Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Minister for Workforce Participation) Share this | Hansard source

I stand to sum up the second reading debate on the Social Security Amendment (2007 Measures No. 2) Bill 2007. We have heard some extraordinary contributions from the opposition in relation to this bill. I have to wonder if it is because they did not read the words in front of them or deliberately chose to misunderstand them. Perhaps they think there is an election coming on and so this was an opportunity to present some misinformation. One of the statements made by the member for Lalor was that the Howard government does not understand the extent of the workforce participation challenge in this country. When you stop laughing, after hearing that statement, you have to get serious about presenting exactly what has happened since 1996.

We have a skills shortage and the lowest unemployment rate to be generated in 33 years. At the same time, like a lot of other developed nations, we have a rapidly ageing population. It was our Treasurer, Mr Peter Costello, who was one of the first in any developed nation to deliver an intergenerational report which identified in very exact terms the shorter and longer term impacts of this ageing population and what this government needed to do to address the impacts. Our Welfare to Work policies are now being emulated around the world. I refer to the UK and to France. Most recently, Chile has become interested in how we are managing to deal with the workforce participation challenges of a booming economy with the demographics of an ageing population, where smaller generations are coming on to replace those who are retiring. Quite simply, we have at the moment in Australia too many jobs chasing too few people. I need to stress that we have the highest participation rates on record in Australia at over 65 per cent.

Under Labor, I am afraid, unemployment was between 8½ and 11 per cent and, at its peak, one million people were unemployed. You had a lot of despair, you did not get much workforce participation growth and certainly you had no plans for the future. The John Howard government, as I said, has tackled the not unknown worldwide problem of an ageing population and a booming economy’s demand for ever more skilled labour. At the same time, it has dealt with some of the most disadvantaged Australians—people who have known long-term unemployment—by changing the rules of access to welfare and by directing a lot more training and upskilling into this sector of people who have often had to leave school too early. And the government has had extraordinary results.

Let me refer to the skilling. Over the last four years we have had over half a million people complete apprenticeships. That compares to just 31,000 under the Keating government’s last year in office. There have been 40,000 work skills vouchers taken up since February to train mature-age people who have never finished school or have no technical qualifications. These skills vouchers have been in great demand because there is an expectation and an understanding that for a person to really compete in our economy in the future they will need skills beyond very early school leaving. Our government, unlike previous Labor governments, is providing those opportunities. The skilling and upskilling opportunities reflect a 25-fold increase in funding for technical and vocational training by the Howard government over the last 10 years. This brings total funding to $25 billion. It was only $1 billion in 1996. The member for Lalor needs to cast her eyes over the statistics before she tries to trot out some very dodgy information.

When John Howard came into office in 1996, the government inherited a moribund and inefficient government employment sector—the old CES or Commonwealth Employment Services. We had people in despair. They were long-term unemployed. They had been churned through endless TAFE certificates. They had no work experience. They had no one-on-one support. There was no sense of a mutual obligation. Mutual obligation gives people a sense of self-respect and, indeed, it gives the community something back, too, for their taxpayer support in helping people who are not able to provide for themselves because of their unemployment. The Howard government also recognised the ageing population and so, as it moved the economy into its boom mode—after having paid off Labor’s $90 billion-plus debt—it was able to say goodbye to Labor’s Working Nation and introduce Welfare to Work reforms.

Let me give another small, simple statistic for those who are not familiar with the extraordinary improvement in the number of people who have been placed in work since the John Howard government came into office. Almost 45 per cent of the most disadvantaged, long-term unemployed job seekers who received employment support under Job Network got a job after three months. This compares with only 25 per cent of job seekers being helped under the old Labor Working Nation.

The cost per job placement is also important, because we always demand value for money while, at the same time, we demand the delivery of real outcomes for Australia’s most disadvantaged. The average cost per employment outcome has fallen to around $4,000 under our Welfare to Work reforms. I am afraid that, under Working Nation, we were looking at $12,800. So we have dropped the cost of helping people get into long-term sustainable jobs to about a third of what Labor was paying for a much smaller outcome in terms of the number of people getting into real jobs.

