Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

There are a range of measures that are proposed in the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017. I only intend to speak on one of them—the issue of drug testing welfare recipients and the implications from that that certain penalties will be imposed in respect of these recipients. I also would like to say, if time permits, a few words about the things that aren't in the bill but absolutely should be if the government was truly focused on the challenge of welfare reform. I am absolutely certain that there is not a member in this place whose offices are not inundated on a daily basis by citizens who are trying to get their benefits processed by Centrelink and yet they are faced with delays. I am not talking about days; I am not talking about weeks; I am talking about months and months and months of delays. These are pensioners seeking to get access to a pension benefit. These are carers seeking to look after a loved one who cannot look after themselves and to access a benefit they are entitled to. The government has cut in excess of 1,200 jobs, frontline positions, and forced hundreds and hundreds of other jobs in Centrelink into casual working arrangements. Is it any wonder that there are constant delays and constant mistakes. I make no criticism of the hardworking staff of Centrelink. I make enormous criticism of the minister, who seems either ignorant or unwilling to do anything about it. And it is the citizens of our electorates who are paying the price.

Before I say more about that, can I talk about the drug-testing initiative. If ever there was a policy that was all about press release and not about outcome, it is this one. This is, indeed, a press release in search of an evidence base, in search of a policy prescription; it is entirely without substance. Many of my colleagues have spoken about the fact that similar measures introduced overseas have not worked; they have cost the taxpayers of other jurisdictions millions and millions of dollars with no perceivable benefit to either the individuals or the taxpayers as a whole. I will not go through that evidence because others have put it on the record. But I would like to have a look at the supposed objective of this measure. If the objective of the measure is to reduce the incidence of substance abuse in this community, there is not a member of this place who would not agree with it. There is not a member of this place who would not say we would be a much better country if we were able to reduce the incidence of substance abuse in our community. And I am not just talking about illicit drugs; I am talking about alcohol abuse as well. We know that the No. 1 drug of concern to people in the front line of substance abuse and rehabilitation is alcohol. There are problems with all the other illicit drugs but alcohol is the No. 1 drug of concern. It is present in just about all of the presentations that they see.

It might surprise people to know that Australia currently spends somewhere in excess of $1.7 billion combating illicit drugs. This, of course, includes police detection and arrest for drug crimes. It includes policing the borders of Australia for importation and prevention programs. It includes treatment programs and harm reduction strategies as well. If this bill before the House succeeds, it will be adding more to that annual bill and what we are spending on drug detection and prevention and combating illicit drugs. We do have to ask ourselves whether that money is well spent, because the results do not seem to suggest that it is. Of the total pot of $1.7 billion, almost 65 per cent is spent on what is known as supply reduction—basically, law enforcement. The bill before the House could in many respects be seen as an additional element in that—an enforcement activity. Just 22 per cent of that $1.7 billion is spent on treatment, 9.5 per cent is spent on prevention and about 2.2 per cent is spent on harm reduction.

The thing that hasn't been thought through by the government in relation to this policy is the fact that the treatment services that will be inundated as a result of this government's policy are already strapped. They cannot meet the current demands. The problem is greater in regional electorates like mine. I speak to the treatment centres down my way. There are not enough of them and they do not have the staff and the facilities to deal with the problems they are dealing with. There is already a waiting list in excess of six months for most of these sorts of services—not everywhere; there some exceptions. But on the whole there is already a waiting list of about six months. And for specialist services in NSW alone, there is one, maybe two, specialist services dealing specifically with women with a drug addiction problem—absolutely strapped. And if they are in need of residential care, even fewer places are available.

So I really do fear that not only has the government not thought through the policy and the resources that are going to be needed just to meet the current demand but whether this is going to have the result of pushing people out of the queue who are currently sticking up their hand and saying: 'I know that I've got a problem with substance abuse and I want to get treatment and turn my life around. I'm sticking my hand up and I want to turn my life around.' That person has willingly presented themselves to a treatment centre only to be told: 'Good on you for taking the first step. We're going to get back to you in months,' not weeks, 'because we don't have the residential services available to us at the moment.' My fear is that these people are going to get pushed back further down the queue because of the results of this ill-thought-through policy.

