Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to continue where I left off on 15 February in commenting upon the Employment and Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Welfare to Work and Vocational Rehabilitation Services) Bill 2006. As I indicated at the time, the opposition will not support the bill as it stands and will move amendments to improve the bill. Labor is strongly committed to welfare reform. I have said that in this debate already, and indeed other contributors to the debate have reinforced that particular view. But we are concerned that the government is adopting a punitive approach, and that is exemplified by its Welfare to Work changes. It is true to say that most of this bill represents a continuation of those changes, it is short on detail and will have many unfortunate consequences for welfare recipients. I am afraid to say that that has been a feature of the government’s Welfare to Work legislation as a whole.

I did manage to introduce in my earlier contribution references to the pensioner education supplement. I indicated to the House that pensioners who study or train in an approved course can access the pensioner education supplement; however, recipients of allowances such as Newstart or youth allowance cannot. Under these changes, people who move from disability support pension or parenting payment to Newstart or youth allowance were supposed to be able to retain the PES until they completed their current course of study. However, this bill clarifies that people who claimed DSP between 11 May 2005 and 30 June 2006 who qualified for the PES and who moved to an allowance will only be able to continue to access the PES if they no longer qualify for DSP as a result of their first DSP review after 1 July last year.

The removal of PES for specified recipients reduces support for education for these groups. This is contrary to the government’s indication in 2005 that PES recipients would retain this entitlement for the remainder of their course notwithstanding the welfare changes. Labor has always argued that restricting the PES so that Welfare to Work candidates cannot access it is short-sighted and will do nothing to alleviate skills shortages. The sector agrees that this is a retrograde step and argues that this is inconsistent with the government’s previous commitments. Labor proposes to extend the pensioner education supplementary to all Welfare to Work candidates.

The Welfare to Work changes include changes to compliance such that certain breaches incur a penalty of eight weeks nonpayment of income support. Some people who face this penalty may be able to access financial case management in certain restrictive circumstances. These arrangements are entirely discretionary and are not guaranteed in legislation. While the breaches may be contested through the appeals process, decisions regarding financial case management cannot. The bill, however, provides that overpayments can be recovered by deductions from future income support payments. We have a situation where there is legislation for the recovery of overpayments but no legislation for the payments themselves. The lack of an appeals process is indeed also unsatisfactory.

There are obviously some cases where it is entirely justified to recover payments; Labor is not opposed to debt recovery in principle. Centrelink needs appropriate recovery powers, but such powers should be subject to transparent guidelines and review mechanisms. The bill fails to provide these.

In conclusion, Labor is not opposed in principle to the idea that the provision of this service could be contestable; however, this should be guided by considerations of the public interest and on the condition that appropriate safeguards and quality control mechanisms are in place. The framework being applied by the government does not meet these requirements—in particular, the loss of parliamentary oversight of these safeguards is unacceptable.

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