Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I see that there are very few speakers from the government side standing up to defend the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Drug Testing Trial) Bill 2019. It's easy to come to the conclusion that this is yet another example of the government trying to find someone to beat up and trying to divide the community by having a common enemy that people can unite against. In this case the government are picking on people who are unemployed.

I'm going to do something else in this speech. Prime Minister Turnbull said when he first announced this that it was about love. I'm going to take the government at their word for a minute—that this really is for them an attempt to get people off drugs and into work—and then I'm going to try to persuade them that this is a really stupid way to do that. It's a really stupid way to do that. I'm going to be really nice about it as I call you a little bit stupid. Sorry about that. It is very difficult, because this really is a stupid idea.

This is the third attempt to introduce a trial to drug test welfare recipients—not pensioners, which is the other group of welfare recipients that the government talks about, but just Newstart and youth allowance recipients. This is the third attempt to introduce it. It was absolutely rejected twice. It has been reviewed, probed, analysed and overwhelmingly rejected by anybody who has any expertise in working with drug addicts, the unemployed or young people. It has been overwhelmingly rejected. Every single submission to the Senate committee was against this, except for two submissions from the department. It's like the entire world, those who know very much about this field, says that this is a bad idea, and the department, which admits it did not consult, says it's a good idea.

It's very rare that a government goes completely off on its own. It's very rare that a government totally ignores the overwhelming consensus of experts and makes the decision to follow a path that nobody except itself thinks is a good one. Yet that is what this government has done.

The government says that it's about getting people back into work and off drugs. I want to start there. If the government were serious about tackling drug addiction, it might want to keep in mind that currently the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales has found that between 200,000 and 500,000 Australians a year want to access addiction services but can't because the services are underfunded. If the government were serious about getting people off drugs, perhaps the place to start would be with those 200,000 to 500,000 people who are trying to access services but can't because the services don't exist.

In Western Sydney I have people tell me about the desperate need for drug and alcohol services for young people, which are quite different to services for adults. They're not there in a sufficient quantity to serve the needs of Western Sydney now. There are young people who want those services but can't get them. If you want to get people off drugs, surely the place to start is by properly funding the services that help people who step up to do that. You don't go around testing to see if there are a few more who aren't ready to seek help and then try to punish them into it. Surely that's a wee bit nonsensical.

The second thing is getting people into jobs. There are over 700,000 people unemployed and many more underemployed. Every day I have people desperate for work come into my office. They have a great range of skills but have a little bit missing—they might come from another country and their qualifications are not recognised here or are not quite right or they can't get experience.

A young woman who came to see me recently has been on Newstart for 14 years. She has a degree and is desperate to work but has never been able to get that first job. I get people coming into my office all the time who are desperate to work. Desperate is the only way to describe it. What about those people? What about the young people who want apprenticeships and can't get one because the government has decimated TAFE and the number of apprenticeships has dramatically dropped? I lost 1,500 apprentices in Parramatta alone in the first six years of this government. What about starting with people who are almost ready to work—whose attitude is right, whose skills are really good and who want to work? What about starting with them?

Why, when the unemployment rate is so high, would any sensible government who is thinking about the need to get people into work say, 'Let's see if we can find people who really don't want to work, who are sitting in their garage smoking pot. Let's start there'? That's absurd. As a previous employer, I can tell you that that's not the person I want you to send to me. I want you to send me someone who wants to work, who has worked, who's fallen out of the workforce—maybe because they're 50 or 55 and became retrenched—a person with experience or a young person who has been working for the community establishing community organisations.

There are many, many people out there who are doing great stuff, but they just can't get their foot in the door. Start with them. Why not start with drug addicts that want to get clean but can't because the services don't exist? Why not start with people who really want to work and have done everything they can to get themselves ready—they've done degrees; they've studied at TAFE; they've volunteered; and they've done everything they possibly can to get a job and can't get one. Start there.

But what do we get from this government? A really, really weird solution—and that's putting it mildly—to a problem that's made up, a problem that the government's going to look for to see if it can solve it. And, in order to find that problem—this small number of people who may be ripping off the taxpayer by sitting in their garage and smoking pot—the government are going to drug-test 5,000 people, supposedly randomly selected, though I don't believe that because I've read about the algorithms. They're going to drug-test 5,000 people in three locations to see whether or not these people—many of whom are desperate for work, and 25 per cent of whom will already be working—have in the last week or the last two weeks had a bit of pot on the side. If they did, I assure you, they didn't buy it with Newstart. I assure you that they did not spend taxpayers' money buying drugs—unless it was alcohol, which is a far bigger problem but isn't included in this. So, again, the biggest drug issue, which is alcohol, isn't covered.

Drug addicts who actually want to get clean, and come forward looking for treatment, can't get it. But the government's not interested in fixing that. There are people who desperately want to work in areas where there are skills shortages, such as aged care and child care, and in areas where we need more workers, and they almost have the qualifications, but is the government interested? No, they aren't interested. Alcohol is a major problem, but is the government interested? No, they aren't interested. Instead, they'll spend enormous amounts of money—look at what these drug tests actually cost; if you really want them done properly, without the false negatives and all the rest of it, it is actually really expensive—and randomly test 5,000 people and find a few that, presumably, they can then talk about in the media to turn people against them. It's really hard to believe it's about anything other than that, because it doesn't make any sense.

