Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Social Security Amendment (Liquid Assets Waiting Period) Bill 2009. Under the current social security law, people claiming Newstart allowance, youth allowance, sickness allowance and Austudy who have liquid assets above a maximum reserve amount of $2,500 if single without dependants or $5,000 otherwise must generally serve a waiting period called the liquid assets waiting period before being able to access income support. This bill will amend the Social Security Act 1991 to double the maximum reserve threshold for liquid assets to $5,000 for singles without dependants or $10,000 for others for a two-year period from 1 April 2009. The effect of this will generally be to reduce the length of the liquid assets waiting period. The bill will also amend the Social Security Act 1991 to exclude the surrender value of life insurance policies from the definition of liquid assets for social security purposes. This will mean that life insurance policy surrender values will not be taken into account in calculating any applicable liquid assets waiting period or in determining severe financial hardship for the purposes of eligibility for income support. This amendment will ensure that income support claimants are not unreasonably disadvantaged by having to cash in their life insurance policies before they can access income support. These measures will commence on 1 April 2009. There will also be consequential amendments to other pieces of legislation as a consequence of this bill.

The decision to limit the increase by a two-year period provides an appropriate and measured response, in the government’s view, to the current extraordinary financial circumstances. The government has committed to reviewing these arrangements in a year. The threshold levels and indexation arrangements would be matters considered in the review process. This is an important initiative in these troubling times with the global recession. We have heard much about what is happening overseas in Canada, in the US, in Europe and in the UK, particularly about the rise in unemployment in those countries. Certainly we are seeing a rise in unemployment in this country. That is why it is important in these difficult times to provide what assistance we can, when a person finds that they are unemployed, to ensure that they get access to financial support as soon as possible. That is why I welcome these government initiatives by the Minister for Employment Participation.

But of course that is not the only thing that the Rudd Labor government is doing. Through the $42 billion economic stimulus package, there are new employment services, extra services for redundant workers, investment in training and a fairer compliance system. This bill is not introduced in isolation. There are a raft of initiatives and employment services that have already been introduced by this government to assist those people who find themselves unemployed. This is about supporting Australian jobs by stimulating the economy and investing in the skills we need now and in the future. It is crucial to our capacity to ride out the global financial crisis.

Through our new employment services, we are reforming employment services to improve opportunities for every Australian to participate in the workforce and to help build a more productive and competitive economy. Following intensive consultations last year, the Rudd Labor government is undertaking a complete overhaul of the existing Job Network and will introduce new employment services on 1 July this year. These new services will be demand driven, personalised and focused on addressing the real barriers to employment that each job seeker faces. There will be a much stronger focus on equipping job seekers with the skills and training required to gain a job and meet the labour needs of employers. There will be services for newly redundant workers. In light of the global financial crisis, the Rudd government has acted quickly to reduce the impact on workers and their families by providing intensive employment services for newly redundant workers. This came into effect on 24 February 2009. The government announced a further commitment of $298 million over the next two years so that newly redundant workers would be immediately eligible for intensive employment services.

This is so critical and it has been welcomed by training organisations throughout the electorate of Petrie who know about the difficulties faced by workers. Consider those workers who are made redundant in their forties or in their fifties. They have been in a workplace in a particular occupation for many years and suddenly find themselves redundant. They can have great difficulty in re-entering the workforce after they have found themselves on the unemployment line. We need to provide them with dedicated individual assistance, personalised assistance, not only to assist them to get back into the workplace but also to do it in a way that actually assists that person moving forward with their skills as well. This is not just about saying, ‘What skills do you have? That is great. Here is another job that needs those skills.’ This is about asking, ‘What skills do you have and what can we do to add to those skills so you may go out and actually move ahead in your career?’