Labor has failed utterly to present to Australians their policies and plans to increase workforce participation. We are still waiting. You can imagine that in my office, I, as the minister, keep a look-out for the policies and plans on Labor’s websites. I read the utterances of the shadow spokesperson, Senator Penny Wong. I look for some policy. I look for perhaps some endorsement of our Welfare to Work reforms, because that is what Labor tend to do. They say: ‘That’s working. We’ll have a bit of that too.’ While we have seen Labor’s support for Welfare to Work in some utterances and some small print, all we have got from them again and again since 1996 is opposition in the House and in the Senate when we have moved motions proposing these absolutely revolutionary ways of helping the unemployed into work. Labor oppose every legislative move, despite their having no alternative policy for dealing with an ageing population or building workforce participation.

One way that Labor would not have to work so hard is if they ever get back into office and we would then see the end of a booming economy. I guess Labor expect that the economy will collapse. There would not then be the demand for workers, with soaring inflation and a wages break-out and with labour unions demanding centralised wage fixing and pattern bargaining, and so on. Perhaps that is Labor’s plan. However, the unemployed of Australia deserve much better than that, and it is what the John Howard government has delivered.

I must admit Labor has presented a discussion paper, but it is very long on platitudes and rhetoric and has no alternative approaches. The discussion paper advocates returning to the failed Working Nation policy, whereby, as I said before, job seekers were simply recycled endlessly through TAFE certificates. The unemployed then had some of Australia’s longest resumes in terms of certificates undertaken but no work experience and no individual support to get them in front of an employer who would then employ them.

What does Labor’s discussion paper actually call for? It calls for an increase in welfare payments, reduced Jobsearch requirements for the unemployed, mandated longer periods of welfare dependency and an end to Work for the Dole. When Work for the Dole was introduced, it surprised some people. They said, ‘How can you expect the unemployed to leave their homes and go and do something for their community?’ It might have surprised the Labor Party but it did not surprise the community, who thought it was an excellent idea. It has also not surprised the long-term unemployed who, through Work for the Dole, have gained work, as well as their self-esteem, and their sense of social isolation has come to an end. They, too, are able to get work because they are employable through the Work for the Dole experience.

The member for Lalor displayed her policy ignorance or deliberate misrepresentation of this bill by claiming that it takes medical officers out of the decision making in relation to work capacity assessment, and Labor are going to move amendments reflecting that misunderstanding. This bill in fact strengthens the role of medical evidence. Job capacity assessors are required to take into account all medical evidence in making a decision about a person’s work capacity. Self-evidently, that is of critical importance. These changes do not remove medical evidence requirements or downplay the importance of that evidence. Instead, the bill requires that, where medical evidence was not provided, say, to the job capacity assessor but was in fact provided later on during, say, an appeal—for example, to the Social Security Appeals Tribunal—then the same medical evidence is resubmitted to the job capacity assessor so that they can form a view with the full information—or with more information than they had originally—to decide the work capacity of that individual. The job capacity assessor then resubmits their assessment and the review or the tribunal appeal moves forward.

So I suggest to the member for Lalor that she takes a little bit more care when reading bills or she gets some better advice. Labor, as I say, have failed to present a policy to get job seekers with a disability into a job. I find it quite extraordinary that they misunderstand our policy which, self-evidently, through the statistical information—you can look at it any time—shows that we have been much more successful in helping some of Australia’s most disabled and disadvantaged people into real jobs in the open market.

The shadow spokesperson said way back in June that Labor would present their national strategy for disability employment. I am afraid, as with their welfare to work plan, we have not heard anything since June—just screaming silence. There has been no policy for workforce participation and no policy for job seekers with a disability but there has been a misunderstanding of what the government are presenting in this bill, which further enhances the capacity of some of our most disadvantaged people to get on with having the right welfare support or indeed the right job opportunities.

These legislative amendments also recognise the role that grandparents and other relatives have when they take on the critical and significant responsibilities of caring for a child. We are extending access to automatic exemptions from job seeker requirements and other participation requirements already in place for some principal carers. In addition, some principal carers will have access to a higher rate of payment by caring for a child who they are not in fact related to. This reflects the change in society and in family structures where often we see grandparents, in particular grandmothers, now being responsible for their grandchildren and in every way being the substitute parent. We want to acknowledge and support those grandparents in the important work that they do.

