Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Standing Committee on Education and Employment I present the committee's report entitled Advisory report on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2011, incorporating a dissenting report from the member for Melbourne, together with the minutes of proceedings.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

by leave—The bill was referred by the House Selection Committee to the House Standing Committee on Education and Employment on 24 March 2011 for inquiry and report. This is the second bill referred to the education and employment committee under the new arrangements that provide for the Selection Committee to refer a bill to a committee for an advisory report.

The inquiry received 16 submissions and took evidence from government departments, employment and social security peak bodies, employment service providers and other stakeholders in two public hearings that were held in Melbourne and Canberra. We are especially grateful to the people, organisations and departments who participated in the inquiry.

The committee was struck by the passion for social welfare, commitment to employment participation and breadth of knowledge expressed in many submissions and by numerous witnesses. Although the committee recognises that broader issues were raised in relation to the social security and welfare systems as a whole, the committee's focus must, of course, remain on the measures proposed by this bill. This bill seeks to tighten the compliance regime currently applicable to job seekers receiving participation payments by introducing payment suspensions for job seekers who fail to attend appointments with their employment service providers until they agree to reschedule that appointment.

There is no doubt about the crucial role that sustained and meaningful employment participation plays in the lives of all Australians. The minister echoed the words of our Prime Minister when she indicated that the benefits of employment stretch far beyond the receipt of a pay packet. Employment participation brings with it a suite of benefits including not only economic security but also dignity, purpose and direction. A central element of fostering employment participation is encouraging job seekers to interact and engage with their employment service providers. A lot of people have spoken about this as a punitive action, but the government and the committee saw it as a way to engage job seekers and to get them to talk with their employment services, which is critical and important. The committee believes that this bill is a step in the right direction in this regard. I would like to respond to some of the assertions in the dissenting report, in particular that there was not support for this measure. In response to this claim, I draw the attention of the House to, for example, the evidence from Dr Prins Ralston, Executive Leader of Employment Solutions at Mission Australia, who said that these measures will:

… assist employment providers by encouraging job seekers to properly engage with the system. That is the core of what we believe—that these amendments will be a tool that will help us to better engage job seekers.

Ms Sinclair, CEO of the National Employment Services Association, said:

The amendments outlined in the current bill are considered welcome improvements to the job seeker compliance framework and we believe should put a greater emphasis on engagement and participation.

While recognising that there were mixed views expressed in the report of the CPSU, the union that represents the front-line workers, its submission said:

The majority of CPSU members felt that the proposed changes would likely increase compliance by job seekers as payments would not be made until job seekers attended appointments. A majority of members also said that changes to notification for reconnection requirements would improve job seeker compliance.

We recognise that some issues with the bill were brought up, especially in the administration of the system, and the committee's report contains 10 recommendations which we believe will enhance the communication and equitable administration of the measures proposed in the bill.

A strong message to the committee received from peak bodies and other stakeholders was that the social security system is complex and often confusing. Therefore, a key recommendation in our report centres on the production of plain English explanations of the changes proposed in the bill and the impact that they will have. The purpose of this recommendation is to combat and minimise complexity in order to enable effective communication of the changes proposed in the bill to all job seekers and to ensure that job seekers fully understand their obligations and are able to meaningfully engage with employment service providers. In a similar vein, the committee has recommended that the word 'special' be removed from the reasonable excuses provision proposed by the bill, again in order to simplify and clarify the measures proposed by the bill and ensure that they are implemented as intended without an unnecessary level of complexity.

The committee has also recommended the development of consistent guidance and training materials for those who will be involved in the administration of the proposed compliance regime and the provision of comprehensive training to Centrelink and employment service provider staff. These measures will ensure the consistent and equitable application and administration of the proposed compliance regime across the board. Furthermore, the committee has recommended the collection of data in relation to why job seekers without a reasonable excuse miss appointments and a review of the impact of the measures proposed by this bill. These recommendations are targeted at filling a perceived gap in the research conducted in the area of job seeker compliance and ensuring that a concerted effort is made to continue to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed compliance regime.

