Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to raise in this place my concerns about the direction that this government is taking in relation to unemployed people across this country. It seems that its continuing obsession with dividing our country has found new depths, when we look at what's happened across this week. The most vilified by this government, it appears, are our most vulnerable, those people who are in receipt of benefits and seeking employment—and it doesn't seem to matter how old you are.

At one end, we have this government incensed, punishing people between 55 and 59 who are looking for work. Currently, mutual obligation requires this group to do 15 hours of volunteering. This government has in the past spared these people, in an age where even this government has conceded that employers are not giving unemployed 50-plus people a fair go. It has conceded it in the past, but now this government is going to change those conditions and insist that people aged 55 to 59 who are unemployed meet the same mutual obligations as others.

This seems cruel. It seems to lack empathy. The people who are in this category in my electorate I spend time with, and I am very concerned about what this will further do to their self-esteem. It is not easy to find yourself in your 50s and unemployed, and these people deserve empathy—something that it appears the member for Pearce and the member for Aston are devoid of.

And it is not just this age group. Then we look at our young people. Just in the last week, we've seen the PaTH internship program bring itself and the government into disrepute when it was found that a coffee chain has been suspended from being involved. Despite the government promising us that this program would be reeled out in a just way, a young person was found working extreme hours for $4 an hour on top of their payments and another young person was being paid in vouchers. Then we find that, although the program is failing, at the other end of the spectrum 1,300 young people are going to be punished for what we were assuming was going to be a voluntary program. We are now finding that young people are going to be punished for not taking up the opportunity to work for $4 an hour. People are being asked to before they've signed contracts.

This government needs to take an empathy pill. It needs to stop and think about how it's treating the most vulnerable. They are not a target. Stop dividing this country and start looking after people.