I'm going to share this speech quite widely in my community, because I think people need to know exactly what's happening here. I am going to explain some of the detail of this because, when you listen to what's actually going to happen to these people on Newstart, it's quite interesting, particularly when you realise that one-quarter of Newstart recipients are over the age of 55. The number of people over the age of 55 has surged by 45 per cent in the last six years. The fastest-growing group is people over 55. I'm sure a lot of them are sitting at home smoking pot in their garage and need to be found out! I will try to pull myself together, but it is quite absurd.

We also know from the government's own figures that there are 19 job applicants for every job. So there are 19 people on Newstart or youth allowance for every single job. Yet this government is saying that the reason that these people aren't working is that they're on drugs. Well, I don't think there are 700,000 drug addicts out there. No doubt there are a small number. No doubt in any area you will find a small number of people who really don't want to work, who do other things and take their Newstart. By all means, they shouldn't do that, but that's not where you start when you have a problem of the size that we have in this country. It really is not where you start.

We also have a situation where, in the last few days, we've seen the IMF downgrade the growth forecast. We have had the Reserve Bank downgrade the growth forecast. We have an economy in trouble. We need to grow jobs. Is the government doing anything about that? If you want to get people off Newstart, perhaps the place to start is stimulating the economy and making sure that the number of jobs that we have grows. There are a range of areas to do that in. You could take the caps off for the NDIS, for example, because we know we're going to need a couple of hundred thousand workers in that field in the next decade, if we get that right. We know with the ageing population we are going to need thousands more aged-care workers. Try and get that right. Get people into jobs, because there are jobs that need doing that are currently sitting vacant. We have skills shortages in a whole range of areas. In virtually every technical trade, we have skills shortages. In regional areas, you can wait months to get a basic bit of painting done. You can wait months to see a doctor in regional areas. Do something about that. Do something that addresses the jobs that we need to be done. Make sure that people are trained to do them. Take some of those 700,000 people and the extra 300,000-odd that are underemployed and create the jobs for them. Do it in a real way, not by supposedly punishing this mythical person that you've made up and you're going to randomly drug test 5,000 people to find. This is absurd.

Let's look at what it actually will do. It will require 5,000 Newstart and youth allowance recipients in Canterbury-Bankstown—down the road from me—Mandurah and Logan to submit to random drug tests. The trial will run for two years. If a person does not agree to participate in the trial, their application for social security will be denied and they will not be able to reapply for four weeks. That will help! If they actually are a drug addict, that will really help! People will be required to submit to saliva, urine and hair follicle tests in a Centrelink office or nearby location. The tests will be designed to detect cannabis, heroin, cocaine and amphetamines. If a person fails a drug test they will be placed on income management through the basics card—80 per cent of their payment will be quarantined to pay bills and purchase goods, and 20 per cent will be paid to their bank account. A follow-up test will be conducted within 25 days. If the person fails a second test during the trial they will be referred to a contracted medical service for recommendations about treatment.

Now, for a start, if a person fails a drug test, it doesn't mean they're a drug addict. Many of us in this area know people who take drugs recreationally. I don't, by the way. I don't take Panadol; I don't take anything at all. But I know people who do and I have worked in industries where some of these drugs were actually quite common. A person who fails a drug test is not necessarily a drug addict. Even if they are a drug addict, pushing them into drug treatment, if they're not ready, will not work. Everybody who works with drug addicts says this will not work for that reason. It's the wrong approach. It makes no sense whatsoever.

If treatment is recommended, attendance will become part of the person's job plan and a condition of receiving social security. That means, unless the government increases the funding substantially to current drug treatment centres, including in Western Sydney, those people are going to push out other people who are trying to get in. So instead of 200,000 people trying to get drug treatment and being unable to do so, there will be 200,001 people, because it will push someone out. Someone who wants treatment will be pushed out, and someone who isn't ready will be pushed in. It will not work. Every expert says so, but, again, the government knows better.

If a person fails to attend mandated treatment, they will be sanctioned. This will include having their payment entirely suspended for up to four weeks. This is really quite amazing. If a person disputes the results of a test, they can request a retest. But if the retest is positive, the person must pay for the cost of the retest. From what I know about the cost of these treatments, that's probably about four to five weeks of Newstart, which they won't be on because they will have been suspended! This is absurd. Please think this through in a real way. Please think this through.

Every single expert in the field of drug addiction and drug treatment or in a field working with young people says this won't work. The only people who say this will work are the government. I strongly suggest that the government reconsider this. Have a look at what the experts have said. It's been reviewed more times than you can count. It's been tried three times and failed. There are reports, submissions and material everywhere on this that tell you why this won't work. Just listen. Just listen for a minute, and you will change your mind.

Debate interrupted.

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