Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the member for Blair's motion. It is a timely motion and, in fact, one that is well overdue. I have met with representatives from various organisations, both legal services and advocacy organisations, advocating for the particular position and needs of people with disabilities who are seeking employment.

I must admit that I was shocked to learn of the very low proportion of people with disabilities currently in full-time and meaningful employment, but I was more shocked to learn that there were not any strong national strategies in place to change this.

One of the things that could have been done as a minimum for some time, and this motion does allude to it, is starting to set targets, or at least reporting targets, within public services and elsewhere for the employment of people with disabilities. Much is made by both the current government and previous governments when it comes to attacking welfare payments about the need to move people into meaningful employment, but one can only have the stick approach if one is serious about strategies for finding employment for people with disabilities. To date that has not really been the case. So requirements to report would be a very good start.

I might suggest, too, that it is not just this category of employee, this category of people, who are going underrepresented in our work force and for which there should be reporting targets certainly in the public service. There is also another group of people who are highly represented in my electorate—people who have come here from refugee and migrant backgrounds. They maybe first generation having arrived here only a couple of years ago, or they may have arrived some time before that, potentially even generations ago. One of the things we are finding is that the unemployment and underemployment statistics amongst this group are particularly high as well. We are finding for example that if you have come here from a non-English speaking country and you have a tertiary degree or higher skills and qualifications, you are more than twice as likely to find yourself in a low-paid job compared with someone who has come here from an English speaking background. So underemployment is an issue, as is unemployment.

I would hope that if the government is serious about tackling the issue of underrepresentation in our work force we can go beyond this issue and take this perhaps as a template to look at other groups that are currently going unrepresented or underrepresented. But, more importantly, we are going to need more than reporting targets for people with disabilities. It is probably time for the government to consider binding employment targets within the public service and also to look at the government's procurement policy, because there is much more that can be done and it is far too often the case that when it comes to budget time the government is ready and willing to wield the axe and to rewrite the disability support pension impairment tables, for example, and to look at things that can be done to save money, yet there is not a corresponding national strategy for employment of people with disabilities. That is something that needs to change. We also need a national strategy for the employment of people who are underrepresented coming here from CALD communities and from other backgrounds as well.

I do commend the member for Blair for moving his motion, but there is much more that the government could be doing if it was serious about this issue, and it is time to take public service employment strategies and procurement policies much more seriously.

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