Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Social Security Amendment (Liquid Assets Waiting Period) Bill 2009. This is an interesting bill. It is most interesting to reflect that what we are doing with this bill—and, indeed, the opposition has no objection to this bill—is overturning a Howard government savings measure and restoring the pre-1997 threshold amounts. So people who are applying for income support and have liquid assets will now be able to claim those benefits at the pre-1997 level thresholds. There is no accident about this. Twelve years ago we had a government which was dedicated to ensuring that all Australians had a job or had access to a job. Now, 12 years down the track, we are returning to the pre-1997 level thresholds because unemployment is on the rise and people are losing their jobs. It is not something that we enjoy—it is not something that I enjoy—but it is happening.

It is a strange and unusual argument that the member for Petrie puts when she talks about these dramatic rises in unemployment and says, ‘There is a global financial crisis; the whole world is going through this. Everybody is doing it; therefore we have to do it.’ My answer to that is: under the former government, Australia was one of the world’s leading economies. We did not follow other economies into the Asian financial crisis. We did not follow them into the risky and unusual financial arrangements that we saw with the subprime lending crisis in the United States. The former Howard government, with the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and ASIC, regulated to ensure that we had better and proper financial arrangements in place, which prevented many of those things happening in our country. This was not an accident; it was the result of good management and good policy.

What we see with this bill is that we now have to prepare for many more people claiming Newstart allowance, youth allowance, sickness allowance and Austudy. All members in this House would agree that this is far from a good development. Nobody should be trumpeting that this bill is some sort of triumph of government policy. No government should be coming in here today with the sort of divisive rant that we heard from the member for Petrie, suggesting we now have better economic policies, at a time when, clearly, we have people flocking to claim government benefits because they have lost their jobs.

What we did not hear from the member for Petrie—and what I suspect we will not hear from members opposite—is how we address the causes of this problem, not how we address the symptoms. What we are doing here with this legislation, which amends the Social Security Act, is addressing the symptoms of a broader and bigger problem, not the causes. Indeed, every time you hear a member opposite attempting to talk about what has caused this problem, we hear nothing but a blame game. We hear that something or someone else is responsible for what is happening—but not them. They are the government of Australia. It is their responsibility to put in place policies to ensure that people can find a job.

Today we are seeing the highest level of youth unemployment since 2001—a return to the days when we lost whole generations of young people to unemployment. When I left university there simply were not enough jobs for the graduates who left university. You could expect not to get a job and not to get a good salary for some time. We are now seeing a return to that. So it is with great trepidation that we support this measure before us today that says we have to return to a pre-1997 measure of welfare delivery because people are no longer able to access employment.

Within the member for Petrie’s submission, we did not hear about things that would help young people get a job. We did not hear anything about the ‘how’—how we will ensure that better employment conditions and circumstances return to our economy. The member for Petrie spoke of the barriers but then did not outline any barriers. I can tell you some real barriers to employment. A barrier to employment is labour costs. If you do not want to affect the wages of workers, which we do not during this time, then labour costs relate to things like payroll taxes, the cost of putting on extra staff or of keeping extra staff, and the definition of a small business—what level you set it at so that you generate the ability of an employer to employ more people instead of fewer.

They are the kinds of things that the government ought to be talking about and thinking about to prevent what we are doing here today, to prevent a return to the situation of 12 years ago. We should not have a triumphant entry into this place today with this bill and this trumpeting of the Rudd government’s mantra. This bill brings a very sad moment. There is nothing for anybody here to be triumphant about. It is unfortunate that we are now going to be seeing more Newstart allowance recipients, more youth allowance recipients, more sickness allowance recipients, more Austudy allowance recipients and more people seeking unemployment benefits, simply because there are no jobs to be had.

We see the government pressing ahead with their industrial relations changes even though the world economy has changed. If things have changed so dramatically on the employment front that we now have to change the Social Security Act, then why would we stick with a pre-election policy on industrial relations? Clearly the ground has shifted so much. Clearly the employment environment has shifted so much. Of course, we know that they are pursuing an ideological agenda, and we can see in this bill before us today that they really do not have a lot of sympathy for the very people who are going to be the unfortunate victims of this crisis.

I think, Mr Deputy Speaker, you will agree with me that if you do not have a plan to address the causes of this crisis, if you simply say, ‘Everybody’s doing it; the whole world is in a recession and therefore we will just have to go along with them,’ then you really do not have much hope of pulling yourself out of it. We accept that there will be a need for the measures within this bill in the next few years. We reluctantly accept that. It is not an instinct that ought to come to any of us easily. However, we do highlight that the main reason that we are facing this crisis of unemployment—the lack of jobs for young people now—is the fact that employers all around the country are laying off parts of their workforce in anticipation of a further downturn.

These are the things that the government should be addressing. They should be addressing how to get people jobs. The answer is not going to come, as the member for Petrie suggested, from a politician in Queensland suggesting that she will just create jobs. The Premier of Queensland has given a commitment that there will be jobs. Well, why didn’t we think of that! If all a government had to do to create jobs was to say, ‘We’ll create jobs,’ then we would create the jobs. Everyone in this place knows that governments do not create jobs. It is business, the private sector, which generates the employment capacity that drives down unemployment in this country. The member for Petrie says, ‘Why don’t we simply create jobs?’ It is because governments do not create jobs, and the government will not be able to create those jobs to save us from this emerging unemployment crisis.

It is with great trepidation that I say that we will accept the need for this measure, but we do not accept that governments should simply be spending dollars on things such as social infrastructure when we have an economic crisis. That is another fact that the member for Petrie overlooked. She trumpeted the Rudd government’s spending on schools. Independently of this debate, spending on schools is a worthy exercise. But when you are trumpeting it as a response to the greatest economic challenge that this country has faced, it does not stack up. You can spend dollars in a way that generates more than a dollar of economic return for every dollar spent. It does not mean that you should not spend money on education. But if you are saying that that is your prime response to the greatest economic challenge of our age, you will find that all the spending in the world on things that do not produce a dollar for dollar return or a dollar for better return will not produce the desired effect. And it will not produce the jobs that they are talking about. That is why the government are hesitant to state the number of jobs that this measure will create. We know that governments will not create the jobs that we need. Indeed, that is why we are seeing the emergence of bills such as the Social Security Amendment (Liquid Assets Waiting Period) Bill 2009.

Here is the Rudd government saying, ‘Let us return to a pre-Howard era policy; let’s go back 12 years; let’s go back to the thresholds of 12 years ago.’ Why are we going back? Why have the government suddenly become conservative in their policy? The conservatism is because we are going back to a situation in which we will have a million Australians out of work. That is where we are going back to. That is why we have to make these preparations. That is why we are having to take these measures in this place today. Nobody here enjoys that; nobody here would seek that situation. But it is coming and the government, instead of focusing on measures that will create employment, generate jobs and produce a real impact in the economy, are seeking to spend money on political and social measures in their own interests.

It is with great trepidation that we will not be opposing this bill. But we would seek from the government a better answer in terms of what they are going to do about jobs and, in particular, how they are going to reduce the highest levels of youth unemployment we have seen since 2001—which will unfortunately rise if nothing is done.

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