SENATE

110 SENATE Thursday, 13 October 2016
called fund in place. To deliver the sorts of changes that are needed, to address the big issues like social policy, we
need the government to reform their policies too.
When Minister Porter announced these changes recently, he joked that our current social security net was like a
'snake eating its own tail'. The same can be said about a government which is implementing what looks like and is
in fact a half-baked version of the New Zealand approach, without genuinely addressing key social policies such
as poverty and a national poverty plan. It constantly astounds me that successive governments think that, despite a
weight of evidence to the contrary, restricting people's decision-making and taking control over people's lives,
such as controlling the way they spend money, will lead to change. In fact, the evidence shows that it does not. It
will not change. It will not lead to that significant social change, and it will not lift people out of poverty.
Paternalism has been the approach by a successive number of governments—and it does not work.
Add to this, there is the minister's flat refusal to increase the woefully low Newstart, despite successive calls
from major social service organisations and business leaders. When asked about a potential increase, Minister
Porter, who recently refused to live on Newstart for a week, argued that only a small percentage of people live on
Newstart alone, and, when they do, it is only for a short time. He said that many others get a second payment.
What the minister failed to mention was that you can be accessing more than one payment and still be living
below the poverty line. For example, if you are a single parent, with a child under 12, and accessing Newstart and
rent assistance, you will still be living below the poverty line.
During this Anti-Poverty Week, I urge the government to use their imagination—in particular, the minister who
is responsible for our social security system—and consider what it would be like to depend on these low
payments. I urge them to try to understand the barriers and the multiple disadvantages that people are facing every
day—consider their lived experience. I call on the government to end its constant attack on low-income families
and people who depend on our income support system. They deserve better. They deserve the supports that they
need to get out of poverty. So, this poverty week, let's consider those who are struggling to survive on payments
that are below the poverty line and far below the minimum wage.
Sugar Industry
Senator O'SULLIVAN (Queensland) (19:00): Tonight, I rise to speak perhaps briefly on an issue that is
emerging within the Queensland sugar industry. I remind the fact to colleagues in the chamber that most of the
sugar industry in this country is located in my home state of Queensland. It is a significant industry. It has some
4,500 grower families. Most of the farmers in sugar are family operations—mum, dad and children—and many of
them are multigenerational in this particular sector. Significantly, dozens of small vibrant communities in North
Queensland rely almost exclusively on the sugar industry to underpin their local economies. If you have met these
people, Mr President, you would know that these are very decent, basic, hardworking Australians who have
devoted their lives to the production of this valuable commodity.
Sugar played a very significant part in the development of my home state and particularly in the development
of North Queensland—most particularly on the eastern seaboard between the Great Dividing Range and the coast.
We have had struggles in this space now for two or three years after the arrival and eventual execution of a
business plan by a multinational company called Wilmar Sugar. As I speak, one should keep in mind the impact to
an agricultural industry or indeed any other industry, where a company gets excessive control in the space—that is
to say, what the company does or does not do impacts directly on not only these growers that I have mentioned
but these coastal economies and communities of interest, and indeed, with an industry of this size, on our national
interests.
When Wilmar came along, as most suitors do when they first sidle up beside you, they were the perfect
corporate citizen who indicated during the foreign investment review process that they had no real intentions of
creating disruption within the industry. Indeed this is a very stable industry. This industry has operated on the
same terms now for 116 years and it involves a wonderful principle—one that I think should be introduced into
other agricultural industries—where growers or producer have the ability to retain some economic interest in the
product that they produce as it goes down through the supply chain, through the marketing line and reaches its
destination with the customers.
In the sugar industry, we have seen Wilmar try and corner the market, reducing our farmer-to-farmgate prices
by ignoring and, in fact, rejecting the principle of grower economic interest that has been in place for all these
years that came about as a result of a royal commission that occurred here in Australia all those years ago. They
have been unsuccessful with that with the Queensland government—and, might I say, it was not the Queensland
Labor government. It was despite the Queensland Labor government. I acknowledge the support that our LNP had
from the Katter Australian Party in Queensland to be able to introduce legislation into the Queensland
parliament—in fact, it was the first time the Labor government in Queensland were beaten on the floor—when
CHAMBER