Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (18:40): I rise to contribute to the debate on this matter of public importance. Wage growth has stalled considerably. Significantly, from 2008 to 2013 it was growing by an average of 3.3 per cent per annum. From 2013 to 2018 it was growing by an average of 2.2 per cent per annum. To put this into perspective, the CPI growth in 2018 was 2.1 per cent. This meant there was virtually no real wages growth last year. In fact, from 2010 to 2017 there was, on average, an increase of only 0.3 per cent in real wages. So much for this government's claims about being able to manage the economy! The government can stand there and try to claim that they are the economic managers and that they are pre-eminent in this space, yet we see these terrible statistics. The Gini coefficient, which measures economic inequality, has been increasing steadily and now stands at 0.337. We are one of the most unequal OECD countries in the world. In fact, it seems that we are rubbing shoulders with Greece, a country that is still recovering from a major recession. My question is: what do families do with rising power prices when this government continues to invest and wants to invest in inefficient, carbon-polluting power instead of going for clean, renewable energy, which is the energy of the future and will help bring energy prices down? We are seeing one million Australians putting off seeing a doctor because they can't afford to. These are the real impacts of living without real wage growth. But then, with these rising prices, my major question is: what do people living in poverty do? In Anti-Poverty Week, I want to focus on those people. Of the three million people living in poverty, 740,000 are children. One of the major things the government, who claim to be good economic managers, could do is raise the rate of Newstart by at least $75 a week. You'd get an instant injection into the economy of up to $4 billion and 12,000 more jobs would be created—a lot of those in rural and regional areas. That is how we can help people meet the rising cost of living. That's how we can help people out of poverty. Those struggling to make ends meet are having to go to places like Foodbank. At the beginning of Anti-Poverty Week, on the weekend, the Foodbank hunger report 2019 was launched. That report found that, over the past 12 months, the number of people seeking food relief increased by 22 per cent. Three in 10 food-insecure Australians are going a whole day without eating at least once a week. Single-parent households have the highest likelihood of experiencing food insecurity, at a rate of 47 per cent. Many of those affected are living in deep poverty. On average, they are $135 a week below the poverty line. Senator Rennick: The cashless debit card will fix that. Senator SIEWERT: I'll take the interjection from across the chamber. I was just told that the cashless debit card will fix that. How mistaken is this government! The cashless debit card punishes people and, in fact, takes away people's cash. It actually means they have less cash to spend—cash that would enable then to take advantage of second-hand goods or go to markets. Go out and talk to people who are trying to survive on the cashless debit card. It is punitive and it makes life harder. I've been out there. I've talked to a lot of people over the 12 years that income management has been going on in this country. If you'd been at the hearing on Monday night, you too would have heard about some of the impacts of the cashless debit card and the fact that income management in the Northern Territory has not met any of its objectives—not one!—and that's from an independent analysis. This government is failing to manage the economy for the people it is supposed to serve, and, in particular, those living in poverty.