Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

Centrelink is going to have dedicated case workers for the most disadvantaged jobseekers and will work closely and in many cases under the same roof with financial counselling services, drug and alcohol counselling services, housing and homelessness services and other types of services to help long-term unemployed back into the workforce by overcoming the issues that have kept them unemployed.

Case coordination will allow Centrelink case workers to work more closely with jobseekers. For example, instead of a jobseeker turning up and talking to any person who happens to be on the counter, they will have a dedicated case worker. After all that time that they may have been too embarrassed to tell Centrelink that they cannot read and write well enough to fill in an application form a job, they will now have one person who they can talk to who can help them access one of the 30,000 literacy and numeracy places that we have funded in this budget. A homeless jobseeker might get the help that they need to stabilise their housing so that they have a place to have a shower and a good sleep and a place where employers can phone them so that they can get back into the workforce.

Non-government organisations will be working with us to identify the most important local changes that they can make. We have a local solutions fund of $25 million to support those local changes. The Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs talked about changes for teenage parents and jobless families. We want those teenage parents to reach year 12 or get an equivalent qualification. We want their kids to be school ready. We want welfare recipients to be able to keep more of what they earn, because we know that part-time work is often a stepping stone back into full-time employment and we want to make that part-time work count.

These are just a few of the measures that the government introduced in the most recent budget to target the most disadvantaged jobseekers. In mining boom mark II we cannot allow whole regions to be left behind as they were during mining boom mark I. We have heard very little from the Leader of the Opposition on these new measures since the budget two weeks ago. He continues to be all opposition and no leader.

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