Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2011. Last night in his budget speech the Treasurer talked about jobs, workforce participation and getting for people what the Prime Minister has often described as the benefit and dignity of work. I would describe it as self-esteem and self-belief; that is what it is about. Getting a person a job is the best way to redistribute wealth in this country. The old-fashioned notions that you engage in some sort of Marxist or communistic redistribution of wealth are well and truly gone out of the pantheon of responsible political parties in this country. The idea is to get a person a job. If you create jobs you create wealth, you create financial security and you create self-esteem, not just in the household but in the next generation. Intergenerational poverty is attacked by getting a person a job. Sometimes you need to be tough; you need to be a person who gives someone a prod. A government sometimes needs to do that. Sometimes governments need to express that tough love. Sometimes we need to actually provide an incentive for people to break out of the cycle of the despair and depression of unemployment.

Last night the Treasurer talked about creating infrastructure projects that will create jobs in my home state of Queensland. This bill is about making sure that people will work in those types of projects—projects that will create important wealth across Queensland through the mining boom and across the agricultural sector, in retail and construction and all across South-East Queensland and Queensland generally. What we saw last night was the creation of incentives to work, a carrot-and-stick approach that will deliver a new workplace development fund to create 130,000 new training places over four years. In my home state of Queensland we will see trade apprentice income bonuses for 95,800 Queenslanders, who will receive a $1,700 benefit. In my electorate, 2,786 people will enjoy the benefit of that sort of trade bonus income assistance.

You will see incentives for employment, and that is what we are talking about here in this legislation—incentives to help people to get jobs. Obviously in my electorate we will need that help as we recover from the flood, but we will see that help across Queensland. In Queensland, 48,887 of the very long-term unemployed—people who have been without work for two years or more—will get help to find work and prepare for work, with an additional $2.7 million from 2012 to 2015 to support local employment services as well. We are going to see that across Queensland and elsewhere, and we are going to see that as we get these people back into employment.

Unemployment in this country is 4.9 per cent. In America it is about 8.8 per cent and across the European zone it is about 9.9 per cent. As the Treasurer said in a speech I heard not more than 10 or 15 minutes ago, we do not have a person to spare. So legislation of the sort before us today does fit in with the narrative we are talking about in creating wealth, creating jobs, creating productivity growth and making sure that economic development is spread across the whole economy, particularly in flood affected areas of Queensland.

This bill represents another example of how the federal Labor government is helping unemployed people back to work. I grew up in a household in which my dad was a cleaner at the meatworks and my mum was a shop assistant, so I knew how important a job was in what is traditionally described as a working-class family in Ipswich. I know the importance of hard work to self-esteem, to career possibilities, to being able to fulfil potential, to provide for your family the kind of financial security it needs and to build a worthwhile life of not just affluence but also security. Employment is absolutely essential to creating a productive nation and to supporting families, and to give a firm direction to job seekers is absolutely critical.

This bill implements our election commitment to introduce tougher rules for job seekers. Announced on 11 August 2010 as part of our program was a policy named Modernising Australia's Welfare System. The amendments in this bill will improve the current job seeker compliance framework by providing additional incentives for job seekers to engage with their employment service providers and to participate fully in activities designed to improve their employment prospects.

We have seen over and over how long-term unemployment can destroy self-esteem, create intergenerational poverty and cause whole communities to go into despair, to go into activities of crime and to have poor health outcomes and regression. When communities are not healthy in their economic prospect, people get an unhealthy physical outlook on life and engage in all kinds of nefarious behaviour. So getting a person a job is a good way not just to reduce criminal activities but also to improve the prospects of regional and rural areas as well as urban areas across the country.

Too many Australians who are without a job and are capable of work rely on unemployment benefits or the like. At a time when our economy is going from strength to strength, particularly enjoying the benefit of the mining boom, we need to make sure we can get people into employment. Talking to manufacturing industries in my electorate, in Ipswich and Somerset, as well as people in the metalworks industries across my electorate and big employers like Swift Australia at Dinmore, where there is one of the biggest meatworks across the country, I hear them crying out for more and more employment. We are seeing more and more people going from, say, the Bremer Institute of TAFE, before they have completed their TAFE courses, onto the mining sector. So we are creating these workforce shortages, scattered around economies west, south and north of Brisbane.

This government is determined to make sure that unemployed people get back in the workforce and can be engaged as productive members of our society. People who have jobs are more likely to engage in civic society. They are more likely to be involved in sporting groups and RSLs. They are more likely to be involved in church and charitable work. They are more likely to help the homeless. They are more likely to be on P&F associations. They are more likely to participate in civic life, because they feel they have a stake in it. So this is good not just for social inclusion but for social equity and for the benefit of our economic development. At times it means that we have to be disciplined; we have to be tough, and the government takes a parens patriae approach when it comes to this. It is a case of adopting a fairly paternalistic approach, but it is necessary. This bill will introduce suspension of payments for job seekers following an initial failure to attend an appointment or, in some circumstances, an activity such as a Work for the Dole scheme. As soon as the job seeker agrees to attend this appointment, their payment will be restored with full back pay. All job seekers will be required to attend a rescheduled appointment regardless of their reason for missing the first appointment. If a job seeker attends the rescheduled appointment, they will not be penalised. In this way, job seekers will learn to understand the importance of taking personal measures to ensure that they find work. When they get a job, if the job starts at 9 am, they cannot just say, 'I'm going to turn up at 10 or 11 am.' What employer would want that? They need discipline in their lives, and the discipline that they will gain in attending these rescheduled appointments will be very important for them. In this way, job seekers will be encouraged to actively look for future employment prospects and will get used to the idea of fulfilling their obligations.

Should a job seeker not attend a rescheduled appointment, payment will again be suspended. But this time, if they do not have a reasonable excuse for missing the appointment, they will incur a reconnection failure fee and lose payment for each day from the second missed appointment until they reconnect. And they will not receive any back pay. That is the stick approach. There is punishment. Reasonable-excuse provisions are going to be tightened so that if a job seeker has a reasonable excuse for not attending an appointment or activity it will not be accepted if they could have given advance notice of their inability to attend. In this way, job seekers will be under no illusions as to the expectation of the federal Labor government that they need to take responsibility in securing employment. In this way, the self-esteem, the pride or the dignity—whatever you want to call it—of work and the value of contributing to the ongoing prosperity of their country and their respective communities can become an important part of their lives. That will be good for them and good for their children as well. If they have not experienced it in the past, it will be good for them to pass on that message—as employers will, no doubt, when they ultimately find a job.

We cannot afford lost opportunities in terms of employment. In an electorate like mine, which includes the two fastest growing areas in south-east Queensland, Somerset at 4.2 per cent growth last year and Ipswich at 3.5 per cent growth, we cannot afford to have people not in employment. The development of the whole corridor west of Brisbane is crucial, and jobs created locally, with people trained and employed locally, are absolutely vital.

This approach involves us engaging in what I would have to describe as some pretty tough big brother tactics. But that is absolutely necessary. We know that job opportunities are crucial. We need to tell people that. We need to tell that to our children and our neighbours and our friends. As someone who has employed dozens and dozens of people in his working life, I can tell you that it is extremely important that you get the right person for the job and that that person knows that they have to turn up on time, be there, work and contribute. This approach looks tough. It is tough. It should be tough, because it will benefit the Australian economy. I commend the legislation to the House.

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