay the disproportionate amount of money that goes to paying rents in a society where rental is now so high and so extreme—particularly in communities affected, as we have seen in Senator Siewert's state of Western Australia but also elsewhere in the country, by the huge boom in the mining industry—that it is out of the reach of many people. That is why the poorest are becoming homeless.

We really need to ask this question: what sort of society do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a society which has a growing gap between the rich and the poor—which of itself then ends up with a society with lowered life expectancy, poorer health outcomes and less educational opportunity for some because a few want to maintain the wealth that they have to the exclusion of others? I found it particularly obscene when I heard last week that Marius Kloppers had left BHP, taking $75 million on top of his wage with him as he left the company—$75 million. This is a company, BHP, which only paid $77 million in the mining tax to the Australian people for the Australian people's ore that BHP was making its huge profits with. The fact that BHP could write off its poor judgement in terms of its African operations in Mozambique, for example, and use that not to pay an appropriate tax in Australia just shows you that we have both a government and a coalition who are bending over backwards to facilitate the mining industry to the detriment of those in Australia who are struggling—and there are many of them. I draw attention to the single parents. Taking away that support from single parents because there was a hole in the budget because the mining tax was not paying and there was a refusal to fix it, letting Marius Kloppers walk away with $75 million whilst taking the money out of the pockets of single parents, is surely an affront to what a decent country would look like and to making sure you address this issue of equality of opportunity.

Over the weekend there had been much discussion about the implementation of the Gonski review and trying to get a fair amount of funding into the schools which are the most disadvantaged. Once again, the Greens have said: 'Yes, we will pass Gonski. We want this new funding formula which is fairer to go through, but we would like to see priority given to the funds going first to the most disadvantaged public schools.' If we were a society that was actually genuine about providing equality of opportunity to all children, regardless of the socioeconomic background from which they come and regardless of where they live, then we would be supporting such an amendment. But, instead of that, we have got the Treasurer, Mr Swan, who has said that making the country a fairer place is a priority for him but we have to create the wealth to sustain these programs—and of course he was referring to all the support payments. Well, he is making the country a less fair place by not creating the wealth that there is the opportunity to create at the moment through the mining tax, by not choosing to go after that, and instead trying to take money away from single parents and coming in here with a bill which gives a mere $4 extra a week—in a restaurant, a cup of coffee—for people who are struggling to pay the rent, struggling to put a meal on the table and struggling to get their children back to school.

All this is in the context of people talking about trying to get people who are currently unemployed and on Newstart allowance, or single parents, back into the workforce. This is condemning them to not being able to get back into the workforce, to having to make the choice between maintaining a computer, paying for internet access and so on and actually providing what their children need to go to school. What sort of choice is that for a single parent? Why are we putting people in that position? All of the recent evidence out of the OECD, out of the Gonski review, shows that it is the educational background of parents that is a significant factor in their aspirations and their ability to achieve. That comes down to income inequality. Income inequality has been rising in Australia since the mid-1990s, effectively, and the social inclusion report that came out last year gave evidence to that effect.

The government stand up and talk about Labor values, but the action that they take is the antithesis of those Labor values. They are refusing to raise the money from the mining industry at a time when it is making megaprofits and instead are cutting payments to single parents and then coming in here with a bill which says, 'We will give a $4 a week rise in payments.' This is nowhere near enough. It holds up a mirror to statements about values. If you are serious about social justice and go out into your electorate and talk to people—to single parents, to young people who are on the youth allowance, to people on Austudy and to people on ABSTUDY—you will soon find that what we are saying is true: they are struggling to pay the rent and to put food on the table. They are asking the question: 'Why is it that we are being so repressed and put down in a society which is becoming wealthier by the minute, where the number of wealthy people is growing and the gap between the rich and the poor is expanding?'

The fact is that the middle is being hollowed out. People are either being pushed down or getting into the higher income brackets. The middle is being hollowed out, just as has occurred elsewhere in the world. President Obama stood up and said that this gap between the rich and the poor in America was a critical issue for the wellbeing of that society, and he campaigned on it in the election. I am not suggesting that Australia is anywhere near as unequal as the United States. It is not, and I am very pleased that it is not. That is because we have a long tradition of trying to maintain an equal opportunity for all, regardless of where they have come from or the personal circumstances in which they currently live. That is an aspiration which I think most people, if you stopped them in the street, would say that they want to see delivered and that they think they could be proud of. But the reality is that it is not the case. Senator Siewert has demonstrated that it is not, by trying to live on Newstart. As she indicated in her speech, the price of the goods that she bought during her time on Newstart has increased by $7 a week. This bill provides a mere $4 increase, so people are still falling well and truly behind. This is nowhere near what it needs to be.

