Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be speaking on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015. The measures in this bill continue the Abbott government's attack on young Australians by seeking to introduce a one-month wait period for Newstart allowance. This bill seeks to give young job seekers under 25 nothing to live on for a month. It represents, yet again, an abandonment of young Australians by this Liberal government, and it reflects the continued unfairness at the heart of this government. It makes clear that this budget is just as unfair as the last.

Labor will oppose this latest cut to young Australians, just as we opposed last year's attempt to leave young job seekers with nothing to live on for six months. Whether it is one month or six, Labor will not support a measure which pushes young people into poverty and hardship. Leaving young job seekers with nothing to live on for a month is cruel, unfair and unjustified. What does this government honestly expect these young people to live on for a month? How will they buy food to eat? How will they pay their rent? How will they pay their train fares?

All of our citizens should be afforded a basic standard of living, no matter how old they are. It is a fundamental pillar of the social contract in Australia. Australians do not want to live in a country that abandons young people who have fallen on hard times. Labor knows young people want to work. They want to be able to find work. They do not want to be on welfare. They want to take responsibility for their lives. Young people want to be independent. They want the self-respect that a job can give—to know that they are making a contribution to our society. If we cut this money from young job seekers, we rob them of the ability to look for work. We rob them of the opportunity for self-respect. Young job seekers will be too busy trying to work out how on earth they will live and how they will pay their rent and eat, not how they will look for work opportunities.

The Minister for Social Services cannot say how this cruel cut will help young people find a job. Over the last 12 months, the Abbott government have argued unsuccessfully that a six-month wait period for unemployment benefits is essential. That is what they told us last year. They had no evidence that this would help young people, whether it is one month or six months. What evidence do the government point to to put this proposal forward?

According to the former Minister for Social Services, New Zealand has a one-month wait period. The former minister basically argued for much of last year that if it was good for New Zealand then it must be good for Australia. Of course, we found out that it simply was not true. New Zealand does not have a mandatory one-month waiting period, and it never did. The former minister just made it up. He made it up because there is no evidence that making young people wait for Newstart will help them get work. It was nothing more than a cynical attempt by this government to try to con the Australian people into accepting its harsh plan to leave young job seekers with nothing to live on for six months.

And the current Minister for Social Services is no better. He prefers to demonise and belittle young Australians, to create the outrageous fiction that somehow welfare is a 'career choice', to use his words—as if young Australians desperate for work around the country would rather be on Newstart than have a job; as if the young Australians attending job interview after job interview, only to be told they are unsuccessful, need the added stigma of being labelled a dole bludger by this Minister for Social Services! The measures in this bill reek of the divisive politics that are the hallmark of this government, and Labor will not have a bar of it.

But it is not just Labor that thinks this measure is cruel and unfair. Most major welfare organisations across the country have condemned the policy. The National Welfare Rights Network said the one-month wait period:

… will place young people in severe financial hardship, leaving them without food, medicines, money for job search and rent. No income means no income — whether it's for six months or four weeks. There is no place in our social security system for such a harmful approach. The Parliament should reject this plan outright.

John Falzon, CEO of St Vincent de Paul, said:

This change is a clear admission of the cruelty of this measure without actually abandoning it.

ACOSS, the Australian Council of Social Service, said:

The Government now proposes to reduce the six month wait for unemployment payments for young people to one month, yet neither policy has been justified, especially at a time when unemployment is rising.

This last point is particularly important. The government's own budget papers forecast unemployment to peak at 6½ per cent. This just shows how harsh and unfair this measure is and how bad it will be for the economy.

On top of that, we know youth unemployment is around double the national average—the highest in a decade. In some parts of Australia, one in five young people cannot find a job. According to the Brotherhood of St Laurence, the number of young people facing long-term unemployment in Australia has tripled since the global financial crisis. In 2008 there were 19,500 long-term unemployed young people aged 15 to 24 in Australia, compared to 56,800 in 2014. Kate Carnell, the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said:

… unless the youth unemployment issue is addressed—and it will need to be addressed quite aggressively … we will end up with a generation of young people on the fringes of the economy.

But this Liberal government has no plan for jobs and no plan to deal with the youth unemployment crisis. Its preferred approach is to demonise and belittle young job seekers who would love nothing more than to get a job and to get ahead in life.

This bill also seeks to change the eligibility age for Newstart, pushing job seekers who are between the ages of 22 and 24 onto the lower youth allowance. This is a cut of around $48 a week—$48 a week this government wants to take off these young people, around $2,500 a year, a very significant amount of money for a young person. Labor will oppose this measure, as we have done for the last year, because it is wrong. We will oppose the pauses to indexation changes of income free areas. These changes too will hurt the most vulnerable people on income support payments, and over time these changes will only hurt these vulnerable people more. We will also oppose the measures in the bill that apply a one-week waiting period to all working age payments. This is nothing but a shameful cut by the government that will leave people on income support with nothing for a week.

There is one measure in this bill that we will not oppose. We are prepared to make sensible decisions when they are not fundamentally unfair. In fact, following last year's budget, Labor agreed to around $20 billion in savings. In this year's budget, Labor so far has announced support for more than $2 billion in savings. This shows that we are prepared to be fiscally responsible while making sure that we support those who are most in need. We understand just how important it is to be both responsible and socially just. Labor will support the ceasing of the low income supplement in this bill. We call on the government to split the bill when it gets to the Senate, separating out the low-income supplement measure so this can be agreed. If the government is not willing to split the bill, Labor will oppose it in its entirety.

This Liberal government is knowingly pushing young people into poverty as a result of these measures. We will always do everything we can to protect the most vulnerable Australians. At a time when we see the US President, Barack Obama, talking about poverty and inequality being the 'core challenge of our time', this Australian Liberal government is attacking the most vulnerable people in this legislation, with cruel and unfair cuts that will diminish the living standards of young people, drive our young Australians into poverty and tear up the social contract that has served this country so well for so long. Labor will continue to oppose measures that push young people into poverty. We will stand up for these young people by opposing these cruel and unfair cuts, just as we did the six-month wait for Newstart.

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