Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Okay, you had your go. Now it is my turn. At 31 December 2013, around 11 per cent of job seekers had been reported for noncompliance three or more times during the last 12 months. This accounted for 71 per cent of all noncompliance reports. This clearly depicts the need to implement stronger deterrents, particularly for those job seekers who take advantage of Australian taxpayers by repeatedly failing to comply with the guidelines of income support payments. These people should not be allowed to refuse a suitable job offer and to continue receiving welfare payments from the government. The only way to improve this bad behaviour is to ensure there are financial consequences for noncompliers, rather than simply letting them get away with not working, through the former government's penalty waiver system. The introduction of waiver provisions by the former government in 2009 has had a significant negative effect on the provision of this service, with 644 penalties applied for refusing work in 2008-09 compared with 1,718 in 2012-13. These are people who have been assessed and deemed capable of working, but are simply refusing to do so.

It is important to note that checks and balances will be applied by the Department of Human Services when determining whether a job seeker has failed to comply with income payment requirements. The department will continue to be required to talk to the job seeker, the job seeker's employment service provider and the employer who offered the work before imposing an eight-week serious-failure period. Also, before a decision maker determines that a job seeker has committed a serious failure due to persistent non-compliance, the decision maker must conduct a Comprehensive Compliance Assessment. These checks and balances will ensure the eight-week penalty does not impact on those job seekers who, despite their best efforts, cannot get work. It targets those who are offered suitable work but refuse to engage in that employment opportunity without a reasonable excuse. There is a clear expectation throughout Australia that to receive a taxpayer funded financial payment from the government unemployed people should be expected at all times to demonstrate that they are actively looking for work or undertaking activities to improve their employment prospects.

I was disappointed to note that Western Australia recorded the second highest number of people issued with an eight-week non-payment penalty for noncompliance from 1 July 2012 to 30 June 2013. During that period 4,642 penalties were issued compared with 930 in Tasmania, which recorded the lowest number. It was also disappointing to note that Western Australia recorded the third-highest number of no-show no-pay financial penalties. Although the amendments before the House today do not seek to change the no-show no-pay penalty, this framework for assessing noncompliance by the Department of Human Services is also important to note. The consequence of a no-show no-pay failure is the application of a penalty amount equivalent to one working day of a person's payment. This is applied if a job seeker, without a reasonable excuse: fails to attend an activity that they are required to attend on a particular day; fails to behave appropriately while participating in an activity; fails to attend a job interview; or intentionally acts in a manner during a job interview that may result in an offer of employment not being made. This penalty was issued in Western Australia 7,271 times during the 2012-13 financial year.

These statistics clearly show that non-compliance is happening far too often throughout Australia. The worst cases, of course, are those that are regularly issued with non-compliance penalties, but they simply have this waived due to the former government's weakening of rules regarding the application of penalties for serious failures. The Australian people expect their taxpayer dollars to go towards policy measures that improve our community and benefit Australia as a whole.

Debate interrupted.

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