The Greens have today announced their election commitment to work with First Nations peoples to address Australia’s unfinished business, close the gap and achieve justice.

Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert said a commitment to self-determination must be at the heart of closing the gap, and that this approach has been sadly lacking.

“The Greens have today announced our costed commitment to addressing our unfinished business with the Uluru Statement from the Heart as a priority," Senator Rachel Siewert said.

Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert today said she has little confidence that a transition to a digital platform and other measures announced today will go any way to addressing the broken jobactive system.  

"For a start anyone who has spoken to or at least listened to someone on Newstart would know that it is very difficult for people to actually afford internet services and smart phones. 

The Australian Greens on Tuesday unveiled a comprehensive suite of policies that will support older Australians to access high quality aged care and better pay and conditions for aged care workers. 

 "It's been clear for years now that there are significant issues within the aged care sector and for too long aged care has been put in the too hard basket”, Senator Siewert said.

“We can’t keep tinkering around the edges. The Greens understand we need change and a comprehensive plan of how we are going to care for older Australians.

Experts at a hearing into the cashless debit card today have roundly slammed the Government for using their so-called trial site evaluations to justify the extension of the cashless debit card “trials”.

“The ORIMA reports have been thoroughly discredited by academics and researchers as well as the ANAO and were today described as “extremely misleading” but they are still being referred to by Government to justify the trial extensions”, Senator Rachel Siewert said.

Discussions of a “living wage” have to include unemployed workers who are living in poverty on payments as low as $40 a day, Senator Rachel Siewert said today.

“It’s time that we recognised that unemployed workers are workers too.

“We need to change the law so that if you work full-time, you’re not in poverty and if you’re out of work  you’re also not living in poverty.

“There is no fair-go when unemployed workers are living on payments as low as $40 a day.

“Unemployed workers have waited 25 years for an increase to Newstart.

It's saddening but not surprising that sole mothers have had to go to the UN to draw attention to the plight of sole parents in this country.

"I congratulate Ms Edwards and Ms McLaren for advocating for the human rights of sole parents and their children", Senator Rachel Siewert said. 

International Women’s Day is a day to celebrate and reflect on what it means to be a woman in our community in 2019.

“It becomes more apparent, every year, that while we now condemn blatant discrimination against women in our society, many of the attitudes that allowed such discrimination persist in our social policy," Senator Rachel Siewert said.

“You only have to look at the number of single mothers living in poverty to see that the long history of social policies that denigrate women, particularly single mothers, is far from over.

The announcement that the Government has delivered “another increase” to income support recipients is farcical in its attempt to spin indexation as an increase to income support payments. 

“Why is the Minister wasting everyone’s time by advising that payments are indexed? It happens twice a year!” Senator Rachel Siewert, Greens spokesperson on Family and Community services said.

The overbearing, coercive and controlling ParentsNext program which invades the privacy of women is part of the very culture of disrespect the Prime Minister has alluded to in the announcement of his extra funding to domestic violence services today.  

“The ParentsNext program is part of the culture of disrespect towards women and anyone who doesn’t see that is kidding themselves, Senator Rachel Siewert said.

The Greens are calling on the Government to urgently address the growing concern amongst survivors, advocates and the community that institutions named in the Royal Commission have not yet “opted in” to the redress scheme which is holding up assessment of claims and highly likely to be putting survivors off submitting a claim.

“Any institution that was named during the Royal Commission should have well and truly signed up by now", Senator Rachel Siewert said.