Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

It is a delight to follow the member for Canberra on this issue. She is a very passionate advocate for people with disabilities. I rise to speak on the Employment and Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Welfare to Work and Vocational Rehabilitation Services) Bill 2006. This bill is part of the Welfare to Work measures which commenced on 1 July 2006. It is in essence a bill seeking to fix up mistakes, but it also introduces a whole new set of difficulties to a system which is already too complex for people to navigate. The main components of the bill are the opening-up of vocational rehabilitation services to contestability—a tender process which, despite the bill being debated only today, has already started. You have to be galled by the arrogance of the government on that. There are some real issues with the process, but I also have concerns about the lack of safeguards to protect some of our most vulnerable job seekers and I will detail that later in my contribution to this debate.

The bill also restricts access to the pensioner education scheme, which the government claims is a Welfare to Work measure. The government has never been able to explain how removing the ability of people to afford education and training assists them into work. Unfortunately, that has been the government’s approach to welfare reform and moving people from welfare to work: place them on lower payments, despite the significant financial barriers they already face; stop them getting the training and assistance they need; and tell them to get off their butts and get a job.

The Welfare to Work changes have been in place for some six months now. Many agencies who work with the most disadvantaged in our community continue to have concerns about them. The harshest impact of the reforms has started to bite and the eight-week breaching regime is, in many cases, causing significant financial distress. The impacts are being felt most significantly by people with disabilities, but sole parents are also waking up to the harsh reality of the Howard government’s welfare reforms. No-one contests that the best way you can help people out of poverty is to get them into the workforce. No-one contests that if you are in receipt of government payments then there is an expectation that you will be obliged to do all you can to find work. But the government has never been able to explain how reducing people’s income and access to education and training helps them get a job.

We will be opposing this bill in its current form. The key areas of concern are the removal of the entitlement to the pensioner education supplement for certain groups of social security recipients and the introduction, without adequate checks and balances, of contestability to vocational rehabilitation services. We also have issues with financial case management.

A demonstration of the harshness and unfairness of Welfare to Work is exposed in this bill, which strips the pensioner education supplement from some of the most vulnerable Australians. Under the Welfare to Work changes, people who moved from the disability support pension or parenting payments to Newstart or youth allowance were supposed to retain the pensioner education supplement until they completed their current course of study. This makes sense, as all the research shows that education and training are among the best ways of helping people re-enter the labour market. However, this is exactly what the Howard government is taking away from Australians who need it most. Education and training are often the bridge to employment. We should be encouraging, not preventing, access to programs like the pensioner education supplement.

The Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, in its submission to the inquiry of the Senate Standing Committee on Employment, Workplace Relations and Education into this bill, highlights that the pensioner education supplement is a stepping stone to employment for people with a disability—a stepping stone that this bill proposes to remove for some social security recipients. The bill would see a person who came onto the DSP in the transition period of Welfare to Work, between May 2005 and July 2006, lose their access to the pensioner education supplement if they were reviewed off the DSP after 1 July 2006. The amendment would result in people who continue to be eligible for the DSP after their first review but who become ineligible at a subsequent review not only moving to a lower payment but also losing their pensioner education supplement.

This element of the bill drew further fire from ACOSS, the Australian Council of Social Service, in the Senate inquiry. ACOSS uses the example of a person with disabilities on the disability support pension who has just commenced a three-year full-time course when their payment is first reviewed, say in July 2007:

• If they lose the pension on this first review, they would ordinarily continue to receive the PES until the course is completed, three years later. This would be worth $31.20 per week, or around $4,900 over the three years.
• However, if they retain the pension at this review but lose it in a subsequent review 12 months later, the PES would then be cancelled. They would miss out on the $31.20 per week for the remaining two years of the course, a total of $3,200.

In this example, the person disadvantaged by the policy is the one with the more substantial barriers to work, since they retain the pension at their first review.

This is clearly unfair and works against the very people who need assistance. I know that the pensioner education supplement is highly valued by people on a disability support pension. I have had countless people in my office who are on such a pension, who are struggling to re-enter the workforce and who would like to see the pensioner education supplement expanded. This bill will greatly disadvantage many of those who need to access the pensioner education supplement but who will have it removed from them.

Catholic Social Services Australia summed up the effects of this provision well when it noted that for people who are turned down for the disability support pension after their first review there will be:

… a high cost in economic, productivity, social and human terms. Many individuals in difficult circumstances who have invested considerable time and effort in furthering their employment prospects are likely to be forced to jettison half-completed courses—courses commenced and continued in good faith in the expectation that the Commonwealth’s Pensioner Education Supplement would be available for the duration of the course.

How incredibly short-sighted!

The other area that we are concerned about is the contestability of vocational rehabilitation services. We have accepted contestability as a principle for vocational rehabilitation services, but we are really concerned about the way in which this government is going about it. As I said, we are here in this place debating the bill and the tender is already out there. We have not even passed this legislation to say that vocational rehabilitation services can go to contestability, yet the government is already out there with the tender.

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