Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm here today to support the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Remote Engagement Program) Bill 2021. This is one component of legislation that will help enable jobseekers in some of the most isolated Australian communities, including communities in my electorate, to access job skills training appropriate to the employment opportunities in their particular community.

I would like to acknowledge that this is a good outcome for the remote Ngaanyatjarra lands in my electorate of O'Connor. I will also give the member for Perth a bit of advice: you can fly in to Esperance, you can fly in to Albany and you can fly in to Kalgoorlie, but if you jump in a car and drive 1,000 kilometres north-east of Kalgoorlie you get to the town of Warburton; that's where the really remote communities in my electorate are. You drive through Leonora, Laverton and Menzies along the way, and it would be good to drop in and talk to some people there about the cashless debit card. Anyway, the NG lands, as I will abbreviate them, have been announced as one of the five pilot sites for the Morrison government's new remote engagement program, which will work towards devising a needs based job training program to replace the current Community Development Program.

While the bill is being introduced and debated throughout this spring period, to help provide the framework for this pilot, I'm pleased to see that the NG lands are finally getting the autonomy they have long been calling for. This will enable them to design a program that will be better targeted to the needs of their people. Unlike many remote Indigenous communities, there are in fact highly-paid job opportunities within the NG lands. The Great Central Road already carries a significant volume of tourist traffic—outside of COVID—as people travel from Uluru through the NG lands to Laverton and the Northern Goldfields gateway into WA. Also, construction is progressing well on the Outback Way, Australia's longest shortcut, which connects Winton in western Queensland to the Northern Goldfields in WA. The Outback Way will not only create an iconic new trans-Australian tourist route but also provide a vital logistics corridor for the movement of agricultural produce, livestock, mining and freight between Queensland, the Northern Territory and WA. Shire of Ngaanyatjarraku Shire President Damien McLean, his council and the Ngaanyatjarra Land Council have long called for changes to the current Community Development Program. So I am pleased to see that this opportunity has become available to them.

In a nutshell, the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Remote Engagement Program) Bill 2021 will establish a new supplementary payment for eligible jobseekers in remote engagement program pilot sites who will participate in placements that are job-like. These placements will build participants' skills and deliver goods and/or services and benefits to their local communities and provide a pathway for jobseekers into a job. In short, it will enable supplementary payments beyond the current working age of welfare payments to be made to those jobseekers who engage in meaningful job training in a real-life working environment. I can't pre-empt the outcome of these community consultations but, for the NG lands, this may present opportunities towards training in hospitality, in tourism, in Indigenous arts and crafts, in the highly paid jobs of the many mining operations nearby or in road construction of the Outback Way and the associated freight logistics that will ultimately follow.

I'm excited about what this program may mean for many of my remote shires who have long found that the CDP does not deliver for their communities. Many of these shires have found an opportunity to create their own remote jobs engagement program through being part of the cashless debit trial. Interestingly, Labor have just introduced their own bill, aimed at scrapping the cashless debit card, which will destroy the Job Ready Pilot Program that is currently operating in the adjacent Northern Goldfields shires of Laverton, Leonora and Menzies as well as the Shire of Coolgardie—all shires where the CDP does not meet the needs of their jobseekers. So the Job Ready Program is already a component of the cashless debit card trial that has been operating in the Goldfields since March 2018.

Yesterday the member for Bruce—it's good to see him here today to hear my contribution—introduced his bill, which, if successful, will force the premature termination of the cashless debit card trial not only in my electorate but also across the other trial sites. I can only speak to my own personal experience, being closely connected to the shires of Laverton, Leonora, Menzies and Coolgardie as well the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, but I don't believe the member for the Bruce has ever visited or consulted with any of the above. For the benefit of the member for Bruce and his Labor colleagues: these shires volunteered to be part of the cashless debit card trial. They hoped it would be a tool to help address the social harm occurring in their communities as a result of welfare dollars being spent on alcohol, drugs and gambling rather than on the necessities of life. If only the member for Bruce had been in Leonora the day a second teenager in that one week had taken their life.

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