Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Here we are again debating another Howard government welfare bill, the Social Security Amendment (2007 Measures No. 2) Bill 2007. This is the third welfare bill this year. In the public domain the Howard government claims it has reformed welfare in Australia, but the Hansard of this place, including today’s Hansard, will show that here we are with yet another bill and another piece of piecemeal reform. This is in a week when we have seen on the front page of a newspaper another cooked-up scheme being recommended by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Mr Joe Hockey. We expect that this thought bubble will have served its purpose—that is, to get a newspaper story. It will now be forgotten, as these things tend to be with Howard government ministers, who do not have a plan for Australia’s future and who are desperately scrabbling around to try to get their names in newspapers in the run-up to the election.

The simple fact is that, when it comes to social security policy, the Howard government has got it wrong. It has got it wrong for 11 long years and it still cannot figure out how to get it right. That is because, time after time, the Howard government goes for a short-term fix, rather than a long-term plan, for this nation’s future. As a result, we still have low participation rates, compared with our competitors. We still have two million Australians who are officially unemployed, working part time but wanting more work than they can get or wanting to work but not showing up in the monthly unemployment figures. It is a staggering statistic but one which many Australians would feel intuitively as they move around in their daily lives. Many Australians would certainly know people who are working part time and wanting more work than they currently have but have not been able to get it. People would be aware of Australians who do not show up in the monthly unemployment figures but who want to work, as well as those who are officially unemployed. Also, as a result of the Howard government’s failure to plan for Australia’s long-term future—

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