Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the amendment be agreed to.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To resume my speech: with respect to the state-by-state modelling for unmet demand, I understand that my colleague Senator Skye Kakoschke-Moore has sought the production of the documents. It is quite unacceptable for this parliament to be expected to vote on such reforms when such critical information is not available. However, the evidence before us does tell us that there is possibly a more meaningful way to address addiction. Experts also tell us that income management as a first step when a person reports that they need help would drive away participants and recipients from self-reporting. In turn, this will make it more difficult to do what I believe the government does want to do—that is, better assist every person receiving the jobseeker payment to be free of addiction and to be job ready.

Schedule 4 no longer provides for drug or alcohol addiction as a reasonable excuse. This can only be a reasonable excuse if we accept that drug or alcohol addiction is a barrier to employment, and then ensure that we provide the pathways to rehabilitation for the participant. As I have previously said, it is reasonable to expect a jobseeker to look for work or to take steps to address the barriers that stop jobseekers participating in looking for work or employment activities. Equally, we as a society must provide as many supports and pathways as possible to assist people to beat their addiction.

Schedule 15 provides for targeted compliance. I accept that we should place expectations on jobseekers to be activated and engaged. I do believe, though, that the compliance framework should include income management as a last resort after all demerit points have been exhausted and before the cutting of payments. There is a fine balance with mutual obligations, and I would like to see debate to consider what recipients' further chances should be before payments are removed, as this would cause detrimental financial impact and possibly adverse or unintended consequences, such as a person turning to crime as they see no other option. I think we must look at this legislation and at these clauses from the point of view not just of the individual recipient but of families, and many of these recipients do have families. As this clause stands, ultimately we could possibly be depriving children of food in the cupboard.

In closing, I cannot support this bill in its entirety as it currently stands. I and my colleagues will continue discussions with the government in good faith, and my Senate colleagues will examine this bill in greater detail. We all want every Australian jobseeker to have every opportunity to address barriers, find employment and achieve happiness and prosperity. This goal is not beyond being realised.

Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017 implements a range of complex measures across the portfolios of Social Services, Employment and Human Services. Labor is committed to ensuring that the proposed measures are in the best interests of supporting and empowering Australians, not demonising and isolating them. We believe in fairness, we believe in equality and we believe in justice. Many of the measures proposed in this bill certainly do not promote these principles. In fact, many of the measures in this bill will deliver the exact opposite for Australian jobseekers and people suffering with drug and alcohol dependency. We note that there are measures we could potentially support if they were separated from other measures in the bill, and we will move amendments in the Senate to do just that. That's exactly why Labor referred this bill to a Senate inquiry—to ensure that it's scrutinised and to ensure that all relevant information on the proposed measures is available.

However, unfortunately, the government has rushed this process through. It has only allowed a short Senate inquiry into the proposed changes and has scheduled the bill for debate in the Senate on the day that the report is released. That's just not good enough. The government wants to shield these proposed changes from the scrutiny of not just the Labor Party but experts in the field being affected by them.

I want to speak to several schedules in the bill. Schedule 3 concerns the cessation of the wife pension. The wife pension is a non-activity-tested payment. It's been closed to new applicants since 1 July 1995. It's paid to female partners of age pension or disability support pension recipients who are not eligible for pensions in their own right. The wife pension was granted to women solely on the basis of their partner's eligibility for the age pension or disability support pension. As at 2020, it's estimated that there will be around 7,750 wife pension recipients. According to this bill, of these, 2,250 will transfer onto the age pension and around 2,400 onto the carers payment. These women will be no worse off under schedule 3 of this bill. However, 2,900 women will be transferred onto the jobseeker payment. These will be women below pension age who do not meet the activity test for the carer payment. Transitional payments would apply that mean that they will continue to receive the pension rate of payment rather than the lower jobseeker payment rate, but its indexation would cease, meaning that they would be worse off in real terms over time.

It's estimated that around 200 wife pension recipients who reside overseas will no longer be eligible for any social security payment as a result of this measure. These recipients are under age-pension age and would not be eligible for either another payment under an international agreement or a portable payment. So, in actuality, this means that these 200 or so women will up to be $670 worse off per fortnight. The group of low-income women who will be transferred onto the jobseeker payment will suddenly be left with nothing to live on—including the 200 women who are recipients of the wife pension and reside overseas—other than their partner's pension, and they probably have been out of the workforce for many years. It would seem reasonable for this group to be grandfathered to avoid them facing financial crisis, particularly given their small number and, therefore, the minimum cost of doing so.

Schedule 9 of this bill proposes changes to the activity tests for persons aged 55 to 59. It removes the ability of Newstart recipients and some special benefits recipients between the ages of 55 and 59 to fulfil the activity test by volunteering for 30 hours per fortnight. The overwhelming evidence provided by experts to the Senate inquiry considering this legislation was that mature jobseekers actually face significant adversity, including ageism, when trying to enter the workforce. The proposal seeks to adjust the obligations of the 55-to-59-year-old cohort by forcing them to enter the workforce, but in actual fact the government hasn't provided any additional support to help them overcome the significant barriers they face.

Experts in the volunteering sector are particularly concerned that the changes may reduce the number of people volunteering in Australia. As somebody who works very closely with community organisations and not-for-profit organisations in my electorate, I understand that they rely very strongly on volunteers, and any kind of negative impact on the volunteering sector is also going to negatively impact those organisations that are providing vital services to people within my electorate.