Is it any wonder that the Australian Medical Association, all of the expert drug and alcohol treatment services—through their peak bodies—and just about anybody who knows anything about how this sector works and what is going to work has said that this policy is nuts and is not going to work? A government that was moved by evidence, as opposed to ideology and a government that was moved by evidence and purity of purpose would take heed from the submissions that have been put through the Senate process—the very public submissions that have been made by many of the advocates—and then say: 'This isn't the right way to go. We're going to withdraw this provision from the bill.' They would have our full-bodied support if they were to do that.

Before I came into parliament I spent a lot of time as a community worker. I worked as a lawyer for many years and in those jobs I had a lot of face-to-face experience with the issues that this bill is purportedly attempting to tackle. It was clear to me then, as it is now, that what we're doing at the moment isn't working and that we need to build our policies on the best available evidence and the best research, not only from Australia but from around the globe, about what is likely to work—particularly when it comes to treatment and how we help people to turn their lives around. We do need to adopt a health based approach, and this bill is anything but that. We need to adopt a health based approach rather than relying on measures which will have the end result of filling our jails with people who have a health problem but which does very, very little to stem the supply of drugs or the harms caused. If those opposite were driven by evidence, not politics, they would direct resources towards the policies which were going to have the best result.

A few years ago I remember visiting the Solaris Therapeutic Community Program. It's a voluntary treatment initiative for adult males at the Alexander Maconochie Centre. For those who don't know it, it's the jail which is about five kilometres from where we are standing today. I had the opportunity to talk to a group of men who were, obviously, in jail and who were going through the program on a voluntary basis. I was talking to them about their substance abuse problems. I asked each of them: 'How old were you when you first saw your life going off the rails? How old were you when you first started substance abuse, whether it was alcohol or illicit drugs?' There were about 11 or 12 guys there. What struck me was that most of them didn't get to double digits. That is, most of them had not turned 10 before they had their first experience of an illicit drug. If those opposite dug deeper and asked what was going on in the household of that young person and in the lives of those young people—if they bothered to take the time to find out what was going on—they certainly wouldn't present the sort of bill which is before the House today.

I've visited lots of drug and alcohol treatment centres around the country over the time that I've been in parliament—I visited them in my professional capacity before I was a member of parliament. When you talk to people who are receiving treatment, one of the things you hear that are remarkable is that over 90 per cent of those people will tell you that there was some pre-existence, some underlying trauma, that set them on the path that they are now on, whether it was abuse in the family or the households that they grew up in; whether it was family violence; or whether it was, as is so often the case, that somebody had a horrific injury, took a course of opioids as part of the treatment process for that injury and went from a licit source of opioid use to an illicit source of opioid use. The stories were so common and so repeated as to allow us to draw the conclusion that in the majority of these instances there is an underlying trauma which causes or leads somebody into substance abuse. From that you can also draw the conclusion that, unless you deal with those underlying traumas, those underlying psychological, mental and physical health issues, you aren't going to be able to get to the root cause of the drug addiction and you certainly aren't going to be able to help those people turn their lives around.

You don't have to be a researcher in this area to know that we've got a lot of people in our prisons. I won't say it is the cause of the crime, but for a significant majority of the people in there—I wouldn't say the overwhelming majority, but a significant majority—drugs and alcohol are on board in a significant number of those criminal incidents. It's why people in the sector often refer to prisons as the rehabilitation service of last resort. At $300 a day, it is a very expensive way of dealing with a problem.

So my message, my heartfelt message, to the government today is this: if you are truly committed to doing more than grabbing a headline; if you are truly committed to doing more than making a cheap political point, than playing a populist card; if you are truly committed to doing something about the insidious problem of illicit and other drug abuse in this country; then you won't be introducing measures like the one before us. Instead, you will take the time to talk to the people whose lives have been affected. You will take time to talk to people who are attempting to turn their lives around or who have attempted to turn their lives around and have succeeded. You will take the time to talk to these people. You will invest in the most effective place, which is in treatment and prevention. If you do that then you will ensure that we go a long way towards reducing the problems that we have in our community.

These punitive measures have been tried overseas. We know they don't work. It is of the utmost arrogance for this government to believe that repeating the same mistakes that have been made overseas is going to have a different result in this country. I can support some measures in this bill, but not this one.

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