Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I too speak in opposition to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017 and in support of the amendment moved by the shadow minister. The problem with this bill is that it represents a typical right-wing government ideology, a typical coalition government ideology. It is an ideology where people who receive welfare, people on government payments, ought be viewed with suspicion, that they should be seen as undeserving and people who are seeking to bludge and receive something for nothing from the government. The government doesn't understand the difficulties that many low-income families and pensioners and people who are struggling to make ends meet go through every day just to survive, just to put clothes on their kids and feed their families.

That is inherent in what the government are seeking to do today through this bill. They don't understand what it is like to struggle. They don't understand how difficult it can be for a kid who grows up in a family where the parents don't work, the parents may be drug-addicted or one parent may have been in jail for a period of time. A kid in that circumstance is at a disadvantage in getting an education, getting into further education or getting into employment. The fact is that a kid in that circumstance is behind the eight ball from the start. They have very, very little chance. If you look at the evidence of studies on intergenerational poverty and breaking that cycle, for those born into that circumstance through no fault of their own it is a very, very difficult situation to get out of.

The government don't believe that Aboriginal people have the right to be angry about what has happened to them in the past and the disadvantage that their people continue to face on a daily basis, with the difference between their life expectancy, educational levels, health outcomes and employment outcomes and those of other Australians. That is evident in the fact that it was the coalition, the Howard government, that refused to make the apology to the stolen generation, refused to say sorry for those acts of injustice that were perpetrated on Aboriginal people for many, many decades in this country by Australian governments that we all know now were wrong. They were simply wrong. Yet John Howard, as the Prime Minister and leader of a coalition government, refused to apologise. And, when Kevin Rudd delivered the apology from that very dispatch box there, there were members of the coalition—who still sit in this House, on the government front bench—who walked out of this parliament in disgust. They are still members of this parliament and they still bring that approach of not understanding the plight of Aboriginal people to reforms such as those in the bill that we are debating here today.

They believe that workers should be seen and not heard, that workers don't have the right, through unions, to collectively bargain to better themselves and that, if they just worked a bit harder, they'd all be able to make a lot more money. They don't understand what it is like to be homeless, to not have a place to sleep at night, to sleep in the car with your kids when you've been booted out of your home and you've got nowhere else to go and you can't get into public housing—and, in New South Wales, that would be because the state Liberal government don't invest enough money in building more of it. They don't understand what it's like to be unemployed—the psychological effect that can have on you and your family, when you are going to job interview after job interview, being rejected because an employer doesn't like the look of you or because you may not have that additional period of experience that they're looking for. And they certainly don't know what it's like to be living solely on the pension, to not have other forms of income to rely on to get by.

That's inherent in the approach that they're taking to energy policy in this country. They are not doing anything about climate change or providing certainty for investment in the energy sector, and therefore prices are skyrocketing and pensioners can't afford to put heaters on during winter to keep themselves warm. They don't understand what it's like to be in a low-income or middle-income family in this country. They are out of touch, and it is demonstrated by this bill that we are here debating today. This bill perfectly demonstrates the heartless and ideologically driven approach of this coalition government to some of the most vulnerable members of our society and the fact that, in order to appear tough, they're willing to enact laws that are based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever, that have not been recommended by independent bodies and that have been shown time and time again to do more harm than good. I am speaking, of course, of the compulsory drug trials for unemployed Australians that they're seeking to introduce through this bill.

This bill includes several 2017 budget measures across the Social Services, Employment and Human Services portfolios. Schedules 1 to 8 implement the social security part of the 2017 budget entitled 'Working Age Payments Reforms'. These schedules will consolidate seven working-age payments and allowances into a new jobseeker payment. These payments are the Newstart allowance, sickness allowance, widow B pension, wife pension, widow allowance, partner allowance and bereavement allowance. The wife pension is a non-activity-tested income support payment paid at the age pension rate to female partners of age pensioners or disability support pensioners who are not eligible in their own right for a pension. To qualify for a wife pension, a person must have lodged their claim prior to 1 July 1995, which is when the payment was cut off to new entrants. As at 2020, it is estimated that there would be around 7½ thousand wife pension recipients. Of these, 2,250 will transfer onto the age pension and 2,400 onto the carer pension. Two thousand nine hundred women will transfer onto the jobseeker payment and just 200 women, who reside overseas, will be left with nothing as a result of this change. It seems reasonable that this group should be grandfathered, to avoid them facing a financial crisis, and unreasonable that they should be attacked in the manner that is contained in this bill.

