Page 4533 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 23 November 2005
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receipt of social security payments and say, “Let’s provide you with the training you need to get a job that is going to be good for you and your family.” That is where it is missing. Mrs Burke sat there and I think her line was, “All these people that live off the fat of the land”—as though people in receipt of a social security pension live some fantastic life.
Mrs Burke: For some people. They shouldn’t be there.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mrs Burke.
MS GALLAGHER: I cannot believe Mrs Burke would believe that and that she would stand in this place and say that people are living off the fat of the land and that they need to be shifted into employment because they are having this fantastic life. There is less income in their families per week than you would have spent on that lairy pink jacket you are wearing.
Mrs Burke: I didn’t make rude comments about your clothing today. Childish.
MS GALLAGHER: I am just trying to give you an example of the money we are talking about here that is supporting families.
Mrs Burke: Silly debate, Ms Gallagher.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!
MS GALLAGHER: You would have absolutely no idea how families live on that income. If you had any idea, you would not be in here saying that families are living off the fat of the land, as though it is some great existence. That is an absolutely appalling statement.
Mrs Dunne cited NATSEM research I think of 2001 and 2004—research produced prior to welfare to work and prior to the WorkChoices legislation being on the table. The most recent research done by NATSEM on welfare to work, released in the last couple of months, suggests that single parents will be up to $100 a week worse off under the proposed changes. This loss in income is due in part to single parents going from paying no tax under the current arrangements, which Dr Foskey referred to, to paying marginal tax rates of between 65 and 75 per cent. The NATSEM research goes on to show that many millionaires in Australia are taxed at only 48.5c in the dollar. That brings into question the fairness of this proposal. If we are going to accept the opposition’s claim that this is a fair approach to take and fair legislation to bring in, I think that fact in itself, which Mrs Dunne seems to have accepted, brings into question how fair it is going to be.
Research done by the National Foundation for Australian Women around people with disabilities shows that from 2006-07 they can be up to $122 a week worse off. Single adults with disabilities, with no private income apart from their social security payment, will receive $46 a week less—a drop of approximately one-fifth. This is due to being forced off the disability support pension and onto the dole or the Newstart allowance, as it is to be named. This allowance is now to be indexed at CPI rather than average weekly earnings, meaning that those losses will be compounded over time, rising to $68 a week by 2009-2010.
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