It is not just the Greens who are saying this. It is not just the social justice groups and the people out there in volunteer organisations who are providing support to people in the community who are saying this. It is not just those people in the non-government sector who are saying this. It is also the business community who are saying it, who are out there agreeing that Newstart should be increased by $50 a week and that putting people below the poverty line is unacceptable in Australia.

So where is the resistance? Who are the people out in the community backing the idea that you should not get people living on Newstart out of poverty? Who are the people advocating that we do not get people living on youth allowance out of poverty? People living on youth allowance now suffer on $170 below the poverty line. Who are the people saying that they ought not to be brought up to at least getting above the poverty line? I have not found anyone out there arguing that. But effectively that is what this parliament is doing. That is what the government is doing and that is what the coalition is doing. The coalition is doing it by saying: 'No increase. They should stay below the poverty line. The miners should not pay any mining tax at all. It is fine for Marius Kloppers to walk away with $75 million and it is fine for youth allowance students to live $170 below the poverty line.' Well, I do not think it is fine. I think it is despicable and I do not think it augurs well for the long-term health and wellbeing of our society.

But, equally, the government are pretending that $4 a week is some kind of genuine attempt to address inequality of opportunity, to address the fact that people are living in poverty and children are living in poverty. It is not enough. How many backbenchers, how many members of this Senate and how many people in the parliament are already paying for breakfast programs in our schools? I can tell you that a lot of them are, Mr Deputy President, and you probably are as well.

I can tell you that around Tasmania a number of members of parliament are paying for breakfast programs in schools because they know that students are turning up hungry.

That is something that people need to take on board. Children cannot learn and cannot achieve to their full potential if they come to school hungry. That is why schools are out developing breakfast programs of nutritious food and asking people to support them. I am very happy to support them, but the point is: how we have got to this? In a society of families and single parent families why are we getting to the point where people have to live with sending their children to school without breakfast? Is $4 per week going to fix that? I do not think so.

It is also about providing nutritious food to students. As we know, children need nutritious food to grow so that they achieve their full physical and mental potential. This is not happening; more and more children across Australia are living in poverty and have poorer health outcomes and poorer educational outcomes, and therefore less ability to get work and less ability to achieve their full potential.

It is not fair; it is not a fair and just society. Nor is this a parliament that cares. If there is one thing you can say about this bill—this social security bill that is giving a mere $210 a year to people on these allowances—it is that this parliament does not care about people living in poverty in Australia. It does not care about the fact that children are going to school hungry and it does not care about unequal health outcomes.

The Greens do care. We do care, and that is why Senator Siewert has developed her own bill to increase Newstart by $50 per week. That will cost about $2 billion a year. We also have the intention to go ahead with this additional Newstart allowance. We know it costs money, but we know that the money is there to be had as well. If the government would get behind us and if the coalition would abandon their cruel and unjust policy of refusing to tax the miners and we actually got the money from the mining tax, we could do the right thing. We could care for people living on Newstart, on youth allowance, on parenting payments, on ABSTUDY and on Austudy. We could care for those people. Surely that is what we want. Long term it is not only good for the people who are given the opportunity to participate in Australian society to their fullest—which is what we would ask—but it is better for our social and community wellbeing as well. When you have less disadvantage you have less anger, disappointment and frustration in the community. You have a more cohesive, happy and optimistic community. And with that you get a happier country.

Everywhere you look around the world you find that the countries that have the narrowest space—the narrowest gap—between rich and poor have the best outcomes as a nation on all kinds of social inclusion—health, education and prosperity outcomes. The more the gap between the rich and the poor widens, the more you get all those social indicators which undermine the health of your society in the long term. This is why the Greens are standing here to say we are prepared to stand up to the miners and to have the mining tax amended so that we can raise the money and block the loopholes. We are able to achieve that.

