Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Remote Engagement Program) Bill 2021, and I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes:

(a) the proposed pilot remote engagement program is intended to replace the current remote employment program, the Community Development Program (CDP);

(b) the Government are the architects of the current failed CDP and the bill again delays long-overdue changes to this program;

(c) concerns this bill could entrench a welfare model, rather than job creation, economic development and self-determination; and

(d) this bill does not address fundamental issues in remote Australia such as housing and essential services; and

(2) calls on the Government to adopt Labor's policy of a remote employment program with real jobs, proper wages with full conditions, and meaningful community control".

The amendment asks the House to do five things: note that the proposed pilot remote engagement program is intended to replace the current remote employment program, the Community Development Program, or CDP; that the government are the architects of the current failed CDP, and the bill again delays long-overdue changes to this program; concerns this bill could entrench a welfare model rather than job creation, economic development and self-determination; and that this bill does not address fundamental issues in remote Australia, such as housing and essential services; and, finally, call on the government to adopt Labor's policy of a remote employment program with real jobs, proper wages with full conditions, and meaningful community control.

The government's remote engagement program pilot is yet another missed opportunity to, firstly, put in place a genuine remote employment service and, secondly, address the underlying challenges of living in remote Australia. The challenges of living in remote Australia are many and well known. On average, remote Australians have shorter lives, higher levels of disease and injury and poorer access to health services compared with people living in metropolitan areas. This is caused by multiple factors. In addition to a lack of real jobs, there is a lack of adequate housing and access to essential services. This bill will do nothing to address any of the challenges. Instead, this government has brought forward a bill offering a fig leaf of changes and a two-year pilot program. These changes are bad in themselves, and they won't make things better for remote Australians. The problem that Labor has identified is that the bill just won't make anything better. An Albanese Labor government would never have brought forward this bill, which is a great disappointment.

It was just last year that the government signed up to revised targets in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, including the reduction of overcrowded housing. This bill was a first test for the government, and what we see is that nothing will fundamentally change for CDP participants and remote communities and that there is no new remote employment program on the horizon. Meanwhile, the challenges of living in remote Australia are very real, and they need to be fixed and fixed now.

Data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows that almost one in five Indigenous Australians are living in chronically overcrowded housing—nationally, 18 per cent of First Nations people, compared to 5 per cent of non-Indigenous Australians. The level of overcrowding increases with remoteness—over 20 per cent of adults in regional areas and over 48 per cent of adults in remote communities. The highest levels of overcrowding in Australia occur in remote Northern Territory. Based on the 2016 census, about 27,600 Aboriginal Territorians live in overcrowded houses, of whom 10,700 are considered homeless. This lack of adequate housing and this overcrowding affect every aspect of community life It increases the levels of domestic violence, suicide, poor mental health, lack of safety, poor hygiene and the spread of diseases.

Just recently, Australians witnessed a frightening example of how rapidly disease will spread through an Indigenous community trying to deal with overcrowding when the Indigenous residents of Wilcannia had to contend with COVID-19 and its deadly consequences. We all saw the impact; we all witnessed First Nations residents with a positive COVID test forced to live in makeshift tents in their front yards just to protect their families. And it was not a one-off occurrence. It happened again and again until the government was shamed into acting. The virus spread fast because of the lack of a national vaccine strategy for Indigenous people and because of chronic overcrowding, a problem that is well known at all levels of government.

The overcrowding experienced by First Nations people is a national shame, and this government continues to have no long-term national housing strategy for First Nations people. In the May budget this year the government offered hope to end CDP and replace it with a new program targeting jobs and skills development, and it flagged that mutual obligation requirements would be relaxed during the development of this new remote jobs program. But in the end, all that was being offered was a two-year trial of new approaches to undertaking 'work-like' activities. While there is no explanation of what 'work-like' activities actually means, we do know it doesn't mean real jobs. We also know that individuals who volunteered for this trial stay on JobSeeker. So the new remote engagement program under trial is just another work-for-the-dole scheme—CDP by another name.

This is such a disappointment. The government has not kept its promise of replacing the CDP program targeting jobs and skills development. It's just a fiddle with the policy and rebranding. The government should adopt Labor's policy for remote employment services. A Labor government will replace CDP with a genuine remote employment program, one that puts in place the best elements of the former Community Development Employment Program, the old CDEP, a program that creates real local jobs with proper wages and conditions and which offers meaningful community control and a pathway to self-determination.

I remind the House that the CDP was designed and implemented by this government. It is a broken and discriminatory program that has been operating under various iterations since 2015. Its purpose was to put in place a welfare-dependent employment service program, a remote work-for-the-dole program, but one that was much harsher, with many more compliance requirements than was expected for jobseekers in other regions in Australia. It took just two years: in 2017 a Senate inquiry into the effectiveness and appropriateness of CDP found that the program was an abject failure. Expert witnesses to the inquiry argued that CDP was discriminatory, that it actually acted against job creation and that CDP was acting as a pool of cheap labour. These experts also said CDP was damaging because more than 50 per cent of all penalties imposed on jobseekers across Australia were for people on CDP. These penalties occurred because Centrelink was not able to take into consideration the family, social, cultural and community obligations on members of an Indigenous community. The repeated breaches and imposed penalties resulted in the loss of income payments, causing financial distress and increasing poverty. The difficulties of staying on the CDP have seen an increase in disengagement from the program, and more local crime and family violence. These outcomes are well known, and that is why Labor is saying this bill is another wasted opportunity for the government. Why is the government being so stubborn? Why is it unable to listen to remote Indigenous communities and leaders?

