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Monday, 21 November 2011
Page: 8978

Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (13:18): The Greens oppose schedule 3 in the following terms:

Schedule 3, page 5 (line 1) to page 8 (line 2), Schedule 3 TO BE OPPOSED.

As I articulated in my speech on the second reading—I do not want to detain the chamber to traverse again all of the arguments—we have very significant concerns about the impairment tables. We do not think there was adequate consultation. We are deeply concerned that many people are going to fall through the gaps of these impairment tables. We do not believe they are right yet. We are going to be submitting a large number of Australians living with a disability to falling through the gaps, because they will not be adequately assessed through tables that are still not adequate and still need to be fixed.

As I said, there has not been adequate consultation. The tables do not adequately cover all disabilities and all conditions. In fact, the government is still trying to fix some of them up. The issues around comorbidity continue to concern us. I note Senator Xenophon's support for those concerns. He has in fact worked in the area of dealing with tables such as these.

The people who fall through the gaps here are the ones who are going to end up on the lower payments on Newstart. They will be on significantly less money and will be required to meet participation requirements that may well be too stringent for somebody who is living with a disability—a quite significant disability—that, because of the new tables, has not been recognised as a significant disability as the person does not make the required number of points. These people will be subjected to quite harsh provisions and will be condemned to live in poverty, with no prospect of escape from that poverty.

We believe it is not appropriate to be changing the impairment tables before the problems with these tables have been rectified. We are deeply concerned about the effect this will have on many Australians. Although we support the motivation in terms of moving to a more functional model, we do not believe the government has got it right. The sheer fact that there was so much disagreement between the assessors using these tables, and the small sample size they were used with, prove to us that, using the precautionary principle, we need to spend more time getting these right and not subjecting Australians to one massive great big trial.

We are therefore opposed to the current tables and to the current process, so we have no option other than to oppose the changes in this bill. We do not believe that they are best suited to those in this country living with a disability.