Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question and acknowledge that he has a deep interest and has done much research into this area. Last night's budget contains a range of amendments to Australia's welfare system. What we are seeking to do is make the system simpler. We are looking to consolidate seven working age payments into one to simplify the system. We are looking to redraft the mutual obligation rules so that there is a consistent system of participation. We want to make the system of mutual obligation fairer, remove inconsistencies and get rid of gaps inside the system that create passive welfare dependence. We are also looking to completely redesign the entire system of compliance to ensure that we have a compliance system that is clear, that is understandable, that ensures that we are helping the people who need help and that ensures that those people who are not doing the right thing and who are gaming the system are not able to continually game the system.

The reason we would hope that members opposite might remain at least a little open-minded to some of the propositions with respect to this system of welfare reform is that there are very deep issues and problems in the system that need fixing. Looking briefly at compliance, there are about 100,000 people who persistently fail to comply with the basic requirements of mutual obligation. We think about half of those are people who genuinely need help, and we need to identify them sooner. The other half are persistently failing to comply, without any real penalties being instituted in the system. Due to the good research of the Minister for Human Services, we can say that we have been unable to find a single person last year who suffered a financial penalty for a failure in job search—not a single person. Seven thousand jobseekers went through a two-week pay series consistently failing to engage, engaged on the last day and got back paid. Three thousand one hundred of that group did it six times in a year. It may surprise some members opposite—indeed, it may surprise many Australians—to know that the mutual obligations that are placed on you in your 20s are completely different than the mutual obligations that are placed on you in your 30s—50 hours a week activity in your 20s; 30 hours a week in your 30s. It may surprise all of us here that there is nothing in the system that requires a 55-year-old Australian to actually search for work when they are receiving Newstart. These are the things that we propose should be fixed. We want to fix them by redrafting the system, but also with very substantial investment: $47 million will be spent reactivating people; $263 million will be spent in helping young parents engage in the workplace— (Time expired)

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