Schedule 9 of the bill removes the ability of certain special benefit recipients of Newstart allowance, aged 55 to 59, to be taken to have satisfied the activity test by engaging in voluntary work for at least 30 hours per fortnight. The changes will allow relevant recipients to be taken to have satisfied the activity test if they are engaged for at least 30 hours per fortnight in a combination of approved unpaid voluntary work and suitable paid work—at least 15 hours must be in suitable paid work. Unfortunately, ageism is a considerable hurdle for those in their 50s, 60s and beyond who are trying to secure a job. That this is the case was backed up by overwhelming evidence provided by experts in the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee's inquiry into this bill. We've all encountered this as members of parliament. It happens on a regular basis. We've all had people in their 50s and 60s who have been made redundant, predominantly in the manufacturing sector, in blue-collar occupations, coming in to see us, saying, 'I want to work, but no-one will take me on. They won't take me on because of my age and because my skill set is seen as outdated.' Changes such as this just make it harder for those people to get by—to make ends meet—and ultimately to get back into the workforce. This change to the legislation means that those aged in their late 50s must secure at least 15 hours of paid work to qualify for their support payments. It is a difficult task made all the more difficult by the fact that, say, for the carer transition assistance payment, which is not due to start until 2020, the government didn't see it necessary to provide any form of additional support to help people overcome this barrier. So it is imposing this new restriction but is providing no additional support, no extra assistance, at all for jobseekers in this age bracket to overcome this barrier that they face daily.

According to the Department of Employment, once a person aged between 55 and 59 is out of work, the length of time they spend looking for work before they secure it is 73 weeks, on average. This compares to the overall average of between 40 and 50 weeks. Labor feels that this is an unfair change that will lead to significant hardship for that cohort of workers and welfare recipients, and that is why we oppose it.

The bill also sets up a drug trial for jobseekers. This is the government's much-vaunted drug-testing regime for potential jobseekers. This element of the bill is particularly heinous, given the cruel intent and the fact that there is no evidence to back it up. In fact, in every jurisdiction where drug testing has been tried it has failed resoundingly and ended up costing the government a lot of money. Schedule 12 of the bill will, from 1 January 2018, or the date of commencement, establish a two-year trial of drug testing for 5,000 recipients of Newstart allowance and youth allowance in three locations. Testing will be undertaken by a contracted third party. Now, that is the key in all of this. A big multinational corporation that's involved in this sort of work is rubbing its hands together saying, 'You beauty! Another big juicy contract from the government coming up.' It will do drug testing of some of the most vulnerable people in our society. You can bet your life that the outcome will be that this will cost the government a hell of a lot of money but won't produce any results at all, because we all know just how difficult it is—and about the lack of resources, particularly in the state of New South Wales because of cuts by the New South Wales Liberal government—to get people into drug treatment programs that are suitable for their circumstances. There's no indication from the government in the budget papers or in the explanatory memorandum to this bill of the cost of this program, which in itself is criminal. How can you bring into this parliament a bill with a big outlay, a big contract to a third-party provider that's likely to be a multinational corporation, and not say to the parliament how much it's going to cost? It's unbelievable, in this era of so-called fiscal rectitude, that you could do that and not say how much it's going to cost.

But worst of all is that this drug trial will achieve nothing, except to punish the most vulnerable jobseekers in our nation. The President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, Dr Alex Wodak, has written on this. He said on 22 August:

Remember that people who use drugs are somebody’s son or daughter, brother or sister, mum or dad, or boyfriend or girlfriend. Many, through no fault of their own, had a shocking childhood or terrible education and never enjoyed a decent job.

He went on to say:

Addiction medicine specialists, GPs, nurses, and healthcare workers of all stripes will tell you that people struggling with alcohol or drug dependence almost always keep consuming their favourite poison even after they have lost everything – their health, partner, kids, job, property and their freedom (after appearing before a court). The scientific definitions of addiction regard “continuing use despite severe adverse consequences” as a central characteristic of this condition. So ripping income support away from these people is not going to help them recover.

That's the view of Dr Alex Wodak, an expert who's spent his life working in this field. It's a view that's supported by the Australian Medical Association and by so many other organisations that work in this field. The evidence is that it simply will not work. But it goes back to what I was saying earlier: it's because those on that side of the parliament don't understand what it's like to be in this circumstance of having a drug addiction and not being able to break the cycle whereby kids grow up in poverty. That is inherent in this bill and inherent in the fact that they want to be seen to be tough and to punish these people as their means of looking like they're cracking down on welfare cheats and bringing fiscal rectitude to the budget. That's the wrong approach, and it's an approach that will end up costing this country a lot more money and not producing the outcomes we seek to achieve.

So, all in all, I and my Labor colleagues are opposed to this reform and to the other elements of this bill that go against that notion of a fair go in Australia and of helping the most vulnerable get back on their feet so they can enjoy a decent life and participate in our society. I urge others to vote down this legislation.

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