We also note that the participation and unemployment rate for the 55-to-59-year-old cohort is similar to the population overall but, once out of work, the length of time a person aged 55 to 59 spends looking for work is 73 weeks, compared to averages of 40 and 50 weeks for those of different age groups. A while ago I held a jobs forum in my electorate, and that was overwhelmingly attended by people within that cohort—people over the age of 50 who are unemployed. I was quite astounded to know that these people don't need more training. They aren't unemployed because of a lack of skills or because of a lack of education. In fact, some of them have PhDs and some of them have engineering qualifications, apart from 20 to 30 years of experience in the workforce.

The government has announced a new program targeted at helping people over 50 back into the workforce called the Career Transition Assistance Program, due to be rolled out in 2020. What I'd like to say about that is that it really doesn't recognise those barriers that our older and mature workers face. Those barriers aren't about their level of skill and they aren't about their level of education. As I've said, many of them have a high level of skill and many years of experience in the Australian workforce, and many of them have education qualifications. In fact, one gentleman who attended my jobs forum has an engineering degree and 20 years of experience in the engineering sector. But, because he's over the age of 55, he's been unemployed for five years and is finding it very difficult to get back into employment.

They don't need retraining. Our older Australians and our mature workforce don't need retraining. What they need is a substantive change in the system to recognise and value the skills, the experience and the education that older and mature workers bring to a workplace. I would suggest that it might be more worthwhile to promote mature workers in workplaces and to incorporate some substantive measures that address the level of ageism that is occurring in our workplaces, because it is those kinds of systemic and substantive barriers that older workers and mature workers, at least in my electorate, are facing. It's not a matter of their not having any skills. It's not a matter of their needing more training. It is a matter of their skills, their experience and their education being undervalued by the employment market, and I think that's where we need to focus our efforts in that space.

I would like to move on now to schedule 12 of the proposed bill. The fact is that the government really hasn't provided any evidence to support the establishment of its drug-testing trial. In fact, evidence from overseas actually goes against what the government is proposing. In New Zealand, for example, a drug-testing program for welfare recipients was introduced in 2013. In 2015, only 22 of 8,001 participants returned a positive result for illicit drug use. The detection rate was much lower than that for the general population of New Zealand estimated to be using illicit drugs. So, if there is no evidence for this proposal, what information is available to show that it will work? We simply don't know.

The government hasn't told us what the cost to the taxpayer of this testing will be, nor what kind of test it will be. Addiction medicine specialists are concerned about the technical aspects of this particular trial, and still no information has been forthcoming. A long-term cannabis user who is trying to address their drug use will still test positive up to six weeks after their last use. But this doesn't tell us if they are using currently. So how can this test, a test that we have no details about, tell us if a person has actually stopped using drugs, if the drugs are still detected in their system six weeks after they've stopped? These are the kinds of concerns that we are raising but that seem to be swept under the carpet by the government. The government wants to pass this bill without asking the substantial questions about exactly how this part of the bill—exactly how this proposed drug trial—is going to operate.

Medical professionals and the drug and alcohol treatment sector have also raised significant concerns about these measures and their impact on the community. These organisations include St Vincent's Health Australia, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, ACOSS and UnitingCare. In fact, no health or community organisations have actually come out publicly in support of the trial. On top of this, the government is claiming that the availability of treatment will be a criterion for selecting trial sites. The Senate estimates revealed that the Commonwealth doesn't actually have access to data on the availability of treatment and has to rely on the states to provide this information. So, again, there is a lot of confusion about how this is actually going to work and, again, no evidence that treatment places will actually be available.

The treatment sector tells us that there are long waiting lists for treatment all around the country. At a meeting in Perth about two months ago, the treatment sector said exactly the same thing: huge, long waiting lists for people who are looking for help with their drug addictions and for beds within drug treatment facilities. The trials that are being proposed by a government whipping up a policy on the run will just increase pressure on an already overburdened system. There is no plan for people who are identified as having an actual drug problem and who can't access treatment because it is not available. So what do we do? We identify that somebody has a drug problem, but then there is nowhere to put them because the drug treatment facilities are already overburdened.

Again, we see a government that is wanting to pass a bill without the support of the organisations and specialists who know best and without giving us any information on how it will work. We can't simply continue to ignore the advice of experts in the field. The advice that comes from those working at the grassroots—those who are working with people who are drug addicted—is telling us that this drug trial is simply not going to work. In fact, it will have adverse effects on those people who are trying to rehabilitate and discontinue their drug use.

Now, we know that the kinds of punitive measures like those being proposed do not stop illicit drug use. You cannot stop drug use simply by incorporating a range of punitive measures or by punishing those who are caught up in this illness. Testing like this can actually lead to people simply using less-traceable but more-harmful drugs like, for example, synthetic cannabis. It can also encourage people to turn to other drugs that aren't being tested for as part of the trial, such as alcohol. What we can see is that the proposed measures do not promote fairness or justice or compassion for jobseekers.

I know that receiving welfare and looking for work is stressful and difficult enough as it is. I've been there. I know what it's like and I've lived through it. It's not something that a lot of people are proud of. A lot of people find it quite humiliating. These measures will potentially make it harder for those jobseekers to provide for their families and break out of cycles of poverty and drug abuse. They will not help or support jobseekers with drug use issues. They will just punish them and make it harder for them to address those issues. (Time expired)

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the previous speaker for her contribution and all those participating from this side of the chamber. I have to say that I'm a bit bemused by the fact that there's been such a drop-off of government members speaking on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017. So few of them have actually participated, which raises a number of questions, I would have thought, about the belief that exists within the government ranks about some of the measures incorporated in this legislation.