How much money are we talking about? We had this costed; the proposed changes we were making to increase the mining tax to a 40 per cent rate to fix the loopholes and to tighten up the generous depreciation provisions. That would bring in $26 billion over the forward estimates—$26 billion over four years! On that basis—if you are going to get $26 billion over the forward estimates—why would you not spend $2 billion of that a year to help children and their families to get out of poverty, or to help students struggling on youth allowance to achieve to their best ability in the educational scenarios that they are working in?

These are Australia's children and young people, disproportionately in this category, who are being done down by an unequal system and by a government and a coalition who are not prepared to take on the big miners but who are prepared to keep people in poverty. It is a sad indictment of the way that the society is going that this can be happening and people just sit back and accept it. The Greens do not accept it. We joined single parents out the front of this parliament the last time we were here during the estimates week. Those people had heart-wrenching stories to tell of the choices that they had to make. Far from getting people into work, it has meant that in many cases it has prevented them from being able to take up opportunities for work. It is driving people deeper and deeper into poverty.

I conclude by saying again: advising a man who is starving to eat less is both grotesque and insulting. And that is what both the government and the coalition are doing. In the case of the coalition, it is refusing to give any increase at all in support, and the government is suggesting that $4 per week is somehow fair—is somehow fair!—when the mining industry is walking away with megaprofits and can say goodbye to a chief executive with $75 million in his pocket in addition to everything he has earned over the years in that position. What does that say about the gap between the rich and the poor? The Greens do care, and will continue to argue and prosecute the case for a society which cares about people as well as the environment.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support Bonus) Bill 2012 along with my colleagues Senator Siewert and Senator Milne. You have to ask yourself what has happened to the Labor Party and what has happened to the party who, under the Whitlam government, introduced the single parent pension because they knew that doing things on your own was a tough job. You have to ask yourself what has happened to the Labor Party when their values to do with looking after the most vulnerable in our community are now being traded off for what is in the best interests of people like Gina Rinehart and of the big mining mandates.

This morning the Prime Minister has announced the appointment of a new children's commissioner. It is fantastic to see this country finally catching up with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which we signed over 20 years ago. But it took us 20 years to even take the crucial first step that that convention required of us, to appoint somebody at a national level to advocate for the rights, needs and interests of young people and children in this country. It took us 20 years to do that and now we have a children's commissioner, appointed today, and I congratulate the government for doing that. But this legislation is precisely the type of issue that 12 months ago a children's commissioner, if we had had a commissioner in place then, would have been screaming blue murder about given the given the fact that single parents and their children have had to suffer as a result of the callous cuts to the budget that the government have introduced. The fact that we are debating today a bill that gives parents an increase of only $4 a week despite their copping a reduction of up to $100 a week beggars belief. The Labor Party have truly lost their way when they are slugging single parents more when they are not prepared to stand up to the mining industry. The government wants to save $700 million by making single mothers in particular—we know that the majority of single parents in this country are mothers—pay for the government's budget savings, rather than introduce a proper mining tax that actually would have covered the necessary costs. Rather than making Gina Rinehart pay more tax, this government is telling single mothers around the country that they have to skimp and save.

My office has been inundated, as many of ours would have been, by stories of hardship from single mothers and single fathers across the country about how tough the changes introduced by the government last year are and about the effects that they are already having on their family. Parents are telling us that they cannot afford rent and that they have had to tell their kids, when they went back to school at the beginning of this year, that there would be no school camps. Their kids will not be going to school camps this year because the government has cut their payments, some by more than $100 a week.

Of course, we hear from the government that this is all about making single mothers work harder. Well, I can tell them that single mothers are probably the hardest-working people in this country. Not only do they have to hold down jobs and put food on the table for their kids; as everyone knows, they have to do the hardest job of all of being a parent—and when you are doing it on your own it is a tough gig. These parents have been kicked in the guts again by the Labor government. Rather than standing up to the miners and telling Gina Rinehart she should pay more tax, it has said, 'Single parents, you cop it.' Where are the values that were introduced by the Whitlam government when Mr Whitlam said that single parents deserved a bit more support and that looking after the most vulnerable in our community was something that all of us as elected representatives had a duty to do?