What was it about the CDEP that made it so positive for remote Australia? Under the CDEP, jobseekers could do more than just receive their unemployment benefits. They could take on real local jobs created and administered by local First Nations communities, paid at minimum wage rates for hours worked. The program offered a genuine alternative to being on welfare while still contributing to their communities, and there were flow-on benefits for the community—meaningful control and a pathway to self-determination. The scheme operated under a flexible funding model that allowed communities to complete self-identified projects. This government appears to genuinely have a problem with the idea of Indigenous self-determination.

Over the years the government has attempted to reform the CDP and make it less onerous. The first attempt was in December 2015, just six months after the program had started. The changes were strongly criticised by Indigenous stakeholders and service providers because of a lack of consultation. In the end, this amending bill lapsed because no-one supported it.

In December 2017 the government tried again. This time it issued a discussion paper canvassing three options for reform, including a new wage base similar to the CDP. But when the bill finally came forward in 2018 it had added a target compliance framework—a demerit system—and the subsidised wage scheme was limited to just 6,000 CDP participants. These changes were again sharply rejected by stakeholders because, again, no-one had been consulted, and, again, the bill lapsed.

In 2019 the government tried again to get to the bottom of remote-jobseeker concerns and undertook an evaluation of the CDP. In summary, it found that more participants than not thought the CDP had been bad for their communities and that the high penalty rates were discouraging people from participation. So many remote young people were just not receiving income support, because to stay on the CDP was just too hard. Yet here we go again; the government has come back to the parliament with a bill for emerging employment services it has not consulted on.

Aboriginal Peak Organisations Northern Territory, APO NT, told a Senate committee on the legislation: 'What the government still fails to understand is that CDP participants are already trained. They have worked and will work if there are jobs available.' And the data shows that nothing is changing for remote Indigenous communities under a work-for-the-dole program. APO NT also told us that over the last decade the employment gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in remote Australia has grown, and that the poverty and social harms that arise from this have increased. Independent analysis has found that the CDP has contributed to this growing gap.

Labor has many concerns with this bill and its pilot program, primarily because it is such a missed opportunity. While the bill contains very little detail on how it will be designed and implemented, it does establish the remote engagement participation payment, a supplementary payment to income support. The payment of up to $190 a fortnight for 104 weeks will be offered for undertaking work-like activities in community identified placements, but it is only for 200 participants in the five pilot sites. That's about 40 people for each site. This is not reform. This is delay.

Because the minister will be the decision-maker on all matters relating to the pilot program, only he knows what the new compliance regime will be. But what we do know about the pilot is that the participants will not be offered the normal protections of other workers, like wages, leave entitlements and superannuation. They will not be offered a traineeship or apprenticeship and have no guarantee of a real job at the end of two years. We cannot determine whether the pilot program will be discriminatory or compatible with human rights. The minister has told the parliament that the lack of operational detail is because the government need to be flexible in developing the new program and we should take them on trust, but the government have broken many of their promises to First Nations people. The most recent was their failure to deliver a voice to the parliament, a referendum on constitutional recognition in this term of government and a national vaccine strategy for First Nations people. This government cannot be trusted to improve the lives of First Nations participants on CDP.

Labor would never have brought forward this bill. First Nations people do not need another quick fix to a welfare program and a rehash of the same old failed policies. They need the government to address the underlying challenge affecting lives and holding people back. A Labor government will not make the same mistakes. We will not only end CDP; we will listen to First Nations people and put in place the program they want, one that generates economic growth and creates job opportunities, because there is no substitute for paid employment. Our program will be implemented by our Aboriginal community controlled service providers and include large-scale Indigenous employers in remote Australia. Their expertise will be central to the design of any new employment program.

In conclusion, the government has yet again missed an opportunity and offered the parliament minor tweaks to a major problem. We don't need a pilot. First Nations people need a new employment program implemented across the whole country. What is the use of a trial in only five locations when a good employment program should be flexible enough to be tailored to the needs of every community from the beginning? The parliament has two options: to support the sliver of change being offered or to reject the bill outright. Because the situation in remote Indigenous communities has become so dire, Labor will not stand in the way of the passage of this bill. The participation payment will provide a benefit for some CDP participants and their communities. For the other 29,500-plus active CDP jobseekers who will not receive the payment or participate in the pilot, nothing will change. They must remain on CDP until sometime in the future. Labor does not consider this to be a good outcome, and so I ask the minister: go back and listen to First Nations people again and redesign your program to one that delivers for all on CDP, a program that will actually get people into work, gives on country young people opportunities and truly helps to end poverty in remote communities.

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