Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

If we are serious about getting people into jobs, we should be seriously looking at the system that underpins Job Search, which, quite frankly, is the mechanism to assist people to help secure employment. It is obviously our aim and objective to help those who are disadvantaged by assisting them, where we can, into gainful, paid employment. If we are serious about getting people into work, we need to actually have an effective compliance regime in order to encourage people to look for work. Regrettably, sometimes people do need to be led. I do not think we need to make any apology for saying that there must be certain incentives to encourage people to undertake their part of the mutual obligation package, and that is taking all possible steps to seek gainful employment.

The reality is that the former government presided over what was a rather harsh and counterproductive compliance regime that certainly penalised harshly when people did not comply. As a matter of fact, if one failed to comply on a third occasion under their regime, this would eventuate in one not receiving welfare payments for eight weeks. Under the eight-week regime, when a non-compliance penalty was triggered, a job seeker was not required to have any further contact with the employment service provider or Centrelink for that whole period. So, if someone was going to be in breach, what occurred then was that they would think there was no point doing anything else and that they may as well just sit back and do nothing. That is precisely what the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Employment Services Reform) Bill 2008 is designed to address. It is that ‘do nothing’ approach that the minister has sought to change in a constructive way to get the focus back on what we should be doing for job seekers—and that is helping them into gainful employment.

Therefore, I say that the current system is inadequate as a deterrent. It is certainly in its early stages too harsh on noncompliance and the penalties are too late. Under the current arrangements, the job seeker, as I said, could miss a fortnight’s participation before any action was taken at all. If noncompliance is going to be addressed in any way, we simply cannot have a situation where up to a fortnight goes missing before action is taken.

What we are trying to do through this legislation is bring about some real, mutual accountability. We know what our accountability is from a government’s perspective, and that is to take all possible steps to assist people to find employment. But we are also trying to instil in the job seeker the obligation that they must take all reasonable steps to comply and, in so doing, to find a suitable job.

When you think about it, if a job seeker fails to turn up to a job interview or something else that has been mandated under the Job Network scheme, nothing happens. On the next occasion that that same person fails to turn up, nothing happens. That person could then be complying and doing everything else but, if something occurs within that period of 12 months and they then miss a third job interview, that job seeker then incurs the eight-week penalty. It certainly does not equate with the mutual obligation I was speaking about. It does not draw the job seeker’s attention on the first two occasions to the fact that not turning up is pretty serious. It does not do that. It simply waits for the final trigger to occur and then down comes the guillotine—‘You will now incur an eight-week penalty and you will go off welfare payments for that period.’

If you listened to what the former speaker had to say—and I did labour through that speech—you would have heard him say that he did not think we needed to change anything in the current system. He thought it was fair and that people should be punished if they do not turn up and that this is what drives people into employment. That sort of stuff fails to equate with the fact that in the last two years these penalties have been in operation, 2006-07 and 2007-08, there has been a doubling in the number of people who have received eight-week penalties. Sure, this legislation has really meted out the punishment and, sure, there has been a doubling in the number of people who have incurred such punishment under the legislation, but what is not clear is: has this actually contributed to putting people into employment?

The last speaker also indicated that there has been a significant reduction in unemployment over recent years, and that is quite true. It is pretty clear to me that what has led to that is a resources led economic recovery, particularly in some states, that has significantly increased employment opportunities. That is not necessarily right across the board, however. I can indicate to the House that in my own electorate of Werriwa at the moment the rate for youth unemployment still stands at 23 per cent.

There is a mining boom out there. There is a resource led recovery taking place in Western Australia and Queensland. But 23 per cent of the young people in my electorate have tried unsuccessfully to gain employment. That is the real figure. That is the real world. That is what we should be working on. We should be encouraging and assisting these people into proper employment. We should not do that to simply reduce the unemployment numbers but to give them what a job gives to people: a sense of self worth and a sense of genuine commitment. Hopefully, that in turn will lead to value adding for our community generally.

We know that the compliance system has done nothing to reduce unemployment. Despite the doubling of the numbers that has occurred in the last couple of years, there has been no improvement in the attendance at Job Network interviews, there has been no improvement in the attendance rate at customised assistance and we know that this eight-week penalty does not act as an incentive to get people into employment.

What we have been told, and this is from the Welfare Rights Network, is that the relationship between the eight-week non-payment penalty and major dislocation, including homelessness, relationship breakdown, increased mental stress, illness, violence and crime, is both categorical and direct. That is borne out when we consider the people who we are applying this mandatory provision to.

Research conducted by the University of New South Wales Social Policy Research Centre has found that up to 20 per cent of people who underwent an eight-week breach lost their accommodation or were forced to move to less appropriate housing. We are not talking about people of means—people who are in the circumstances so that they can move or simply weather an eight-week break. Let us get this straight for this House: we are talking about the people who are least able to move and least able to find employment at the moment—hence they are on the programs that they are. We must appreciate the reality of that.