This bill gives recipients an extra $4 a week despite the reduction in payments across the board. Senator Siewert, as we all know, has a bill before the parliament to increase Newstart by $50 a week. That is a minimum as to what should be done. It is just giving people a fair go. What happened to the idea of looking after the most vulnerable and helping those who need a little bit of a hand up every now and again? It seems to have been forgotten. Meanwhile, as Senator Milne points out, Mr Marius Kloppers walks away with $75 million cash in hand. That is not a fair go for the rest of the country. It is obscene. That is what that is.

In South Australia, my home state, there are 25,000 single parents and about 40 per cent of them are going to be impacted by the changes that this government rushed through the parliament, with support from the coalition, only a few months ago. Some of those impacts are already starting to be felt. Welfare agencies are telling stories of how the number of single parent families applying for charity assistance has grown and schools are reporting that children are not being enrolled in their school camp programs. In Adelaide over the last few weeks, many of the public schools have been having swimming week, and about $25 is required for your kid to be allowed to be involved in it. When you have just had a cut to your fortnightly payment of anywhere between $100 and $200, $25 to send your kid to swimming classes, along with all the other kids in their class, is a pretty tough ask and there are parents who have had to make the decision that their children would not go to swimming week classes because they simply could not afford them. This is the reality of what this government's callous policies do to the most vulnerable in our community.

Rather than standing up to the big miners, rather than saying, 'We could get our savings and fund an increase in Newstart of $50 a week, make sure that single parents are not slugged and make sure that we actually get something back for the community from this massive mining boom that we are having,' the government has gone to water, buckled at the knees and handed over to Gina Rinehart and her mates everything that they wanted.

It is time this government stood up for the interests and the needs, and understood the vulnerabilities, of those in our community who need proper support instead of kowtowing to the needs and desires of the big miners.

As I said at the beginning, today the government has announced the appointment of the National Children's Commissioner, Megan Mitchell. Her role will be to make sure that people understand the full impact on the country's children and young people of pieces of legislation and policy decisions enacted by this parliament. I would be interested to hear what the new children's commissioner thinks of pushing single parent families into poverty, because that is exactly what this government is doing. Rather than taking the opportunity to lift people up, give them a helping hand and get them into work in an effective way, and a way that empowers and inspires them, we have seen this government just kick and kick and kick. It beggars belief that it is the Labor Party that has followed the coalition down this path of get tough, get mean, cruel policies affecting vulnerable people rather than standing by the principles of former prime ministers like Whitlam, Hawke and Keating, who knew that government had to stand up and help single parents and their families and ensure that children were not sacrificed just because the government of the day wanted to make some budget savings.

We should be seeing an increase to Newstart of $50 a week. The government does not have the guts to do that. From the bill on the table it looks as though it does not have the guts at all. There is $4 extra a week, when all of the social welfare organisations, industry groups and everybody who is in the know understand that a $50 increase is an absolute minimum to help people get back into the workforce and provide for their families. The big myth about cutting the single parent pension is that it will force people back into work. This is despite the fact that over 40 per cent of single parents are already working. They are juggling working the hours they can get, squeezing them in during school hours, being able to do the school drop-offs and pick-ups and being able to make ends meet and put food on the table, providing a safe, loving and caring home for their children.

Cutting people's payments by $100 does not really help them—particularly those who are already working—find more work. How do they pay for the before- and after-school care now? How do they make sure that their kids have everything they need? How do they keep themselves fit and able to go back to work? This is a backwards policy, a cruel policy, and it is absolutely a rejection of the very values that people like Gough Whitlam brought into the parliament when they advocated the single parent pension in the first place. It is a short-sighted policy, it does more harm than good and all the while the big miners, Gina Rinehart and her friends, are being let off the hook.

This government has to recognise that, if it wants to fund the services that our community needs, it has to get the revenue from somewhere. Fixing the mining tax, plugging the loopholes that the miners had cleverly had put in, would be a step towards making sure we had the money in the coffers to fund an increase for Newstart, to implement the Gonski reforms in a meaningful, effective way and to fund an NDIS program. And what about affordable child care? We have just slugged single parents with a reduction in their pension, and yet childcare costs continue to rise. What is the government going to do about that? This bill is an insult to the hard work of single parent families, to anybody who is struggling to survive on the paltry Newstart allowance, and of course to all those young people who suffer on $175 a fortnight under Youth Allowance—way below the poverty line. The Greens will continue to advocate that Newstart be raised by $50 a week and that we allow single parents to earn what they can in the jobs they have without suffering the callous cuts proposed by the Labor government.