The amendments also streamline the administration of transfers between one income support payment and another. Restrictions will operate on the time frame in which a payments transfer can be made, and transfers to the closed payment of mature age and partner allowance will no longer be possible. As I have already said, the bill provides new guidelines regarding the review of income support in relation to partial capacity to work, current or continuing inability to work, impairment ratings and incapacity exemptions from the activity test. The guidelines will require that reviewers access expert assessments of work capacity, including all medical information that is available, when determining appeals of income support decisions. The rights and needs of the person are fully protected and understood. We in the Howard government care for individuals. That is why we are strengthening this legislation. The review processes under the social security law include Centrelink authorised review officers, the Social Security Appeals Tribunal and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

This bill provides even further support for people assisted under the government’s Welfare to Work reforms. These reforms are helping people with the right supports and incentives to make the transition from welfare to work. In most instances, if you have a capacity to work, a paid job is better than a life on welfare because, unfortunately, a life on welfare often means an intergenerational cycle of unemployment. Sometimes we see up to a third generation of Australians where there has not been work in the household because under the Labor regime, only 10 years ago, there was no understanding and support to help move parents in particular into real work.

One of the most successful elements of the government’s Welfare to Work reforms has been changing the rules where previously a parent on a pension—and the vast majority of parents on pensions are single mothers—was able to stay on welfare until the youngest child turned 16. By then, the parent, particularly the woman, felt she was unemployable. Her employment skills were rusty. Perhaps she had no IT skills or experience or perhaps she had literacy and numeracy issues, because many parents on welfare have low formal school attainment levels.

We changed that regulation. We now help those parents on pensions, when their youngest child turns six, into at least part-time work of 15 hours a week. This has changed parents’ lives across the nation. In particular, we have women saying to us, ‘Our kids are proud; our kids go to school and talk about the job which I have. Our kids are proud when I put on my uniform or when I start up my new car. The kids are having a holiday for the first time.’ This is what it means to have a Liberal government. We care about the individual’s independence and their ability to make choices and be free of the dependency that locks them into a poorer life experience.

In the past Labor was happy with the regime where, if you were a person with a disability and you could not work full time in an open employment situation, you went on a disability support pension. In most cases, you stayed on that until you went onto the old age pension. The government has now said, ‘If you have at least a half-time capacity to work in an open employment situation we will help you to get a job.’ Across Australia we are seeing people with disabilities saying, ‘I’m now back in the workforce. I can hold my head high. I had a mental health issue; I’m being supported and assisted in getting through that because of a supportive workplace.’

On the other side we have employers saying to us, ‘The John Howard government has given us a solution to our workforce shortages. You are giving us people whom you have been prepared to train into a job.’ The government provides pre-employment training for specific tasks and jobs to be done. Also, people across Australia are saying, ‘Thank goodness; at last a government is addressing the Indigenous unemployment issues in all parts of Australia, but particularly in Northern and Central Australia.’ Under Labor we had unemployment of the second, third and sometimes the fourth generations. It might have suited Labor’s own purposes to have a dependent population, but it does not meet the John Howard-led Australian government’s long-term plan to deal with workforce shortages, the ageing population and our booming economy—and its demand for skilled people—and to give every Australian a fair go.

It is a matter of national importance that 600,000 children are currently growing up in jobless households. Unfortunately, these children were in jobless households and, under the Labor Party’s so-called ‘Working Nation’, they were left there for a very long period of time. We are assisting those 600,000 children by helping their parents into jobs. They are no longer likely to also be unemployed. Teenagers whose parents are on welfare are five times more likely to be unemployed themselves. If you are working aged, able bodied and on welfare in Australia, we have good news for you: the Liberal philosophy and policy of this coalition government is to help you into a job.

I was somewhat depressed to hear the opposition lamenting our Welfare to Work reforms, I presume simply as a matter of form. If you are on the opposition benches, what you do I suppose is think you need to oppose. I invite the opposition to help celebrate every day when a long-term unemployed person finds work in Australia, to support our Welfare to Work packages and to support this bill. It offers real opportunity for the disabled and for grandparents who are looking after children. It gives them recognition of the important work that they do. I commend the bill to the House.

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