Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in relation to the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2011. In doing so I will raise several issues of concern to my community, some of which I believe have broader national implications. But I cannot resist commenting at least a little on the member for Fowler's contribution. He is a member who I find to be very thoughtful in his comments, as a general rule, and I agree with a lot of what he said, particularly about the need to keep young people engaged. I take great exception to his assertions that the Howard government did nothing in relation to skills and training, but that is a debate for another day.

It is worth noting that the Rudd government actually watered down the mutual obligation in 2008, introducing their 'no show no pay' compliance model, which saw job seekers docked a day's welfare for failing to attend interviews. It is all very well to have a soft heart in this place, but there is no excuse for a government having a soft head. I am afraid it was a soft-headed response by the Rudd government. The high rate of missed appointments is a clear indication of the failure of Labor's compliance regime, which I do not believe provided sufficient disincentive for many people. In March 2011 there were 179,000 people classed as long-term unemployed in Australia, and in the past 12 months leading up to that period approximately two million people missed job interviews. I think that is a fair reflection that there was nothing to ensure the compliance of those people who were meant to attend activities with the providers.

I have spoken in the past about the need to reform our welfare system, particularly as it relates to young people in receipt of unemployment benefits. I do get the chance to speak to many young people in my community, as I am sure many other members do, particularly in our secondary schools, and I always encourage them to aim high to achieve their full potential and to never sell themselves short. Just because they come from a regional community, there is no reason to sell themselves short and think that some things are beyond them in their future career prospects. I also tell them that they really should treat unemployment as being a situation of last resort for them, in terms of receiving unemployment benefits. There is no-one that I ever speak to in secondary school that regards being long-term unemployed as a career goal, so I think there is something that goes wrong from those mid-secondary school years to when the young people are actually seeking work. That is where we need to make sure that, as a government, we have a firm hand but a supporting system. That is a critical issue for us: to help young people in those very difficult transitional years as they move out of secondary school and into the workforce.

I am concerned that for some young people who may go off the rails, for whatever reasons, the option of receiving unemployment benefits has become too easy. I support an overhaul of the unemployment benefits system, with a view to making sure that people who can work are actually working. That is not intended as some sort of punishment to these people in any way whatsoever. I believe we do these young people a huge disservice if we allow them to remain on unemployment benefits without ensuring that there are some very stringent obligations on them to make a contribution to our community.

Programs like Work for the Dole and Green Corps have been successful in many parts of Gippsland in providing opportunities for young unemployed people to develop a work ethic, to develop new skills and to make a meaningful contribution to our community. They should not be seen as any form of punishment. I would advocate that we find a new name for the Work for the Dole program, something that is far more positive and encourages people to feel that they are actually making a contribution to the community rather than it being some sort of punitive measure.

There are, however, concerns with the program and concerns with the compliance regime. I have had the opportunity to speak to coordinators from different agencies who are involved in these types of work activity programs and work based training programs. They have met with me and described the problems that they are having in making sure that long-term unemployed people are meeting their obligations. In a typical case, a training allowance may be provided for someone to work in some sort of Green Corps type program, and they will be given clothes and suitable equipment to participate in that program. Sometimes there is some financial incentive involved. The problem starts if they turn up on the first day but on subsequent days they simply do not turn up and participate at all in the activity they are meant to be participating in. The problem continues when the agencies submit to Centrelink a participation report and Centrelink does not actually breach the people involved; there are no sanctions applied to them.

I can understand the situation from the side of the Centrelink staff faced with a disgruntled client, someone who is making all sorts of claims as to why they could not reasonably attend that activity or work training program. It is probably easier in many cases for the Centrelink staff to simply wave it through and allow the person to not be breached. But it goes to the core of what we are talking about here today in terms of the compliance measures.

There are people out there right now who are taking the Australian taxpayers for a ride. This type of rorting of the system has to stop. We need to set higher standards of workforce participation. In that sense, I do support the new compliance legislation before the House this evening. In her second reading speech, the Minister for Employment Participation said:

As soon as Centrelink is advised that a job seeker has missed an appointment with their employment services provider, or if the provider believes that the job seeker has become disengaged from an activity they are supposed to be participating in, Centrelink will suspend the job seeker’s payment.

That is a positive step. I know there are a range of issues to do with what are reasonable excuses and ensuring that the most vulnerable people are not adversely impacted unnecessarily by this new approach from the government, but I certainly support the general thrust of the new compliance regime.

I would like to note a submission from Mission Australia to the inquiry into this legislation. Mission Australia supported the proposed amendments, saying that they 'are critical to ensure the compliance regime is not too lenient and has a more immediate effect,' the point being that, unless there is a direct and obvious effect on the job seeker at the time of the actual breach, the impact of such sanctions is likely to be diminished.

The Mission Australia submission also highlights the high number of participation reports that are being overturned by Centrelink. That is something I referred to earlier. The majority of participation reports are overturned on 'reasonable excuse' grounds. Around 20 per cent of the reasonable excuses upheld by Centrelink were on the grounds of a medical reason where specific evidence was not provided. That goes again to the core of the issue: we really must be expecting some level of credibility to the excuses being put forward, and these reasonable excuses must be legitimate if we are to ensure that people are meeting their obligations.

