The Greens say the Government need to address continuing uncertainty over the vaccine roll out. There are supply, delivery and hesitancy issues plaguing the rollout that need urgent attention and actions in the face of the delta variant.

In light of the highly transmissible Delta strain now in the community, the Greens say it's a shocking failure of leadership of the Morrison Government that they haven’t required an update of  Australia’s infection prevention and control guidelines to address airborne transmission and ventilation in hotel quarantine.  
 
I have been asking the Government about these guidelines for months and months and now here we are with the Delta variant in the community and no update to the national guidelines for how quarantine hotels should manage airborne transmission. 
 

The Greens have criticised changes to the Private Health Insurance Act 2007 which passed the Senate last night saying they set a dangerous precedent for how disabled people can access Private Health Insurance. 
 
Under these changes Australian Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John, who is not yet a participant of the NDIS, would not be considered a disabled person.
 
Greens spokesperson on Health Senator Rachel Siewert said: 
I am disappointed to see that the Government has succumbed to the pressure of private health insurers.

The Greens will oppose the Streamlined Participation Requirements and Other Measures Bill 2021 that will rip $457 from people receiving Jobseeker and $346 from people receiving Youth Allowance. 
 

The Greens welcome the Federal Court judgement on the robodebt class action that found the Commonwealth "unlawfully"  raised $1.7 billion in debts against 443,000 people, but say that the Government has still fundamentally failed to be accountable for the illegal robodebt program. 
 
"Citizens shouldn’t have to fight tooth and nail for justice and take their own Government to court to get any measure of accountability", Greens spokesperson on Family and Community Services Senator Rachel Siewert said. 
 
As Justice Murphy said, this is a shameful chapter. 

The Greens say Minister Robert’s latest release on the DobSeeker hotline confirms that it is just more Government funded intimidation of people on income support. 

This attempt to once again demonise people looking for work is despicable. There are 1.14 million people looking for work and the Minister is making a big deal of a few hundred calls that are still being ‘investigated’. This demonising has to stop.

The Greens are calling on the Government to ensure all workers impacted by the snap Victoria lock down have urgent access to the JobSeeker payment.
 
The Government ended JobKeeper much too early despite warnings of second and third waves,” Greens spokesperson on Family and Community Services Senator Rachel Siewert said. 
 
We know that casual workers, those in hospitality and services roles are the ones that will lose a week's wage going into lockdown. 
 

The Senate has supported a Greens referral to the Senate Community Affairs References Committee to conduct a Senate inquiry into the purpose, intent and adequacy of the Disability Support Pension (DSP). 
 
There have been a series of changes and cost-saving measures over recent years that have reduced the number of people able to access the Disability Support Program. Since then, there has been a sharp decline in people applying for and being approved for the DSP. 
 

“This budget is a surplus of scatter gun approaches and tinkering around the edges. 
 
“This is a budget that continues the ongoing disdain this Government has for people who have been doing it tough for a long time and for whom things have only got worse due to the global pandemic and recession: people on income support, older women, young people, single parents and disabled people.