As we know, this bill seeks to amend a range of quite complex measures across social services, employment and human services portfolios. As usual, I'm indebted to the Bills Digest from the Parliamentary Library and the work they've done on this legislation. As the Bills Digest tells us, schedule 12 amends the Social Security Act 1991 and the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 to enable the government to run drug-testing trials in three locations. From 1 January 2018, 5,000 new recipients of unemployment payments will be asked, under this legislation, to take drug tests as part of a trial to take place in three locations across the country. People who refuse to take the tests may face penalties. People who test positive on the first test will be placed on income management. If they test positive on later tests, they may be asked to accept drug treatment as part of their mutual obligation requirements.

The government argues that the drug-testing trials have two objectives: to maintain the integrity of, and public confidence in, the social security system and to provide new pathways for identifying recipients with drug abuse problems and facilitating their referral to appropriate treatment facilities.

However, that's not the full story. As again I'm reminded by the work being done by the Parliamentary Library, there are a number of issues that may be of concern. Firstly, the government did not consult with outside experts or service providers while developing the policy. I will come to that in more detail in a moment, because, as we're reminded by the Bills Digest, few welfare agencies, health professionals or drug treatment experts regard a combination of random drug-testing and penalties for refusal to undertake treatment as a promising approach. Indeed, I will explain in detail the concerns of these organisations.

Secondly, a number of policy experts and commentators have suggested that drug-testing measures are more about signalling the government's disapproval of drug use than they are about assisting the problem drug users into employment.

Thirdly, if the cashless debit card or a similar card that is distinctive and readily identifiable is used to income-manage recipients who test positive on a drug test, that may lead to a stigma because it identifies cardholders as drug users. So they are stigmatised and indeed victimised.

Fourthly, the availability of drug and alcohol treatment is in the context of national undersupply. Fifthly, and lastly, the Department of Human Services will engage contractors to administer drug tests and determine that a person should be subject to income management. That raises some very serious concerns, and that is why Labor has moved an amendment which will seek for the House to decline to give the bill a second reading. As we argue, it's a cynical attempt by this government to distract from its political problems—that we know about. And it calls on the government to drop their costly and unproven social security recipients drug-testing trial that medical experts say won't work, to listen to medical and health experts by implementing proven ways to assist people by investing in treatment and rehabilitation services to battle drug addiction, and to stop demonising vulnerable Australians who rely on our social security system.

We expect a lot from our government, but what we want them to do that is most important is to look after the most marginalised, disenfranchised and, ultimately, victimised people in our community. This piece of legislation is doing precisely the opposite. We expect leadership from the Prime Minister. He says this legislation is an act of love. I say to the Prime Minister it's a very poor act of love. It's a very strange definition of what love is, as my comrade reminds me, if you're seeking to victimise and stigmatise people, because that is the outcome of this legislation on the people this aims to recruit into this drug trial.

It's very important that the Prime Minister comes into this place as the leader. He is the Prime Minister of the country. He should be using his position for all Australians, not just for some Australians, and what he is doing here is penalising some of the most disadvantaged, marginalised people in this country. He has no problem, as we saw last weekend, attacking the Leader of the Opposition in the most puerile way—in a very childish and schoolboy manner. Yet he can't bring himself to look after the interests of these Australians who, as we're being told by people who know this business, will be victimised, will be demonised and will be stigmatised by this approach. You can't have it both ways in this country. You either govern for all Australians or you don't. In this case the Prime Minister and the government have made it very clear to all who care to listen and watch that they are not interested in properly governing in the interests of all Australians regardless of who they are or where they live.

I'm a bit over this Prime Minister, to be very frank, because on the weekend he was in Darwin for a whole of an hour. A whole hour he was in Darwin, attending the local Country Liberal Party conference. We know he's got huge problems, but what was his major message from this meeting of the luminaries of the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory? A reminder: he was there for an hour. It was basically to attack the people of the Northern Territory for saying they were concerned about fracking. That's what his message was. He was telling the Northern Territory government that they should overlook the interests, needs, demands and desires of the people of the Northern Territory and just get on with it. Again we're seeing a Prime Minister who clearly has a tin ear. He can't listen, doesn't understand and won't watch and learn from what people who live in regional or remote Australia in this instance think, want and need.

It is no surprise to me that the Prime Minister has adopted this course. But I have to say to him: why doesn't he just look at the evidence and listen to what people who are involved in looking after people who are marginalised in our community say about this legislation. I want to point to a particular submission which was made to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017 by a Western Australian organisation—a very good organisation, an organisation that I have a lot of confidence in. It is the Aboriginal Health Council of Western Australia. They say:

We contend that the proposed changes outlined within the above schedules, will not result in any significant decrease in alcohol and other drug use by those on welfare, or result in any significant savings by the Commonwealth Government—the intended aim of the Bill.

That's what this is about. This is not about looking after the interests of Australians; this is about cost-cutting and getting savings for the government. If they were fair dinkum, they would look at the views that have been expressed.

