Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

The Social Security Legislation Amendment (Further Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2015 will create a simpler and more effective compliance framework to ensure that job seekers are meeting their mutual obligation requirements at every point throughout the job-seeking process. The bill builds on the successful reforms we made last year, which improved attendance at re-engagement appointments with employment service providers from 65 per cent attendance in the 2013-14 year to over 90 per cent in 2015. Those reforms have resulted in a reduction in the average time a job seeker's payment is suspended before they re-engage with their provider. Between September 2014 and March 2015, the average payment suspension duration fell from 5.2 to 3.1 business days. These outcomes are good news for everyone. More job seekers are doing the right thing and taking advantage of the help on offer and receiving their income support as intended. Providers are spending less time reporting noncompliance and more time actually helping job seekers with practical tasks like looking for work.

This is why the government is seeking to apply the same principles that underpinned those reforms to other mutual obligation requirements. Immediate payment suspension with no back payment for those with no reasonable excuse for their noncompliance will be extended to job seekers who miss appointments with specialist providers or who refuse to enter a job plan. This should see faster re-engagement, as it has for provider appointments. It should also ultimately result in fewer failures in the first place because of the more immediate and stronger deterrent effects. The current safeguards in the system will ensure that no-one is penalised for failing to attend an appointment if they give prior notice of a reasonable excuse; nor will anyone be penalised for refusing to enter a job plan if they have a genuine excuse for their failure to comply or it has unreasonable terms in it. The bill provides that, if a job seeker acts in an inappropriate manner during an appointment, their income support payment may not be payable until they attend a new appointment and participate appropriately. If they do not have a reasonable excuse, a penalty amount would be able to be deducted from their payment. Again, these changes utilise the successful no-show no-pay principles introduced last year and would bring the treatment of inappropriate behaviour at an appointment in line with existing treatment of inappropriate behaviour at an activity. This bill will also allow penalties applied for not attending activities without a reasonable excuse to be deducted from a job seeker's next fortnightly payment instead of the one after. Again, this change is based on the principle that a more immediate link between a non-compliant action and its financial consequences will be more effective in ensuring compliance in the first place. It is also a change the then Labor government made for other short-term penalty types in 2011.

I think everyone would agree that looking for work is the most important part of a job seeker's mutual obligation requirements. It gives job seekers the best chance of getting off income support. For this reason, we need to fix the current system, which is too slow and ineffective in responding to job seekers who are not making sufficient efforts to find work. It is unacceptable that it takes months of inadequate job search efforts before a job seeker faces a real payment consequence. This bill will allow us to take a very simple approach. If you are a job seeker and you make insufficient or inadequate job search efforts without good reason, you will have your payment immediately suspended. Meeting the requirements you have missed will result in immediate and full back payment. This means you will not incur a lasting penalty, but how long your payment is held up is up to you.

Australia's income support system is there as a safety net for people who genuinely cannot find a job, not as an option for those who simply refuse to work. Under current compliance arrangements, an eight-week non-payment penalty can be applied to job seekers who refuse work without good reason. Unfortunately, amendments introduced by the previous government mean that job seekers can have this penalty completely waived just by agreeing to undertake some extra activity. It is clear that these penalties no longer provide an adequate deterrent to refusing work, because job seekers know they are able to return to payment with virtually no consequence. This bill will remove the waiver so that all job seekers who refuse an offer of suitable work without an acceptable reason will serve an eight-week non-payment period. This change will ensure that job seekers face immediate and real consequences for turning down offers of work.

Finally, I would like to reiterate that this bill will retain all the current safeguards that are designed to ensure that vulnerable job seekers do not incur any financial penalties inappropriately. Job seekers with identified vulnerabilities will continue to be flagged on the IT systems used by the Department of Human Services and employment service providers. Penalties will not impact those whose failure to meet a requirement is beyond their control—for instance, where they were taken ill or had an unexpected caring commitment—and, where reasonable, they gave prior notice of this. Employment service providers will still have the discretion not to report a failure to the Department of Human Services. All decisions involving financial penalties will continue to be made by the Department of Human Services and there will be no change to appeal rights.

We have listened to Labor's points in the debate and I note that this bill has been referred to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee. I acknowledge the amendments proposed by the member for Franklin. The government will give them detailed consideration in the Senate.

Question agreed to, Mr Wilkie dissenting.

Bill read a second time.

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