I would like to stress that, in the comments I am making tonight, I am not seeking to typecast people on unemployment benefits simply as dole bludgers just because they are not in full-time employment or gainfully employed in the community. For many people, it is a source of great embarrassment. There is financial, social and emotional difficulty associated for those who are genuinely unemployed. But we do have to provide additional motivation for those people in our community who simply refuse to comply with their obligations. I believe that a new form of mutual obligation is necessary. I understand the government has made some announcements in the budget. For my liking, they simply do not go far enough. I believe that, if you are fit and able to work, then after a period of between three and six months of being unemployed we really need to make sure that you are actually doing some sort of community based project where you will have the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the community in which you live.

There is an unlimited amount of work that could be done in our community through a range of community projects like Work for the Dole or Green Corps. Look at any coastal community. There are a number of things that you could be doing, such as foreshore reparation works, rubbish removal, improving community halls and sporting facilities and even helping older people to remain in their homes longer. There are a whole range of tasks that are available and out there in the community. People could learn new skills and participate in these tasks, even after they have only been in receipt of unemployment benefits for a comparatively short time.

I believe that even in that short period of time, three to six months, there is a real impact on the morale of the person involved. They can get into poor habits in terms of their work ethic and end up being disconnected from the community in which they live. So I do not think we are doing anyone any favours by just handing out unemployment benefits without some reasonable expectation that the recipients will then make a contribution to the society that has provided them.

There are also sections of my community where we are now faced with the entrenched welfare dependency problem of second and third generation welfare recipients. If you have never seen someone get out of bed and go to work, if you have never experienced the discipline of providing for your own family, if you have never felt the pride and growth in self-esteem which comes from making a contribution to the community and if you have never seen anyone in your immediate family doing that either, it is very difficult for you to break out of the welfare cycle. I believe that we need to do more in this place—and in that regard I welcome this new compliance regime—to encourage that work ethic, particularly amongst the families in my community which have had such a reliance on welfare over a long period of time.

Passive welfare really does destroy lives and I do not think we need to look any further than the Indigenous community in Gippsland. Too many people in that community have been receiving benefits for many years without any expectation whatsoever of doing some work in return. I think we really need to understand that the issues facing Aboriginal families in Australia do not reside purely in the Northern Territory or other remote areas. The passive welfare system that has developed over many years—most of it well-intentioned, but unfortunately poorly directed—has destroyed families in my community. Gippsland right now has many young people growing up in quite hopeless environments. I believe that paid employment is the way out of poverty for these people and that the decency of a job leads to a wide range of very positive outcomes.

The issues I am talking about that are facing the Indigenous people in my community are centred around health, education and jobs. It is a vicious circle if any one of these boxes is not ticked. We need to ensure that, at a very early age, our Aboriginal children are being well looked after. Healthy kids who are well looked after at home go on to do well at school, they go on to enjoy their education and they go on to lead successful lives. It is easy to say that; it is very hard to provide that in every local community.

On the flip side, there are children who witness violence or abuse, who are neglected in some way or who are not properly checked by doctors or nurses at an early age and develop health problems. These children are starting behind the eight ball when it comes to the education sector, so naturally they do not get the opportunity to develop the skills required for them to go on into the workforce.

It is an enormous challenge for us to break that cycle of welfare dependency in our Aboriginal community and we need to keep working very hard with the service providers to make sure that we have individual families taking responsibility and helping these children achieve their full potential. We can run all the programs we want—and governments from both sides of politics have tried many programs—but, at the grassroots level, the people themselves have to want to make some changes.

There is some terrific work being done in my community, particularly in Morwell, Sale, Bairnsdale, Lake Tyers and Lakes Entrance, where there are elders in the community who are doing a power of work. But in many cases I fear they are swimming against the tide. I have had the opportunity in recent times to participate in an activity at Lake Tyers Mission, where there has been a fishing competition. It was designed to get young kids together with their families to participate in a good, friendly, healthy outdoor activity without any alcohol and without any pressure whatsoever being placed on the community. It was a great event and it helped to bring everyone together to start thinking about what we can do to provide a more functional community throughout Gippsland. Many of the primary schools and sporting clubs in my electorate are working overtime to engage with the local Aboriginal community as much as possible. We need to break down those barriers, to provide opportunities and to make sure the Aboriginal community is involved in everything that we do in Gippsland.

The government, to its credit, has funded a major new childcare and kindergarten facility in Bairnsdale which should assist, I believe, in getting young children ready for school—to help send them on their way and make the most positive step possible. At the moment we have too many young Aboriginal kids who are starting their prep school already behind. They are already a year or two behind their counterparts in the classroom. Unfortunately they get disenchanted and too many of them drop out of the school system as young as 10 or 12 years old. As I said, we are making some improvements and many people are committed to the cause.

I accept that there are no easy answers. If there were easy answers, these situations would have been fixed many years ago. But I want to bring these issues to the attention of the House and to make the point that the urban or regional Indigenous experience in Australia is, in many ways, as perilous as that of the more remote communities that we hear so much about and which attract a lot of the media attention. I think we need to do a lot better to make sure that our Aboriginal communities are engaged in community life. In particular, I believe there is an opportunity for us to work much more closely with our sporting clubs. People from those communities often excel at sporting activities and that provides a bridge for them to get more involved in mainstream activities. I believe very strongly in local solutions to local problems. I think the opportunities are there for us to work in this place for the betterment of all people in our community, particularly those Aboriginal members of our community who are falling so far behind in Gippsland at the moment.

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