Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

We will support this amendment to the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Workforce Incentive) Bill 2022. It's quite unusual for a government, just six weeks after introducing a bill, to amend it in this fashion. We congratulate the government to some extent for listening to what the opposition has put forward for a number of months. Sadly, the government has dragged its heels on this—workforce shortages have been present and getting worse for month and months. We saw the government dragged their heels on introducing the bill to start with—they've now had to swallow their pride and move this amendment today, which we will support.

It still doesn't go as far as the coalition's announcement in June, when we put in place the superior work bonus incentive to allow pensioners to earn up to $600, doubling the $300 that's currently in place. As I said yesterday in moving our amendment to this bill, pensioners need the certainty in many instances to be able to enter into arrangements with employers and others, so we do congratulate the government for backflipping on their hard date of 30 June—which was always inappropriate. We outlined from the beginning that it was inappropriate. We still think that the government should give itself more flexibility and give more certainty to pensioners by having a measure such as this—indeed, the coalition's superior measure is an ongoing measure—that is assessed every 12 months, as opposed to having a hard cut-off date of 31 December. But a hard cut-off date of 31 December is better than 30 June. We appreciate the government swallowing its pride and moving an amendment to its own bill just six weeks after they introduced it.

They could've just taken our policy that we announced for June. They could have listened to employers, they could have listened to pensioner advocacy groups, who for the entire duration of this government have been asking for movement on this. Indeed, the first two schedules to the bill as first introduced—again, we congratulate the government for taking both of those schedules from a bill that the former coalition government introduced in February. They added schedule 3 to the bill, which was the only new part of the bill. I suspect that this amendment goes part of the way to try to deal with the errors that that initial bill created.

The opposition will support this. It still doesn't go as far as the coalition's superior policy that we announced months ago, but we will always support improvements on bad policy. This is an improvement to what was originally put in place by the government, and we will, therefore, be supporting it today—unlike the government who, in the last sitting period, voted against amendments to a bill that was agreed to in the Senate that would have entitled pensioners to the benefits, largely, of schedules 1 and 2 to this bill. They voted against that in the last sitting fortnight, and yet bring forward this bill in this sitting fortnight. It makes no sense. It has made pensioners wait longer than they needed to. This is already late. The government has already dragged its feet on this. The workforce shortages and the disincentives for pensioners to work additional hours have been getting worse and worse by the month.

We will expedite that process now by not moving any further amendments or dividing on this bill. We will support it. But the minister and the government have to get better at moving quickly on the sorts of issues when they arise in our economy, because businesses cannot wait months and months and months for bills to be brought forward. Then they can't wait for the government hashing out their own bill that requires amendments like we see today. They can't wait for a government voting against amendments that were substantially passed by the Senate, making pensioners in Australia wait even longer.

We will support the bill. I want to thank all of the groups who have helped inform coalition policy which has led this debate, which has really pushed the government to moving. Yes, they've been slow, I would say to all those groups, but imagine how much slower they would've been had we not got on the front foot and collectively pushed the government into the right direction here. We will support these amendments. Again, I want to thank everybody who has contributed with the development and the leadership of coalition policy in this area.

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