Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Disability and Carers (House)) Share this | Hansard source

This Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017 is an extraordinary one. It contains some 17 different measures that will hurt many vulnerable Australians, people who are unemployed, single parents, and women and children escaping violence. As Ross Gittins said in an article, just today:

You've never seen such a list of pettifogging nastiness, yielding tiny savings to the budget.

From the title of the bill—'welfare reform'—you might get the false impression that this was part of some big once-in-a-generation change to our social security system. But it isn't. It's a grab bag of nasty and mean cuts that will hurt vulnerable Australians. I'm sure everyone here will remember that when this bill was introduced, in September last year, it had some even nastier measures. It initially had the government's plan to trial drug testing of social security recipients. That measure doesn't have any support of medical, health or community organisations. The government cannot find one expert, person or group that supports the drug-testing trial. All the experts say that it won't work and completely runs counter to the evidence of what does work. The government couldn't convince the Senate crossbench of the merits of its controversial drug-testing trial, so they've taken it out of this bill. Unfortunately, they haven't got the message: they've decided to put it in a separate bill that is on for debate later this week.

I want to go to another schedule of the bill that is also very nasty, particularly for a group of people who find it very difficult to find work in the current labour market. Schedule 9 relates to activity tests for people aged 55 to 59. Schedule 9 was intended to remove the ability of Newstart and some special benefit recipients, aged between 55 and 59, to fulfil the activity test by volunteering 30 hours a fortnight. People would need to fulfil 30 hours a fortnight of activity with voluntary work and suitable paid work. Fifteen of the 30 hours must be of paid work or approved job-search activities. As a result of this measure, the government would have seen many community groups having to cut the amount of time people can volunteer and still receive jobseeker payments. As I say, we already know how hard it is for people in this age group to find work.

The government ignored the views of volunteer organisations, who believe that this change will decimate the number of people and volunteer hours available to community organisations that help neighbourhoods right across Australia. Volunteering Australia has said that this would 'have a profound impact on the volunteering sector'. I remind all the Liberal and National party members opposite that they all voted for this change that Volunteering Australia said will have a profound impact on the sector. Volunteering Australia went on to say that this proposal 'will do little to improve the job prospects of older Australians, an already disadvantaged group in the job market'. The government hasn't provided any additional support to help Australians aged 55 to 59 to overcome the significant barriers they face in the labour market. There's overwhelming evidence, put to the Senate inquiry on this bill, that mature job seekers face significant age discrimination in the labour market and find it very hard to get back into the workforce after they've lost their jobs.

As a result of the amended schedule we've got before us, there will now be 12 months full jobseeker participation, and then people will be able to go back to the old arrangements. It shows the complete chaos of this government. They put a bill in. They've now got a 12-month arrangement. It really is not the way to do good policy.

I say to the government that this is one part of this legislation and these amendments—they might have found a short-term fix but the long-term problem still remains. I'm highlighting one of the schedules today, and I will go on to another in a moment. There are so many parts of this bill that will hurt many, many vulnerable Australians.

We will support the amendments, because they soften the blow, but I absolutely and clearly say to the House that we will continue to oppose the bill overall. The government may have made some concessions of a short-term nature, but this is a straight-up attack on vulnerable people. There might be some short-term, small backdowns in these amendments but there are certainly nowhere near enough to get us to support the bill.

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