The Greens remain in this place the only ones prepared to stand up for single parents and their children, and we are proud of that. While the Labor Party has forgotten who it is meant to look after and the coalition and the miners are laughing all the way to the bank, the Greens are the only ones with the guts to stand up to the big miners and say single parents do not deserve the kicking they are getting from the Labor Party. The government should seriously consider passing Senator Siewert's bill and fixing the loopholes in the mining tax so that we can get on and start supporting people rather than pushing them into further poverty and pushing them down to a point where they become voiceless as the government forgets totally the values it was meant to uphold.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support Bonus) Bill 2012. This particular bill was announced as part of the government's 2012-2013 budget. The Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support Bonus) Bill will provide many disadvantaged Australians with extra funds to count on in tough times. The bill amends the Social Security Act 1991, the Social Security Administration Act 1999, the Farm Household Support Act 1992 and the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 and creates a new indexed, tax-free income support bonus to be paid to recipients of ABSTUDY, living allowance, Austudy, Newstart allowance, parenting payment, sickness allowance, special benefit, youth allowance, transitional farm family relief payment and the exceptional circumstances payment.

The government understands that it is very tough living on unemployment benefits. Making ends meet when you cannot get a job is incredibly difficult. Many Australians are feeling the pressure on their household budgets, and families receiving government allowances are some of our most vulnerable citizens. Some recipients of allowances can find it hard to manage unexpected costs. The income support bonus will provide $210 extra per year for eligible singles and $350 to most couples, where both partners are eligible. The bonus will be paid in two instalments each year, in March and September, with the first payments on or soon after 20 March 2013, subject to the passing of this legislation. For single recipients the initial income support bonus payments will be $105. The payment to most people who are a member of a couple will be $87.50. As is the case with other supplements, each entitled member of a couple separated by illness, or a couple where a partner is in respite care or a couple where a partner is in jail will be paid the single rate of $105. Recipients will not have to apply to receive the income support bonus. Payments will be made automatically by the Department of Human Services to those who are eligible.

As I said, it is very tough living on a Newstart allowance but long-term unemployed, intergenerational joblessness and welfare dependency is beyond tough; it is a tragedy. It is vital that the Newstart allowance continues to provide a strong safety net for people who have lost their job. We know Newstart allowance now supports a more diverse population than it used to, so it is even important that we keep the focus on work because having a job is the best safeguard against poverty. It is the only permanent solution to unemployment. That is why we have invested $5.9 billion and reformed Job Services Australia to target assistance to those who need it most. The government is focused on creating jobs. Helping people back into the work is partly about targeted assistance, but more about strong economic management to create the conditions that support jobs.

The government recognises that the issue of adequacy is about lives, and it will not turn its back on the issue or the people who are doing it the toughest—some of the most vulnerable in our community. It is also why with this measure the government is providing more than $1.1 billion over the next four years to help people who receive these income support allowance payments to manage unexpected cost-of-living expenses. People on Newstart allowance will continue to have access to a range of additional payments and supports, depending on the person's circumstances, including rent assistance, the family tax benefits, childcare support, payments to help with specific costs like medicine or telephone bills and, of course, concession cards.

The budget bottom line always has to be a central consideration, which this government does not walk away from for a moment. The modest extra assistance provided through the income support bonus strengthens the existing support whilst being framed against a background of fiscal prudence, given the tough budgetary considerations of the government and the ongoing priority on jobs. This new payment, along with related measures such as the doubling of the liquid assets waiting period and the increase in the tax-free threshold, will assist some of the most disadvantaged in our community to manage their budgets as they deal with rising living costs.

The government has welcomed the report of the Senate Education Employment and Workplace Relations Reference Committee on the adequacy of the allowance payment system. The government is careful and is seriously considering the recommendations of the committee. Any increase in the rates of Newstart and other payments would come, obviously, at a significant cost. We cannot simply ignore the cost pressures in the current budget environment, and we will need to make some difficult policy choices. This measure will help both new and long-term income support recipients, including those in receipt of the Newstart allowance, to manage and be more resilient to unanticipated expenses. I thank those senators who have spoken on this bill, and I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.