Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. Let's make it really clear that this is a Government that is ramming through a bill that will result in lower increases to benefits. Let's cut through the spin of the Minister that this is about alleviating cost of living pressures because the evidence shows that this bill will result in lower increases to benefits. What this means is this is a Government who wants to push people to need hardship assistance and put pressure on our front-line services at a time where people are doing it really really tough. The Minister has shown no regard for the evidence that has been presented to her whether it was through the media interviews over the weekend or through the process in this legislation despite all the language in the coalition agreement around being driven by evidence and best available information. That is just lip service because this Government seems to completely disregard the fact that at a time where benefit levels have been set by successive Governments below the poverty line all we are doing is slowing down the catch-up that enables people to be able to make ends meet. When we slow down the increases to benefits all that we are doing is we're sending families who are struggling to get by to get into debt to go for hardship assistance to go to the charities and front-line community organisations that are already under the pump.So this is a Government that wants to punish those people doing it the toughest. To what? To provide tax cuts that will disproportionally benefit those on the highest incomes. This is a Government that is waging a war on the poor. To what extent? To just create more suffering. Not to support people into employment because actually there is nothing in this bill that actually proves that reducing the increases to benefits will result in more people being in employment. All that it does is it traps families in a cycle of debt and hardship and that does nothing to support people meeting their aspirations. So when they say that lower increases to benefits will result in more people being in employment it's nonsense. Quite frankly it's spin and it is not grounded in any of the evidence nor the papers that are in front of us. This idea that making it tougher for beneficiaries results in more people being in well-paying jobs has not proven to be true by successive Governments. The reality is that the political football around how we increase benefits and how we treat people on income support needs to stop.This bill could have been an opportunity to actually ensure that whether economic conditions are good or bad we do the right things for those who are receiving income support. We could have indexed benefits to inflation or wage growth—whichever was higher—to ensure that we stop this political football about the formula that we use to increase benefits on a yearly basis.And the Minister also failed to admit—when she spoke about the bill she spoke about the short-term impacts on people on the benefit and those are well-documented and the papers are in front of us but again she failed to acknowledge that over a period of four years people on the benefit will be cumulatively $2000 or so worse off. That $2000 makes a whole difference for those who are already behind on their bills on their rent on being able to afford food. That cumulative $2000 that people will lose over the period of four years will result in higher debts less ability to engage in their communities more toxic stress in those families and more children growing up in poverty—all to be able to afford tax cuts for the rich.So again the Minister needs to front up to the communities and be honest about what her intents are which are to make peoples' lives harder. She does not want to improve peoples' lives—those who are doing it the toughest—because she has not presented anything to this House that would achieve those outcomes. She just thinks that there's a correlation between punishing beneficiaries and therefore people entering employment. She needs to turn her face from the ivory tower that she resides on to the street and speak to people impacted by the legislation that she is ramming through the House under urgency preventing people who are impacted by this bill to be able to speak about their lived experiences rather than the Minister making assumptions and scapegoating a whole group of people who she has no connection to. Enough is enough of politicians talking about for decades all the experiences of being on the benefit just to come to the halls of power and turn—Hon Carmel Sepuloni: She's been on the benefit.RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: She's been on the benefit and yet she turns her back on the people who she's supposed to serve. That lived experience is lip service; it doesn't represent the communities who are doing it toughest right now.