STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator McKIM (Tasmania—Australian Greens Whip) (13:46): Politicians love to tell you that getting money from the government that you need to survive has to be difficult. But, as a politician, I know this: getting money from the government is not hard for politicians. When we travel to Canberra for work, we get over 300 bucks a night with no friction.

It's not hard for us. It's easy. No-one sends us to private providers to prove we deserve it.

No-one threatens our income if we miss a call to discuss our claims. But that is not how it is for most Australians dealing with the government. There's an entire employment services system that hounds people looking for work with pointless tasks and constant threats of destitution.

It's where the disability support system is headed under Labor's changes. Parents face a bureaucratic nightmare just to access the childcare subsidy. And who can forget robodebt—a cruel, illegal system that literally destroyed lives?

So next time a politician tries to convince you that it has to be hard to receive government payments, remember this. They don't design their own entitlements systems to be hard. They design them to be easy.

The government knows how to make claiming public benefits straightforward, fast and easy, because the government does it for politicians. They should do the same for people whose survival literally depends on public payments.