I agree with the Aboriginal Health Council of Western Australia, who say:

that's clear—

that's also clear—

You would think, would you not, Deputy Speaker, that if you were going to administer this sort of approach on drug use or the abuse of drugs, you would actually go to the drug strategy that this government is actually proselytising. But no, that's irrelevant to this approach. This Prime Minister, who ought to know better and who parades himself around as a true Liberal, instead of listening to the concerns of people who know, closes his mind, with a very blinkered approach pushed, no doubt, by those on the right-wing rump of the Liberal Party and the Nationals.

The Aboriginal Health Council of Western Australia go on to say:

which it is. Drug abuse, misuse of drugs and alcohol abuse are largely health-related issues. Alcohol and other drug dependency, as they say in their submission, is a health issue that 'requires primarily a health-focused response to address the needs of those people with complex needs'. Therefore, you would think that if the government accepted that proposition—which they clearly don't—they would adhere to the direction and investment in the strategies outlined in their own National Drug Strategy 2017-26. Not this government. They can say one thing on one day and another thing on another day, depending on who the audience is or what their purpose is. This Prime Minister and his government have shown yet again how duplicitous they really are.

Also—these proposals in this submission pick this up—the government do not outline the provision of any extra investment to voluntary support and treatment services for people with drug and alcohol dependency, who in this case are Aboriginal people. The bill has not been involved with and is not inclusive of community consultation. What we need, as this document points out, is 'further investment in culturally appropriate, evidence-based and ideally community-led, early intervention and prevention services'. That is true. That's what we need. If we've got a concern about alcohol and drug abuse, that's what we need to do.

Deputy Speaker, you've only got to look at the propositions being put by so many others. This government ought to—but they clearly don't want to—listen to the propositions which have been put to them. For example, the president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, Alex Wodak, has said:

The drug treatment system in Australia is overloaded and underfunded. Unless that crisis is addressed, these people will go to the back of an already long queue.

Hear, hear! But what are we doing? Instead of looking for jobs for these people and instead of addressing their concerns and their needs around alcohol and other drugs, what we are doing is saying to them: 'Come in, have a drug test. By the way, mate, you've shown up. You've got a problem with alcohol or other drugs. We might have to look after your income.'

I note a very touching photograph I saw on the television this morning of the Prime Minister at a football game on the weekend. It was a very touching, beautiful photograph of the Prime Minister with a grandchild, giving a warm embrace to the grandchild with one hand and holding a beer in the other. I don't have a problem with the Prime Minister drinking—none at all—just as I don't have a problem with the member for Warringah having a drink now and then, yet the member for Warringah has admitted that he got so stonkered that he couldn't even come in to vote on important legislation. That's not a problem. Everyone laughs it off.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Put him on the BasicsCard!

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Put him on the BasicsCard. Mate, let's just see him on an income trial!

There are so many people—the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the AMA, the Australian Council of Social Services, Catholic Social Services Australia, the Australian National Council on Drugs; the list goes on and on—who have all said that this will not work, it's not appropriate and it shouldn't be done. Why are the government doing it? What is it they have got against these Australians? (Time expired)

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would seem that the government has lost interest in its own legislation. It has run out of speakers on its side of parliament. There is a very long list of Labor speakers because we're very concerned about this bill and this welfare 'reform'—and I say 'reform' because really this bill is full of, firstly, malice and, secondly, ignorance. This bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017, has been done for blatantly political purposes. You can see the conduct of the minister: he's been out there, often peddling the sorts of welfare-bashing headlines that we see in tabloids from time to time, with misleading information given about whole communities. Most recently, there was one in my community where a whole suburb was blackguarded on the basis of 80-odd people not showing up for interviews. So a suburb full of people—a suburb and an area with, literally, thousands of people—was blackguarded on the basis of the few who perhaps didn't show up for interviews for one reason or another. So we know that this government comes to this bill and to this parliament in this area not in a spirit of practical improvement or of trying to design a social security system which provides people with income support between jobs and endeavours to give them help as they seek work; instead, it really does bash them around the ears and adopts a sort of pernicious approach.

There are three areas of this bill where the government's approach will be very, very damaging to their political processes. It's not just that it's wrong—and we know it's wrong—but that it will actually damage them politically, and I think they should think twice about the nature of the politics about this. The first area is schedule 9, about mature-aged workers. My experience with mature-aged workers, in my area, is that often they left school in year 10 or year 11 or year 12 and went to work in factories. They went to work, day in, day out, for years and years and years. They always rocked up at work and always did the right thing. And then one day their factory was scheduled for closure.

I meet people like that all the time. In the middle of the last campaign, I went down to Avery Dennison in my electorate, a little envelope manufacturer—well, it was little; it used to be big, with 400 employees at its height, but it was down to 40 employees during that campaign. And those 40 employees were being made redundant. Those workers, some of whom had started there as they left school and had stayed there for a very long time, did a good job, paid their taxes and did the right thing. Those workers found that when they got made redundant, not only did they not get any help from the social security system, because of the liquid assets test—which the government is further changing in other bills before this House—but that their job prospects were very grim indeed. If you are in your mid-50s, or your early 50s, or even if you're just over 40—if you're my age, 45—your job prospects can be very, very grim.

