Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the motion be amended to read—That the House:

(1) notes:

(a) the positive impact compulsory and voluntary income management is having on the wellbeing of families and children in Perth and the Kimberley in Western Australia;

(b) an independent evaluation of income management in Western Australia reported that income management had made a positive impact on the lives of women and children including increasing their ability to meet essential needs and save money;

(c) that a non discriminatory model of income management system has been rolled out in the Northern Territory to help children who are being neglected or are at risk of neglect;

(d) that more than 1,700 people have moved off income management across the Northern Territory including because they have found jobs and apprenticeships or improved their parenting skills; and

(e) that income management produces positive life impacts for individuals acquiring new skills through training and getting jobs;

(2) welcomes the Government’s decision to trial income management in other communities to help those families and individuals receiving welfare payments who:

(a) are identified as vulnerable by Centrelink social workers;

(b) are referred by child protection workers; or

(c) volunteer to participate to improve their ability to manage and save money and provide the essentials of life for their children; and

(3) calls for continued evaluation and monitoring of income management in the new and existing locations with a view to assisting further expansion for the benefit of vulnerable Australians—

I move In my last speech regarding these matters I spoke a great deal about Western Australia. I do not propose to do that tonight. The member for Durack and others from Western Australia can do that. It has been a long time since I have had anything to do with Western Australia. But in the conclusion of that speech I spoke about the income management and other welfare reforms which have been undertaken by this government. I spoke about their extension to other areas around Australia, in particular into my own community and I think that these reforms are critical but only if they are matched with opportunity. Specifically, I asked for them to be put into the community of Playford. I have been not only talking about this in parliament but also lobbying government ministers because I believe that while Playford, which incorporates the old city of Elizabeth and the old city of Munno Parra, has always been a great working-class community it has always been a community that has been buffeted by changes in the Australian economy, in particular the reduction of tariffs and the demolition of unskilled jobs. So we find that while the average unemployment rate across the country is 5.1 per cent, something we can all be proud of, the average rate across Playford is 12.7 per cent. In some suburbs it is as high as 20 per cent. We know that in some of these communities up to 48.2 per cent of the working age population is in receipt of some Centrelink benefit. We know that the average duration of unemployment is 54 weeks, as against the national average of 36 weeks. We know that all of this has a devastating impact on people's employment prospects, particularly in the new economy.

It is interesting to note that in Playford we used to have a problem with jobs as there were just not enough jobs. When I came out of university I ended up, as a university graduate, being a cleaner. I ended up working in warehouses. I ended up being a trolley collector. I ended up doing casual work of all shapes and sizes—and if I were doing that work then almost certainly I would have displaced someone with less education, someone who was less able to participate in the education system and in the economy.

We know that for such a long period people just did not have the opportunity to work. Of course, unemployment is the most destructive thing that you can do to a family. It is the most destructive thing that you can do to a community. We know that out of all of that has come the terrible blight of decades of unemployment. We have had intergenerational unemployment, simply families that could not get a start even after education and desperate attempts to find employment. Even after really trying hard, they could not find work and this led to all sorts of social problems.

The destruction of the family unit in many of these communities led to problems that were symptoms of this economic and social breakdown but ended up being problems in their own right. So we know that many of these communities need both specific action as to and specific changes to our welfare system. They need the linking of income management with the social security system and the child protection system. We know we have to interlink those systems so that they effectively manage people's incomes and effectively give people the assistance that they need to stabilise their households and, from there, gain employment, education and participation in the broader community. But we also know that we have to provide not just training but the prospect of a job at the end of it.

Governments can do things and I think in this area we have done a great job in terms of income management. Some five of 10 communities around the country are getting income protection and the others of the 10 are getting special programs to intervene to help teenage mothers and the like. But we are not at the end of it. A job is the most valuable thing. A government can take action but we need to provide work. That is why it is so good to see that in my community Holden's have provided a guarantee of 20 jobs off the line to long-term unemployed people who have completed a three-month, five-day-a-week training course. This training course is designed specifically to lift people out of unemployment and into work. It is designed specifically to intervene in people's lives and give them personal presentation and literacy and numeracy skills. It is designed basically around employability. I think that is critical, along with the government's welfare reforms, to sending the message that, although we expect more of people in this new economy and we are not prepared to leave people behind anymore after two decades of economic change, we are prepared to provide opportunity. Nearly all of the money to run these employability courses, these pre-employment courses, comes from federal programs.

They need employers to engage and we have seen both Holden and Woolworths provide these opportunities, provide this work. We have seen Holden now running a second program again some 40 places in the program with 20 employment opportunities. We have also seen Woolworths at Blakes Crossing embark on the Fresh 40 Program, which is all about providing people who have been unemployed and giving them the employability skills so that they can get to work.

Welfare to work is about many things. It is about the government's changes, particularly around income management; particularly around team mothers. But it is also about embracing communities. It is about linking reform to opportunity. That is the critical part that has been missing in previous attempts. We have heard a lot about these matters over the years. We have seen many shock jocks say that if only people did a bit more or knocked on a few more doors they would get work. We have seen a lot of people frankly make excuses for those not seeking work. Neither approach is responsible. It is not responsible for community members; it is certainly not responsible for government members of MPs to advocate. Basically we need both reform which requires more of people and asks more of people in certain instances and it requires that they have stable households. It requires that they send their kids to school; it requires that they participate in the community the same way we would expect anybody to participate. It also requires the government and business and others to come up with the path to employment; to come up with a path out of the mire of intergenerational unemployment which can be so heartbreaking and so difficult and you can only feel for those people who often try. They try and they try and sometimes they get casual work and they just lift themselves out of these problems and something comes along, they lose their job and they are back on the heap.

We do not want to see that happening. We want to make sure that people are lifted out of poverty and lifted out of unemployment. We can only do that if we provide opportunity. As I said, for so long in these communities opportunity was absent. It is now the opposite. We now find that employers cannot fill vacancies; we find, in particular, employers who have skilled vacancies unable to find employment. We have to set up a system where we retrain those who are currently in employment. Retrain them to take on the work that is provided in the Defence industry; retrain them to work in the mines and in the civil construction area where there are going to be so many high paid opportunities and we will kick ourselves if we miss them. We need to retrain the unemployed—this group of people who have been left behind in previous economic growth; left behind after a decade of indifference by the coalition government, to these communities interests. We need to retrain them to take the unskilled jobs or the semi-skilled jobs that will be left behind in this great transition that we are going through. This great change in our terms of trade; this great economic bounty that will hit us which is presenting all sorts of challenges in all sorts of areas but one of them is this area and I think all of these reforms that the government has undertaken and which I personally lobbied for are the beginning of that transformation and the beginning of hope coming to these communities. I commend it to the house.'

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