In terms of my own locality, Werriwa, not all that long ago I held a homeless seminar. What I sought to do was to bring together the homeless service providers, a number of charities, some churches and the New South Wales Police. I also brought along a number of kids that I have met from time to time who live on the streets in Campbelltown, Liverpool et cetera. It was a significant exercise to bring those people together. While we have this mining boom and while we have a significant number of jobs being generated in the resource based industries, there is a level of disadvantage that operates in our communities. I know it for a fact. In addition to the people I mentioned, I also invited on that occasion the local media. They were not there to simply take pictures of an event. Rather, they too have a responsibility, in my opinion, to not only carry a story but be part of the solutions, not covering things up. As a consequence, they have stayed consistently on this campaign to address the levels of disadvantage throughout the Campbelltown, Camden and Liverpool areas.

While going through that exercise, I learnt a number of things. Firstly, of those people who persistently struggle to find employment, the figures show that 15 per cent of jobseekers who get that eight-week penalty have a mental illness, while five per cent have an unstable housing situation. What we are doing is adding to their problems. The three strikes and you are out policy for welfare dependency is quite frankly penalising the most vulnerable in our society. There cannot be a punishment just for punishment’s sake. There has to be something that is an incentive. That is what this legislation is about: providing a positive incentive.

If you fail to turn up and fulfil your obligations, as opposed to waiving the first occasion or the second occasion and bringing the axe down on the third occasion, your payments are held back until you re-enter the system. People understand that. It is like ‘no work, no pay’; it is ‘no show, no payment’. If someone is on the network and has given undertakings, including attending various job interviews, and they fail to turn up and do not have a reason, those people’s payments will be suspended until they live up to their obligations. That is a fair system. People out there understand that. They do not understand a system that says ‘three strikes and you’re out’ regardless of when and where those strikes occur over any 12 month period; a system that penalises people eight weeks of their payment. The financial impact of all this is great.

Two weeks ago, I spent a morning in a soup kitchen that operates in Liverpool. I know that we do not talk about soup kitchens today, but let me tell you: they are real. I spent a number of hours out there with Pastor Gino Zucchi. He runs the Church of the Crossroads—called that, of course, because it is located at a crossroads. For a lot of people, this is their only real meal a day. I spoke with a lot of people who road pushbikes to get there. I spoke to people who had travelled from as far away as Fairfield to get there. This is a community thing.

These people are not going for the free meal. They are going there for other reasons, such the social interaction. Pastor Gino Zucchi’s program has people who can actually help people find jobs, work through the system, make contacts and write letters for employment. It is certainly more than just a soup kitchen. Just before I came down here—I should have prepared a bit earlier, I think—I asked Pastor Zucchi what he thought about the passage of this particular legislation. He said: ‘It would be ideal to have clients still participating in programs that enable them to find the appropriate employment because that is the real aim: to get people in employment—not a punishment regime. The reality is that it is often dependants and housing arrangements that suffer.’

What Pastor Zucchi said is precisely what the University of New South Wales and the research I quoted earlier said. People who are at the sharp end and who are out there working with disadvantaged people—trying to get them into employment and to give them a life and a future not only for them but for their families—know what the reality of this is. We are trying to have people comply. We are absolutely single-minded in that the compliance regime must be fair, decent and reasonable. I would invite members here to apply this sort of standard when considering this legislation as if it were applying to our own kids out there. Those 23 per cent of people all have parents, and hopefully their parents care for them. We are genuinely trying to give those people a future. To have a regime that is simply penalty based for the sake of being penalty based does not put people into employment.

A mining boom and all those things will take care of one area of our workforce and we certainly like to see all efforts going to increasing employment opportunities. But under this particular piece of legislation we are targeting those levels of disadvantage in our community and those people who are struggling. We do need to take the view of caring as if the people we are talking about were our own kids. We would want our own kids to be treated with fairness and decency and not to be subjected to something that is so punishment based that it becomes incomprehensible.

I also took the opportunity to have a talk to the Executive Officer of Macarthur Diversity Services, Karin Vasquez, who informed me they are very concerned that their organisation has many clients who have been repeatedly non-compliant. They see those people within their organisation as having severe barriers to work. She said: ‘Centrelink asking people why they are not complying is an important and necessary policy shift. For example, one of our clients is able to work in many respects, however an intellectual developmental delay affects his ability to comply.’ This is something I really was not aware of. Until today I was not aware that Centrelink does not go out and ask people why they have not complied, because, under this act, Centrelink is not required to. Unfortunately the three triggers are the magical things that trigger non-compliance and penalty. This one-size-fits-all approach is hardly a pathway to employment. It is penalty first, and opportunity is hopefully somewhere down the track. The idea of Centrelink having discretion to sit down and go through these compliance regimes is an added bonus. That was certainly in the mind of the Executive Officer of Macarthur Diversity Services. This is a significant piece of legislation and I commend the bill to the House. (Time expired)

Debate (on motion by Mr Price) adjourned.

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