The problem is that those people, by any measure, have done the right thing in the contract between citizen and government, if you like: they've worked very hard over a very long period, they've contributed to the system and they've contributed to their communities. Often, what they want is a fair go. Now, at the moment the government says to those workers who might not be able to find work again—and that's the grim reality in some instances—that they can fulfil the activity test, which is the number of jobs applied for per fortnight, by volunteering for 30 hours per fortnight. Frankly, when many mature-age workers apply for work they sometimes send in hundreds and hundreds of applications only to get hundreds and hundreds of rejections. And you get a letter of rejection if you're lucky; often you get no response at all. But volunteering allows them some measure of dignity. They can keep volunteering to fulfil the activity test and to contribute to society, as they've done over decades, and not—I don't want to say 'be harassed' by Centrelink or by the job agencies—be put through the ringer in the same way that, say, a young person is who hasn't contributed to the system and who hasn't paid taxes over decades may be. That's a fair acknowledgement of the situation that many mature-age workers find themselves in.

We know that there is age discrimination. We know that the job prospects for these workers can be very grim indeed, even when the labour market is operating well on the macro scale. Often there are regional impacts or individual impacts in terms of their skills. But we know that the work ethic of many of these mature-age workers is really, really good, and that they are often very distraught about not being able to find work. Volunteering gives them a role in the community and in society, and it frees them from the work activity test—which can sometimes be frustratingly cruel, I think, for workers in that situation.

So the government should be very, very careful. In regard to mature-age workers, I doubt very much that this bill would ever have been applied in the Howard years. I don't think that John Howard would have put these mature-age workers, who—through a combination of economic change, age discrimination and lack of skill formation—have now found themselves in a very difficult situation indeed, through this. So I think that the government should think again, and that when the Senate inquiry gives them an opportunity to rethink this that they should think about the provisions for mature-age workers very carefully indeed.

The second area where this bill will impact on my constituents is on jobseekers generally, with the demerit system that would be introduced—ostensibly to avoid people missing interviews and the like. I've had a fair bit to do with this area. Often, I struggle to see the point of the sometimes onerous nature of these compliance systems that we put in place: often they're riddled with error or with human frailty, and often people who are trying to do the right thing get caught out by them. The idea is that we would apply more financial penalties as a result of this new system coming in. At the moment it's projected that the 72,881 financial penalties that are applied every year will rise to 147,000 financial penalties every year. Now, I understand that might sound like a good idea on talkback radio, or when people are bending the arm at the pub. But in reality it diminishes people's capacity to find work and it diminishes their capacity for human dignity, because often the result of those financial penalties is to impoverish them and sometimes to make them homeless. It is an entirely counterproductive thing to apply financial penalties. It doesn't motivate the individual concerned—I can assure you. It often exacerbates the very problems that they face.

The last provision that Labor has concern with is the drugs tests. I can understand people think, 'This is a terrific idea. If only we quarantine their income, that would yield better results.' We had the BasicsCard. I'm not against it in principle, because we implemented a trial in the city of Playford, which is in my community, and I was an advocate of that trial, but I can tell you from personal experience what we found. What we found worked better were the wraparound service that were put in place at the same time. They were what yielded better results. What yielded better results was actually having Centrelink go out to the community. They went out to places, like the Peachey Belt, and had the Centrelink officers visit the community. Those things yielded better results.

This government would have more credibility in this area if they hadn't cut a billion dollars out of the flexible funds in health and other areas, which provided the very services that might assist people getting off drugs. We know, from personal experience and from every credible study, that people are addicts. Addiction is a very complex thing and you need to deal with it in a complex fashion. You can't just apply simplistic notions to it. For all the reasons that were given before, we think these drugs tests are (a) waste of money that could go into treatment, and (b) unlikely to yield any positive result. There are plenty of examples from Missouri and New Zealand and all over the world that suggest you catch very few people, and that the result from catching people is often that you could have actually just spent the money on services and done the job there.

For all these reasons, we think this bill is a very, very flawed bill. It comes down to the government's intentions in this area. This is a government which is in desperate and dire straits politically, and so it is grasping at the most desperate of territory and the most desperate of proposals to try to fix its political problem. I think, particularly for the mature-age-worker proposals, the government will find that these provisions, when implemented, will infuriate a large group of people in the community who are very good citizens, and who find themselves unemployed through really no fault of their own, as a function of a changing economy.

I think the government will rue the day this bill came to parliament and rue the day the minister brought it here, because, once you get past the cheap headlines, what backbench members will find is that they have to face up to these individuals in the community and they have to face up to the results, and the results will not be pretty. This bill, hopefully, will be sensibly amended in the Senate. I hope we can save the government and the community from this minister.

Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the Senate inquiry into this bill, Sharon Pellas from Volunteering Australia, reported:

I have actually found that in the volunteering role I have had a lot more value in terms of the input that I give into where I've been volunteering in both services. I've actually had an opportunity to also increase my skill set and learn to use different IT systems that I wasn't aware of before. I've also been able to share my knowledge in terms of good customer service skills and looking at customer service models. I've also been able to foster self-esteem in people under Job Network and also with people who are working for the dole. I've been able to be involved in bringing a community together.

She says:

I'm still looking for work. I'm doing that myself anyway. So I think I keep a much more positive approach than what I would have if I wasn't volunteering.

