Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to speak on this welfare reform package, which Minister Porter introduced. Along with Minister Cash, the three of us helped put this together, with Minister Porter being the leader. Every single element of this package is designed to help people get off welfare and back into work. That's our objective for this package and, indeed, it's one of the overall objectives of the government to support people to get off welfare and back into work, because we know that at the end of the day a job is the best form of welfare that you can get.

In the time I have available, I'd like to really focus my remarks on the drug-testing policy which, of course, the shadow minister spent so much time referring to. If I have time available at the end I might touch on the compliance regime, as well as the intent-to-claim provisions. But let me start by referring to the drug-testing proposal which is contained within this legislation. As members would know, we are proposing to undertake 5,000 tests of people who go onto unemployment benefits at the beginning of next year. Those people will be tested for a number of drugs, and should they be tested positive they will be placed onto a form of cashless welfare in the form of income management. They will then be required to test a second time within 25 days. If they test positive again, then they will be required to undertake a treatment program to assist them to get off drugs and hopefully back into the workforce. No-one loses a cent under this drug-testing proposal. The idea is to identify those people who may have a drug problem, provide assistance to them, and hopefully get them back into the workforce.

I know the former minister opposite has said that there is no evidence that this will work, and I say to the member a couple of things in relation to that. Firstly, that this is a world-first in terms of how we are going about this trial. No-one else in the world has done it like this. There are many countries who have done drug testing of welfare recipients, including our cousins across the Tasman in New Zealand, but no-one else has done it in this way, where we identify people, place them onto cashless welfare and then require them to undertake treatment.

The second point I would make is that this is a 'trial' in the very sense of the word. You do a trial to get the evidence base to determine whether or not it works. If the trial works, you then might expand it. If the trial does not work, you might take a different position consequentially. In this regard, it is very similar to the cashless welfare card trials. We had a lot of critics in relation to that—as you'd know, Mr Deputy Speaker—but we said we'd take a trial to see if it would have an impact on the ground at reducing the harm caused by alcohol, drugs and gambling. We've conducted that trial, we've had an evaluation and it worked, and so consequently we're rolling it out further.

The third point I would make is that while no-one anywhere in the world has undertaken a drug-testing regime as we are proposing here, each of the three elements which underpin our drug-testing regime has been undertaken before, and there is substantial evidence to support the fact that it does have an impact in helping with the reduction of drug taking and helping people get back into work. I would like to take the parliament through each of those elements.

The first element, of course, is just drug testing itself. As members would know, this occurs very frequently now across Australian society. It occurs in so many industries where there is random drug testing. Think about the construction industry, the transportation industry, the aviation industry, the Defence Force, emergency services and border protection—I could go on.

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