There are opportunities out there right now. There are people in the workforce, predominantly males, in their late 30s or in their 40s who have been in the construction industry for years but do not have a formal trade qualification. Ask any one of the managers they have worked for and they will say that those workers are as capable as any tradesperson they have had on a job. If that person were to have their skills assessed, to have a recognition of prior learning assessment done, it may be that those individual workers can take up initiatives, engage in a course that requires them to complete a couple of units in a trade qualification and find themselves, within a reasonable period, with the full trade qualification. A group training organisation in my electorate, East Coast Apprenticeships, have been doing this very successfully with TEAs over the last year. In fact, they have had some adult apprentices complete their full trade qualification in less than 12 months by recognising the skills they already have. This is what these services can do—assist people on that path. Workers will receive immediate personalised assistance, career advice, referral to available training places and job search help. A personal employment pathway plan will set out the services and training they need to find and keep a job. Providers will be able to purchase services and training for them through a $550 credit. This assistance has never been provided to redundant workers.

In addition to early access to personalised employment services, the government will invest a further $75 million in 10,000 new training places through the Productivity Places Program. The additional 10,000 places will bring the total number of extra places for workers made redundant as a result of significant economic changes in their industries to 20,000. The $2 billion Productivity Places Program is a major, long-term commitment that will deliver more than 711,000 training places over five years. Already more than 80,000 Australians have enrolled in a training course through the program since it began in April last year.

There will be a fairer and more effective compliance framework. The Rudd government has amended social security laws to introduce a fairer compliance framework for approximately 620,000 people who receive Newstart allowance, youth allowance, parenting payment or special benefit and have participation requirements. The key features of the new compliance framework are a more work-like approach with no show, no pay participation failures, retaining an eight-week non-payment penalty for persistent and wilful noncompliance, a new comprehensive compliance assessment before any eight-week non-payment period is imposed, fair opportunities for payments to be reinstated if job seekers participate in an intensive compliance activity and new hardship provisions to replace financial case management.

That is what we are doing already to assist people who, unfortunately, because of economic pressures, find themselves in trouble due to the global recession. That is what the Rudd Labor government are doing right now. We have heard from the member for Boothby today that he and his colleagues in the opposition will be supporting this bill. We welcome that support because it is an important initiative. Of course, there is always a ‘but’ with support from the opposition. It is unfortunate that the member for Boothby believes that this is somehow indicative of the Rudd Labor government accepting that job losses will occur and that there will be a rise in unemployment. Any developed country will tell you that, as a consequence of the global recession, there is going to be an increase in unemployment. For the member for Boothby to stand here today and say that the government have given up and accept unemployment once again shows how out of touch the opposition are. They have completely not grasped what the government have delivered already through our stimulus package in October last year and through the $42 billion Nation Building and Jobs Plan.

Combined, this is an economic stimulus package that will support jobs across those areas most in need of support—for example, in construction. Again, I take you back to the training organisations in my electorate who say that they have got chippies and carpenters who have been stood down because of the lack of work. They absolutely support the government’s initiative to build infrastructure in our schools and to build social housing. They support our white paper on homelessness and our commitment to build more emergency shelters so that there are fewer homeless people. These initiatives are welcomed by my community.

We heard the member for Boothby, Dr Southcott, refer to Anna Bligh, the Premier of Queensland, and her commitment to jobs. In contrast, the policy of the opposition leader in Queensland, Mr Springborg—come the election on Saturday—is to cut jobs and to cancel infrastructure projects going on around the state. It sounds a bit familiar—for a leader of the opposition in Queensland to have a policy of cutting jobs—when you consider what is happening in the Senate right now, where we have an opposition whose policy is to hold on to Work Choices and to oppose the Fair Work Bill because they want to be able to sack workers more easily. So the opposition’s position, both in Queensland and federally, is quite consistent. They support job cuts and they support the ability to sack workers easily. That is what we see from the opposition. In Queensland, we have seen the largest commitment to nation building and investment in infrastructure building. The Queensland government has committed extensively to roadworks, bridgeworks and infrastructure generally to support the state in the long term.

It is convenient for the opposition to refer to the Howard years and how many jobs were created in the Howard years. But, once again, they fail to acknowledge that the economy has significantly changed since 2007.

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