That's Sharon Pellas, a witness giving evidence on behalf of Volunteering Australia. Jemma Toohey, the Chief Executive Officer of Albury Wodonga Volunteer Resource Bureau, quoted a volunteer for her organisation:

In 2013 at the age of 59 I commenced volunteering for 15 hours weekly at the Albury Wodonga Volunteer Resource Bureau. Volunteering gave me a sense of pride, in knowing that some of the skills I had acquired from my previous occupations could be useful to this organisation. Volunteering has also given me many personal benefits, such as teaching me some new skills, meeting new people and a sense of wellbeing by giving back to the community. In 2016 I was fortunate to be offered some casual paid working hours which are still ongoing. It is only due to my volunteering that this opportunity arose and I am extremely grateful. Kind regards, Judy Gallagher.

Ms Gallagher's experience is similar to that of many volunteers around Australia aged 50 to 59 who are able to meet participation requirements through volunteering. We know that in Australia we have a challenge in maintaining the strength of community spirit. What the Americans call the Bowling Alone problem and we call the Disconnected problem has meant that Australians now are less likely to donate money, to volunteer their time, to join organisations like Scouts, Guides, Rotary or Lions, to attend a religious service or to be part of a trade union. Social capital is on the wane in Australia, so we need government policies to be looking creatively at how we can encourage volunteering, not discourage it.

After the last election, Bill Shorten, reflecting Labor's strong commitment to the charity and not-for-profit sector, announced that for the first time there would be a frontbencher with responsibility for charities and not-for-profits, and I am honoured to have that portfolio as part of my responsibilities. Labor takes charities and not-for-profits seriously. Labor stands with charities and not-for-profits in measures that will encourage volunteering.

Among the organisations that have expressed concern about the volunteering measures in this bill are Uniting Communities, ACOSS, Jobs Australia, the National Social Security Rights Network, the Chinese Australian Services Society Limited, the Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association, the Australian Association of Social Workers, the National Employment Services Association and People with Disability Australia. In their submission to the Senate review of the bill, Volunteering Australia wrote:

For many older Australians, losing employment at this age can be quite difficult, with finding gainful options for employment incredibly difficult. Volunteering can be an effective way to engage in society, acting as a pathway back to employment, and a way to keep people healthy and active.

Volunteering Australia also noted a survey conducted by the Human Rights Commission in 2015, the National Prevalence Survey of Age Discrimination in the Workplace, which found that the highest incidence of age discrimination involved those aged between 55 and 64. The submission quoted from a manager of volunteers in the Barwon region, who referred to closures at Ford and Alcoa 'forcing many folk into early redundancies and unemployment' and went on to say:

I meet many hundreds of potential volunteers each year and a significant number of these individuals are 55 to 59 years of age and above. Invariably, the experience recounted to me is of a demoralising period of job hunting, applying for roles that they are never offered, let alone interviewed for, within a job market so competitive that they rarely if ever receive an acknowledgment for the considerable effort made in each application.

The Volunteering Australia submission also quotes from a volunteer-involving organisation in South Australia:

You may appreciate that we are in the business of ‘second chances’, so we accept those who have criminal records wanting to make a go of it and contribute back to society through volunteering. In the case of our Volunteer Manager who works 80 hours a fortnight, we will be forced to shut our Furniture Warehouse if an exemption is not put in place. We accept volunteers according to their skill set … to find full time work and be in this age range with a criminal record makes things near impossible for them.

I commend Volunteering Australia's Adrienne Picone and Lavanya Kala for compiling that important submission.

Leep says of this measure:

… Leep interacts with hundreds of individuals seeking to volunteer their time and skills. A large proportion of these individuals perceive volunteering as a meaningful avenue to paid employment, with 1:4 volunteers enquiring about volunteering through Leep in 2016-2017 being unemployed.

The submission points out that volunteering brings a range of benefits to jobseekers: the opportunity to gain local knowledge and experience, a supportive environment to build skills, a point of reference for future potential employers, an opportunity to engage socially and enhance wellbeing, and a platform to gain confidence. The Leep submission, from Laura Goddard, the deputy CEO, concludes:

Volunteering is the backbone of a robust, safe and engaged community. The benefits that it brings volunteers, organisations and the broader community deserve to be highly regarded and appreciated at all levels of government.

The submission from Anglicare Australia points out:

Volunteers aged 55-64 are the single biggest cohort of volunteers nationally. Forcing people to desist from volunteering and seek jobs that simply aren't there will have a negative impact on their self-worth, and hurt many valuable and treasured community organisations that rely on volunteers to operate.

We are today in an Australia in which the federal government is continuing to wage war on Australia's charities. From 2011, when the charities commission was established, until just last year, the coalition has been committed to abolishing this one-stop-shop regulator for the charitable sector. Despite having had five ministers responsible for the charities commission over the four years in which it's been in office, the coalition has decided not to renew the contract for Susan Pascoe, the head of the charities commission. She's been there through the tenure of five ministers. She's provided stability to the charities commission through a time of 25 per cent staff turnover every year and considerable uncertainty, and she has received professional awards for her work there. The failure to renew Susan Pascoe's contract ought to be a black mark against Minister Sukkar's name, a minister who has failed to engage with the charities commission.

The charity sector also feel they have to fight other retrograde measures from this government, such as the war on advocacy. Charities support the right to advocate. They believe that it is important not just as a social service arm but also for environmental, legal and social services charities to be able to talk about big-picture issues and use their on-the-ground experience to inform policy development. Yet we have a government that is attacking charities' right to advocate. We see, through this bill, a further attack on charities by reducing the opportunity of voluntary organisations to satisfy the participation requirement for 55- to 59-year-olds. This will reduce the number of volunteers available to community organisations. Charities shouldn't be fighting the government. Since the Liberals came to office in 2013, the charity sector has had to write two open letters to prime ministers, one in 2013 to Prime Minister Abbott, pleading with him to change his position on scrapping the charities commission, and another—signed by a range of charities, including St John Ambulance, Philanthropy Australia and Volunteering Australia—just this June, calling on the government to take a more constructive attitude to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.

