Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I come to this debate on the Employment and Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Welfare to Work and Vocational Rehabilitation Services) Bill 2006 from a different position to many other members of this House. I suspect that I am the only member who has worked in vocational rehabilitation services and I did so for in excess of 10 years. A large part of my contribution to this debate will deal with the issue of contestability and what that means to the people affected by the change in the delivery of vocational rehabilitation services.

The bill before us deals with four main policy areas. One is vocational rehabilitation services, to which I have already foreshadowed I will be making a lengthy contribution. The bill removes the entitlement to the pensioner education supplement for certain groups of people receiving payments through Centrelink. The bill also enables the recovery of financial case management debts and makes changes to the income test arrangements for certain CDEP recipients.

I will commence my detailed contribution by addressing the issue of the removal from PES recipients of the entitlement to the pensioner education supplement. The government is making a grave error in choosing to remove eligibility to receive this supplement from people who are in receipt of the disability support pension. Under the bill, people who claimed a disability support pension between 11 May 2005 and 30 June 2006 and who qualified for the PES, the pensioner education supplement, will only be able to continue to access the PES if they no longer qualify for DSP as a result of the first DSP review after 1 July 2006. This is very short-sighted. The government should be doing everything in its power to ensure that people with disabilities undertake some training so that they can move off the disability support pension. The government is making it harder for people in receipt of disability support pension to move off it.

Much of this government’s approach to welfare reform has been motivated by the fact it wants to get people off benefits rather than see them get work. Every day we see the government direct the sharp end of all its legislation to the most disadvantaged in the community. If the government truly were interested in seeing people on DSP enter the workforce and earn a wage, it would help them by maintaining their entitlement to the pensioner education supplement.

I turn to the provisions of the legislation that deal with financial case management debts and the recovery of those debts. Financial case management is only necessary because the government has brought in a very harsh breaching regime. I have shared with this House the concerns of some of the constituents whom I represent. Only last week I raised the issue of two women who have been threatened with breaching. One woman has a cross against her name already. She is 60 years old and was unable to get to an interview because she did not have transport. So now she has one cross against her name. She has been warned by Centrelink that she has to be very careful because next time she will be breached. This happens to a lot of people in the community. The more vulnerable the person, the more likely they are to be breached. Financial case management has been put in place to support those people who have no money to pay for their food, rent, gas, electricity or water bills.

I do not believe that anybody should obtain money fraudulently. But if, after a reassessment, Centrelink staff determine that a person could have looked after themselves—their parents may have given them some money or some assistance and it is as black and white as that—Centrelink can recover the financial assistance they have given to that person. For a country like Australia to have in place such a harsh regime, to my way of thinking, is unforgivable. We should be a caring nation. We should be helping those people who are more vulnerable than others are and we should have proper safety nets in place. This amendment bill raises real concerns. I have already seen firsthand how people within the electorate that I represent have been affected by this harsh Welfare to Work regime.

Welfare to Work is supposed to be about assisting a person receiving a Centrelink payment with moving into the workforce. The way this government is implementing it is all stick and very little carrot. To get the absolute best outcome, a person needs to be nurtured through the process. The more vulnerable a person, the greater the assistance they need. I feel that this government is letting people down in that area.

I would like to turn to the issue of contestability in relation to vocational rehabilitation services. But, before I move to the issues affecting people using the vocational rehabilitation service, I would like to draw the attention of the House to the introduction of contestability. Once the Commonwealth Employment Service closed, that led to the Job Network that operates throughout Australia, offering services similar to the CES. There are some very good Job Network providers in all of our communities but there are also some very marginal and very ordinary Job Network providers who are interested mainly in obtaining money for providing their services and tend to forget the reason that they are there.

Last Thursday I raised in this House my concerns for a 55-year-old woman who had been asked to jump through hoops just to satisfy the Job Network provider requirements. I have had many other people contact me about problems they have with Job Network providers. I even had a constituent who advised me that they had been penalised because they had previously been to see me. They came to see their member of parliament because they were not happy about the way the Job Network provider they had been assigned to was operating, and they were threatened with repercussions. They had to undertake a program because the Job Network provider did not feel that it was right for somebody to go and see their member of parliament if they had a problem with that Job Network provider.

The Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service provide a very specialised service to people with disabilities. They have a wide range of clients from a wide range of areas, with a wide range of skills, education and disabilities. There are people with very severe injuries—head injuries, spinal injuries, back injuries—intellectual disabilities and psychiatric problems. These are all people who need very specialised assistance to find employment. The CRS employ a variety of caseworkers and occupational therapists, who do physical assessments of clients and workplace assessments, and who provide return-to-work programs. There are psychologists, social workers, job trainers and physiotherapists. They provide the services that people with disabilities need to get back to work. And of course I should not forget rehabilitation counsellors, seeing as I was once employed as a rehabilitation counsellor with the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service.

I would have to say that the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service is not perfect, but it certainly offers the greatest hope anywhere in Australia to people with disabilities for getting back into the workforce. I think the changes foreshadowed in this legislation will lead to a poorer service for people looking to attract vocational rehabilitation. Once you bring into play contestability, as outlined in this legislation, you will not be comparing apples with oranges. Vocational service organisations will have fewer skills and less expertise. They will have to pay their workers less. These services will be able to undercut the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service, which pays for the professionals they employ, professionals who can assess objectively the needs of their clients.

It will put in place a very bureaucratic structure and there will be a decline in service. It will be a similar situation to the one that exists with the Job Network providers, with a variable quality of service. If a person with a disability is lucky enough to be referred to the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service, they will get the creme de la creme service; if they are referred to service X down the road, which does not have anyone with proper qualifications, they will end up being put into a job that they are not suited to.

Part of the challenge of getting a person with a disability back into the workforce is being able to choose a job that fits their physical and intellectual capacities. A poorly trained person may say that a person with a back injury could work for eight hours standing all day as a console operator. That is setting that person up for failure. Maybe there might be a person who can do that, but you really need to have the workplace designed around the needs of that person. You need to ensure that that person will have the right sort of support.

With the introduction of the model of contestability set out in this legislation we will have the revolving door syndrome. People will be put into jobs that they are not suitably qualified for—either physically or vocationally. They will go along to the workplace and may work there for a week or two weeks. The vocational rehabilitation service will receive a payment for placing that person but two weeks later the person will be unemployed once again. People with disabilities are one of the most vulnerable groups in our community when it comes to looking for work. If the person assessing their needs is not properly qualified, that is setting up the disabled person for failure. I find that absolutely unacceptable. I do not think this House should support a model that will allow that to happen.

Workers compensation in most states uses a variety of rehabilitation services. They have very different clientele from the type of people who go through CRS. The expertise needed is very different. When you are dealing with the group of people most disadvantaged by disability, I would argue very strongly for ensuring that we provide the proper vocational services. A few years back, the government set up the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service for privatisation—they were going to sell it off. Instead of selling it off, they are giving it away. They are undermining the service by setting up a model similar to the model that exists with the Job Network.

I implore the government to revisit its approach to welfare reform. I support welfare reform. There is no-one in this House more supportive of people with a disability being given a go, being given the opportunity to get a job, than me. I understand all the issues that surround it. I know that every time a person with a disability tries to enter the workforce and fails, it is the most enormous setback for them. They are being put back—behind where they were when they were placed in that job. The more times they fail, the more it affects their self-esteem and the less likely they are to succeed in entering the workforce.

This government is a harsh government. It is not prepared to really look at the issues. All it is concerned about is trying to marginalise those people who need the government’s assistance. I cannot support the contestability provisions as set out in this bill. Let’s face it—contestability is just another word for privatisation. I cannot support the removal of the pensioner education supplement as detailed in this legislation. The recovery of financial case management debts, except in cases where fraud can be proved, is something the government needs to think about long and hard. The only reason we need this financial case management is that the government has in place such a harsh regime, which has affected so many Australians. Rather than support this bill, I think the government should take it back to the drawing board and amend it to make it reasonable.

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