In relation to vulnerable job seekers, about whom many witnesses and submissions expressed concern, the committee has recommended that employment service providers utilise all re-engagement methods available to them, not only compliance action, in order to re-engage these job seekers. The committee recognises that vulnerable job seekers do have special needs that must be addressed properly. The committee has also recommended that additional training and resources be provided to Centrelink staff in order to raise awareness of vulnerable job seekers and ensure that their vulnerabilities are being identified and managed in a manner that is conducive to assisting these job seekers to find and maintain employment.

The committee also acknowledges the concerns that were raised about the capacity of Centrelink staff to implement the proposed measures, given their current workload. I and the committee were pleased that the Department of Human Services has indicated that it will monitor this impact in consultation with Centrelink staff and rearrange working arrangements accordingly. The committee agrees that this monitoring should occur to ensure that no undue stress or unreasonable workloads are put on front-line staff.

In closing, I would like to thank all the committee members who worked on this. There was a lot of constructive discussion and engagement on this. I would also like to thank the committee secretariat for their support—in particular, Sara Edson and Larisa Michalko for their hard work on this inquiry. I commend the report to the House.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—We hear a lot in this place and elsewhere about evidence based policy, and indeed I think it was the member for Fraser who moved a motion to that effect which was passed in this House. But, if there were ever any proof needed that evidence based policy gives way to political imperatives every time, it was this inquiry process and this bill. As we have heard, the effect and the purpose of the bill is to impose sanctions on job seekers up to and including losing part of their pay that they will never get back. During the course of the inquiry, almost everyone who fronted up to the inquiry, either in the form of a written submission or to give us evidence in person, said that this was the wrong approach.

Last year there was an independent review commissioned by this government into the compliance framework for the social security system. That review was chaired by Professor Julian Disney. There were a number of recommendations. Prior to the introduction of this bill, the government had not responded to the recommendations, but it is basing its bill on the review and says the review by Professor Disney gave support to the move to impose financial sanctions on job seekers. The only problem with that is that Professor Disney fronted up to the inquiry and gave evidence that he thought that, at best, this bill was premature and was in effect ill judged. He said that he only included a note about that in his independent report because it was raised by other parties during the course of the federal election. He did not think it was a good idea and it was not one that he would have generated himself. It was an idea he felt obliged to raise because it was circulating in public debate. In his recommendation that refers to this proposal, he said that at the very least we should give all the other measures that he has recommended a year to bed down before we embark on something as punitive as suspending people's payments he reasons for that are clear. They were relayed to the committee by job agency after job agency who came before the committee to say that people find the social security system bewildering and that you cannot proceed on an assumption that the reason people miss appointments is that they are somehow seeking to work the system. In fact, evidence was given to the inquiry that the people who want to work the system are precisely the ones who will turn up to every meeting because they know what is required. The people who are going to be hit by this bill are not the ones who are rorting the system but, according to the evidence, the ones who are confused by the system and who potentially find it difficult. That is why the No. 1 recommendation of the independent review was that there be a plain language reworking of all materials associated with job seeker compliance, because until we are sure that job seekers understand their obligations we cannot punish them for failing to meet them.

The second implicit rationale in the bill is that job seekers are somehow not turning up for so-called illegitimate reasons. The problem with that, if we are serious about evidence based policy, is that you would imagine that someone would have been able to come to the inquiry and tell us why it is that people are missing appointments. No-one could do that. The department could not do that and none of the very small number of people who supported the submission could do that. What we do know from the figures is that 20 per cent of people who miss appointments are Indigenous Australians and that 47 per cent of the people who miss appointments are young people. No-one could explain why that was and no-one could explain why it was justified that there should be a disproportionate impact on those people of these harsh penalties.

What almost everyone who appeared before the inquiry agreed with was that we should go back to basics. First of all, let us find out why people are missing these appointments—find out whether it is because they do not have good transport options, find out whether it is because they do not understand the system, find out whether they knew this was necessary in order for continued payment—and then develop programs that are tailored to that. In fact, that is going on. The inquiry heard that the Centrelink working group is looking at that at the moment; its work is not yet complete.

That is why the Greens have put in a dissenting report. We cannot support the passage of this bill. We propose that time be given to allow the recommendations of the independent inquiry to go ahead, to allow the Centrelink working group to do its job of gathering a proper evidence base about why so many young people and so many Indigenous Australians are missing appointments, and to not take the approach that is more stick than carrot and potentially put some of our most disadvantaged job seekers, who are without an income, even further into dire straits.