Labor supports charities. We want to work with charities not just to fight against the retrograde attacks from the coalition but to try and improve the regulatory rules around fundraising, to avoid the scandals of the kind that we've seen in Britain following Olive Cooke's suicide and to deal with a patchwork of fundraising laws set up in the pre-internet era. We want to work with charities through our Reconnected forums, of which Labor has now held eight around Australia with a range of my shadow ministerial and parliamentary colleagues. Labor wants to work with charities to garner great ideas to build community life. We're not attacking charities; we're in the business of helping the work of the charity and not-for-profit sector.

In the few minutes remaining, I want to make a couple of remarks about the aspect of this bill which goes to drug testing. I want to begin with the very real story of one of my constituents, who contacted me. She's on the pension, and her 33-year-old daughter, she told me, has been addicted to drugs, mostly methamphetamines, for most of her adult life. Occasionally, the woman told me, her daughter turns to prostitution in order to buy drugs. My constituent said to me, 'If you take away her welfare payment for failing a drug test—because she's been addicted to drugs for the last 15 years—all she'll have to pay for food is my pension.' That's not going to make Australia better off. It's a policy that could increase homelessness and could well increase crime. It's a policy that will make Australia less safe.

In New Zealand, as Shadow Minister Macklin has pointed out, only 22 of the 8,001 participants who were drug tested in 2015 returned positive results, at a cost of some $1 million. That detection rate—22 out of 8,001—was significantly lower than the drug use rate reported in the general population. As Shadow Minister Macklin has pointed out, the organisations that have expressed serious concern about the government's drug-testing trials include the Australian Medical Association; the Royal Australasian College of Physicians; the Australasian Chapter of Addiction Medicine; the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists; St Vincent's Health Australia; the Rural Doctors Association of Australia; Harm Reduction Australia; the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation; the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre; the Penington Institute; the Kirby Institute, at the University of New South Wales; the Victorian Alcohol & Drug Association; the Australian Council of Social Service; UnitingCare Australia; Homelessness Australia; the St Vincent de Paul Society; the Wayside Chapel; Anglicare; Catholic Social Services Australia; the National Social Security Rights Network; Odyssey House; Jobs Australia; Community Mental Health Australia; the Public Health Association of Australia; and the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services.

As Shadow Minister Macklin points out, the extent to which this government has managed to unite the experts in this sector against it is extraordinary. We've had an open letter from 109 addiction specialists, 330 doctors and 208 registered nurses calling on the Prime Minister to stop the drug-testing trial. The Australian Medical Association has described the measure as 'mean and stigmatising'. The Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs said:

At a time when we desperately need money for frontline services, it's being spent in a way all the available evidence tells us won't work …

The Royal Australasian College of Physicians said:

Existing evidence shows drug testing welfare recipients is not an effective way of identifying those who use drugs and it will not bring about behaviour change. It is an expensive, unreliable and potentially harmful testing regime to find this group of people.

The Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation said:

Had the Turnbull government consulted experts before unveiling this plan, they would have been advised to drop these measures pronto. Drug testing trials for people on income support have been trialled and abandoned in a few countries. In addition to causing significant harm to affected people and the wider community, they came at an enormous cost to the taxpayer. Isn't the government supposed to be reining in wasteful spending?

Labor will not support these retrograde measures which hurt volunteers, increase homelessness and may increase crime in Australia. We will listen to the evidence and the experts.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We've been debating the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017 for three days now, and two days ago the government ran out of speakers. It's such important legislation that for the last two days we haven't seen a government member get up and speak on this particular legislation. Labor members, one after another, have got up and spoken on this legislation, criticising schedule after schedule in this legislation. If it's so important for those opposite, why won't they own it? Why won't you see more of them in this place speaking in support of this legislation? They'll vote for it, but—I'll tell you what—they'll quietly vote for it, because they won't go back to their electorates and advocate for many of the measures in this particular legislation. That's the case.

We've got a situation where the national accounts were released last week. Mining profits are up and gross profits are up, but guess what? We're in a situation where we've got wages growth at anaemic levels of 1.9 per cent. We've got 730,000 people unemployed in this country, according to the July figures. We have a situation where we've had over 710,000 people unemployed for nine consecutive months in a row. The last time we saw that was in the 1997. And still the legislation we have before this chamber is the priority for the government. We have a situation where the tax-to-GDP ratio has risen under this government. That is, the government is taking more and more revenue from the Australian public: from 21.4 per cent up to 23.7 per cent. Government debt has increased from $273 billion to $501 billion under this government. Labour underutilisation rates have increased as well; more than 1.1 million Australians would like more jobs. Many of them would be dealt with in this legislation today: the 55- to 59-year-olds.

