Page 2077 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 25 October 1989
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MR BERRY: Mr Stefaniak might say "good", sitting there on his fat salary. He should have a little concern for people who are cut off from unemployment benefits - which is basically a starvation rate of pay - after nine months and then put on to a special benefit. Whilst there might be some health aspects in somebody who has enjoyed a fat salary for a long time being reduced in income by those sorts of amounts, I can say that for people who are on unemployment benefits it would do them no good at all. It is a great shame that the Liberal Party would applaud those sorts of policies.
It is estimated that a Federal coalition government would strip unemployment benefit from more than 172,000 people, about 43 per cent of those now getting it, after they had been on the benefit for nine months. As I mentioned before, this is a fine example of victim bashing. You get stuck into the people who are in the weakest position and who are least able to fight back and try to promote greed amongst the rest of the community for tax cuts which would do no good for Australia as a whole.
A Federal Liberal government would double the waiting periods for unemployment benefits from one week to two. People on sickness benefits would be subject to a monthly check by Commonwealth medical officers, and some invalid pensioners would have to have a yearly check. Migrants would not be able to claim unemployment, sickness or invalid benefits in their first year in Australia. Imagine the impact that that sort of policy will have on the family reunion processes which can be enjoyed by migrants to Australia. I am sure that the ethnic community in Australia would be most upset by the Liberal Party's announcements in this regard. I am sure that the Liberal Party is fully aware of that, because in those areas which they have attacked it would be very unlikely that there would be one Liberal vote. It has been an entirely cynical exercise from the outset.
The effect of these measures would be to increase the cost of policing and administration responsibilities of the Federal Department of Social Security. There are also proposed cuts to other important areas: in education a cut of $205m, including an annual up-front charge of $1,200 for tertiary students; in employment a cut of $289m, which includes abolishing job programs like Jobstart, Skillshare, the industry training support scheme and the new enterprise incentive scheme. Aboriginal affairs spending would be cut by $100m. The important work of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody - I can see Mr Humphries leaving the chamber now, and I must say that I would not want to stay here and hear all this information about the Liberal Party policy - would be wound up and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission would not proceed.
The most likely effect of these spending cuts is to place a much heavier reliance on existing services provided by State and territory governments which will be further
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