Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very keen to give my contribution, following the member for Durack's disgraceful comments about people on this side of the House and that this measure is not punitive. I rise to support Labor's position on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017, and in doing so place on record my concerns about the efficacy of these measures that the government is trying to implement.

As usual, this proposed legislation is a reflection of all the hallmark traits that this government has—lazy, incompetent in consultation and only interested in punitive measures which are based on popular opinion, not research, fact or professional input. Just a bunch of born-to-rule judgemental MPs who sit around on their fancy yachts casting aspersions over the lives of young people who are unemployed. They come in here with their mates from The Daily Telegraph making fun of, ridiculing and demonising anybody who hasn't made it by their standards. Anyone on a disability pension is given a front-page splashing—a front-page treatment on The Daily Telegraphgiven scornful looks and dragged across the front pages, demonising their very existence. How dare they have a disability!

Then, with all of the Christian values we hear espoused over there, they judge anyone who happens to be unemployed or need the support of our social security safety net, claiming it's their own fault, that getting a job is somehow a rite of passage and that jobs are easy to come by. I would like to hear just one of them come in here—the hypocrites on the other side who come into this place—and tell the real story about employment in this country. Just one. One would be a good start. The reality is that there is one job for every seven Australians. In my part of the world, that I'm proud to represent, we have one local job for every 200 people. It is called the jobs deficit, and I would implore anybody to visit my office and get a copy of the report and read about the reasons for why we have such a deficit.

What's more, we have a proposal to make our community even more populated by 2050 without any real action, or ability or commitment to delivering new jobs. We might hear the minister for infrastructure talk a big game on jobs with the Western Sydney Airport. However, the reality is that these are pie-in-the-sky job figures based on nothing more than a dream—dreamed-up figures that are nothing more than empty promises.

Here in Australia we have a government hell-bent on punishing people who are desperately seeking employment, a government that refuses to take any responsibility for the inequity facing our communities and a government that is too lazy to do anything about creating meaningful employment, just further casualisation. This government ripped $17 billion out of school education, rebranded it as Gonski 2 and said that money in education doesn't equal better outcomes. Well, I believe in unicorns and fairies and for some time, for a third of my life, I believed in Santa; however, it's a stretch for even me to think that thin air will improve our educational outcomes, which, tada, the member for Durack might like to know, lead to poor outcomes in employment. With the background I have in my professional life I can tell you that it will not.

The government won't address falling wages. They want to cut the wages of anybody who relies on penalty rates. They won't invest in TAFE. In fact, in my community, apprenticeships have fallen by 37 per cent under this government. When it comes to falling wages and penalty rates, have we seen the government's modelling on the cost to the welfare system of those people who are reliant on penalty rates? No, we have not. What about the tertiary sector? They have stripped millions of dollars out of universities. The university in my area, which supports some of our lowest socio-economic students, will feel this the most.

Let's just recap where we are. Lazy government—tick. Won't invest in jobs and keeps promising the Earth on invisible jobs in Western Sydney that won't be built until 2025, not relieving any of the unemployment pressures now—tick. One job for every seven Australians—tick. One job for every 200 residents in Western Sydney—tick. This government has cut $17 billion out of education—tick. This government has voted to cut the wages of 700,000 Aussies through the slashing of penalty rates but has not told us how we're going to pay for it—tick. A drop in the number of new apprentices being trained in Western Sydney of 37 per cent—tick. Now they're coming after the university, which has many students who are the first in their family to train at a tertiary level—tick.

This is an exceptionally poor track record for a government which promised jobs and growth. None of those things that I mentioned say anything about jobs or growth. So what's the government's response? What is the response of the people opposite? What are they doing about this? Are they being 'agile and innovative'—a key term coined by the Prime Minister—to create more jobs? The jobs of the future, perhaps? No. Are they investing in training and skilling up young people? Also, no. Of course, they are just interested in punishing the vulnerable young people who are in receipt of our social security safety net. They are taking zero responsibility for the part they are playing to create and perpetuate joblessness.

Schedule 12 of this legislation and the proposed establishment of a drug-testing trial would see 5,000 people on Newstart and youth allowance randomly selected—to pee, to spit or to have their hair pulled out—to be drug tested—all of which is still up in the air. Because if you are unemployed and on welfare, of course you are also on drugs! How could we be so remiss as to miss that linkage? How could those two things not be intertwined? How could those two things not be inextricably linked? What is this government saying to all of the people in receipt of welfare? 'You're using drugs.' What is the government saying to all Australians who are not in receipt of welfare but are sitting on the judgemental benches? 'Anyone on welfare is also on drugs.'

Professionals with over 20,000 years of combined experience have all come out to condemn these actions. It is a shame that the member for Durack has left, but I do see the member for Tangney over there. He might want to take particular note of what I'm about to say. The professionals have all stated that this will do more harm than it will do good, and it will. Imagine the effects of being judged by an entire nation and told that, simply because you need help and support from Centrelink, you are a drug user. I'm not sure that they taught me that when I got my education at school, but it is certainly nothing that helped me get a job or where I am now. It is of no surprise to me that 1,000 individual practitioners, including the boss of the AMA, Dr Michael Gannon, have all rejected this idea and have been speaking out against it. These are professionals—not MPs, who come in here with opinions, but people who are trained in this space.

Do not misquote and do not mistake me as not being in favour of supporting people who live with addiction. In the Hansard is my own family's experience of someone who continues to be and was addicted at the time of my birth, when I was being raised, and during my adult life. I fully support any initiatives that will help—and I underscore the word 'help'—people who live with addiction. I support initiatives that have sound research, sound practice and sound support; not on-the-hop, lazy, opinionist policy that will do nothing more than stigmatise those who need that the least. I have watched, and I continue to watch, the effects of addiction close up. I've seen the deep impacts of what living with addiction does, and there is no punishment equal to the torment that is living with addiction. I have watched a man lose his job, his family, his home, his freedom and his friends—a good man who, if not for addiction, would give you a kidney. People who are addicted do not need punitive measures like this one that the government has proposed. They need practical ones—rehabilitation, support services and a clear way forward.

The government are asking a whole section of our community to take the blame for their incompetence—a section of society that should have had the opportunity for education, training and support throughout their lives. The government are taking punitive steps to hinder those people's ability to get a job, in the main by not providing anything more. Then they are saying to those who do rely on welfare to support their habit—and I understand that there are some whose addictions will be funded by Centrelink: 'We will punish you and push you into a life of further disadvantage to fund your habit.' I do not accept that this is sustainable, suitable or the best practice. It is certainly not the best use of the public resources that we have at our disposal as MPs to help them—and I include in the resources at our disposal those 1,000 professionals with a combined 20,000 years of experience.

The Prime Minister has got his legislation all mixed up. This legislation isn't about love. He might be confusing it with the other legislation he's so gloriously messed up, the one about letting people who love each other get married. That bill is indeed about love. This one—schedule 12, in particular—is about punishment, being cruel and draconian and harming already harmed people. This bill does nothing to address the jobs deficit or to prevent addiction from occurring in the first place. This isn't about a race to the bottom either, because you lot already won that race a long time ago, under your former Prime Minister, and you continue to win it under this one.

I implore the members opposite to take some time with the 1,000 professionals who understand and are well educated in addiction, to find out what alternative steps—which is what they always seek when they come in here with their dorothy dixers—might be available to them in the pursuit of actually helping people who need it and not harming them.

See this speech in context