Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

We have had the opportunity through the course of this debate to outline a number of concerns that we have about the program design that will be supported by the passage of this bill. This bill does two things: one is that it provides a top-up to income support levels, and the second thing it does is that it allows someone to re-engage with the social security system if they have not been successful in holding down a job through the PaTH program.

A number of us will no doubt be taking the opportunity during consideration in detail to focus on different elements of the actual PaTH legislation that is being considered, and we would also like to take the opportunity to ask the government for answers to questions that we feel were simply not answered by the government, with all due respect to the minister at the table. A series of concerns have been raised relating to things such as the definition of what an intern would be and whether or not, for example, this bill would allow for the displacement of existing jobs. We also asked questions about whether or not wages would be undercut as a result of this system. Even with the top-up that is provided people will be paid at a rate that is less than the national minimum wage, and we have expressed concerns about that.

We have also expressed concerns about whether or not people who are in the unfortunate position of experiencing a workplace accident would be covered by workplace compensation legislation and what the arrangements would be around that. It is a bit hard to imagine that a $200 top-up to income support will cover people in the instance where they are injured, have significant medical costs, are unable to participate in the program and may be potentially prevented, as a result of that injury, from taking up employment. These are all serious questions and none of them, I say with the greatest of respect to the minister at the chair who has been provided with the summation to provide to the House, has been addressed. So I think it is important that in consideration in detail these things be looked at.

Importantly, one of the issues is that this bill will enable, in effect, churn. It recognises that there will be churn in this program—that is, that there will be people who will go through the PaTH program, will potentially start with an employer and then not be retained by that employer and will have to re-engage with the social security system. So there are questions that certainly arise out of schedule 2 of the government's bill, where it allows for a suspension instead of cancellation of income support. This addresses the need for safeguards in the event business fire employees within 26 weeks instead of following through on their commitment. I would like to ask: how much of this churn does the government estimate will happen as a result of the program? How many workers does the government anticipate will not make the full six months after participating in this program? With the government guarantee that businesses will not churn through free interns instead of hiring long-term employees? How will that churn be monitored? What steps will be put in place to identify it before interns are placed and after? Who will monitor those rates? Is a tip-off line in the National Customer Service Line enough to pick up instances of churn across 30,000 placements in up to 20,000 businesses a year? How will the government know whether interns are accepted and other employees in the organisations are retrenched? How much information about its company and its staffing will a business have to provide to be eligible to accept more interns under PaTH?

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