What I cannot understand is the fact that this government is actually in one of the schedules getting rid of the bereavement allowance. Without the bereavement allowance, which helps vulnerable people after the death of a partner, they will be $1,300 worse off. I bet those opposite won't put that in their newsletters that go to constituents. I guarantee they will not tell their constituents that, for example, if you're a pregnant and you've lost your partner, for 14 weeks you won't get any support whatsoever in terms of the bereavement allowance. It's gone if this legislation gets through. I guarantee they will not be talking about that at their listening posts or mobile offices. And they won't be telling the 200 wife pension recipients that they're going to lose their support. They won't be telling the 2,900 women who will be transferred onto jobseeker payments that their indexation will cease and they'll be worse off in real terms over time. I guarantee they won't be telling them that.

And what about those 55- to 59-year-olds who are currently making tremendous contributions by volunteering in wonderful organisations around the country? In fact, last Friday night in my electorate I was at the child safety protection awards, where two wonderful local organisations were there and many people were honoured. There were a number of police officers and school principals, but also present were Mission Australia and the Ipswich Community Youth Service, who do fantastic work in terms of child protection and assisting young people and older people with disability with employment services as well. They are fantastic organisations who do wonderful work in the local community.

Schedule 9 will remove the ability of Newstart and some special benefit recipients between 55 and 59 to fulfil the activity test by volunteering for 30 hours per week. Fifteen of those 30 hours now will have to be paid work. We have a problem with volunteerism in this country at the moment. The previous speaker, the member for Fenner, wrote a tremendous book called Disconnected. He worked previously on Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, which was a great examination of the drop-off in social inclusion and volunteerism in the United States of America.

Wonderful organisations such as the Scouts, brigades, P&Cs, trade unions, chambers of commerce, sporting clubs, RSLs et cetera have a decline in contributions and the number of people attending and being involved in these organisations. The member for Fenner wrote a book called Disconnected, and I commend people to read that particular book. I'm not advocating for his sales, by the way; I'm not trying to enrich him. It's a great contribution that he's made to public life by writing that book. He points out that we have seen that in Australia as well. Organisations are dropping off. As a federal member, I know you only have to go around to many organisations to see the fact that there are many people of what my grandmother would call 'the older generation' when she was alive. Everald Compton, the great advocate who stalks these corridors, calls them the oldies. He is a former head of National Seniors Australia. He does that sort of thing, but he's a great contributor to community life as well.

Many of these people face terrible age discrimination because they've lost their jobs. In my community right now, some of these people are facing the challenge of losing their jobs. We are losing 900 jobs in the Ipswich and West Moreton region, from the Churchill Abattoir and facility there owned and run by Woolworths to the Steggle's chicken processing plant out there in the Wulkuraka region. There have been people who've come to or contacted my office and people whom I've spoken to personally. I've spoken to the meat workers union—the AMIEU—and the metalworkers union, who are both working with these people, and there is a great all-of-government and community response to these. But some of these are older workers will be facing the challenges that in this legislation currently before us today. I want to thank the government, in a bipartisan way, and Minister Tudge, for the fact that Centrelink and the Australian government Department of Employment will be helping out. I want to thank Regional Development Australia for the help they are providing. I also want to thank Ipswich City Council, and I want to pay particular credit to Alan Brown, the business liaison officer, and also the Queensland state government. I've been dealing closely with the member for Ipswich, Jennifer Howard, and the state member for Ipswich West, Jim Madden.

It's a big challenge we are facing in our community, but some of the workers who are going to be subject to this legislation, including one who was in my office fairly recently, are in this age bracket. The government has said that this is part of its broader, stronger participation provisions but those workers will face big challenges, and I want those workers in Ipswich to know that we are with them all the way. We will help wherever we can, and my office will always be available. If they need help with Centrelink payments or assistance to make applications, we will be there to help them and, if they are interested in contacting us, I am happy to talk with them about the challenges they face.

I note that there was a Senate inquiry into this legislation. Many of the community organisations that I referred to before, such as Mission Australia and Ipswich Community Youth Service, are part of organisations such as Volunteering Australia. Volunteering is a tower of strength. We know how important it is. It touches every section of our economy and every section of our community: sport, recreation, art, heritage and emergency services. It's so important. The role of volunteer support services is about empowering local communities and about being there in times of need. I have seen this in times of terrible floods in 2010-11 and in 2013 in Ipswich and Somerset. Sadly, Volunteering Australia records show that, for the first time in 20 years, the number of people formally volunteering in Australia in 2014 has reportedly declined to 31 per cent, down from 36 per cent in 2012. So volunteerism is under challenge. But what is happening here? Volunteering Australia made a submission to the Senate inquiry into this legislation before the chamber. What they said about tightening the activity test was that it will have a profound impact on the volunteering sector. I will quote from the submission. The truth of the matter is that many people fulfil their activity contribution by volunteering. That's laudable and wonderful.

Volunteering Australia is strongly opposed to the proposed amendment.

They call this particular aspect of the bill 'short-sighted' and lacking in understanding of the pervasive age discrimination that this group experiences every day. We saw that when I was the shadow minister for ageing in the Labor opposition in the last term of parliament. We saw great age discrimination campaigns undertaken but, sadly, people in this age bracket do face age discrimination.

The Willing to work: national inquiry into employment discrimination against older Australians and Australians with disability (2016) report of the Australian Human Rights Commission found that people aged 55 years and over make up roughly a quarter of the population but only 16 per cent of the total workforce. The report found that older people experience greater levels of discrimination in workplaces when applying for jobs. That's backed up by a survey conducted by the commission in 2015 revealing that those who had reported experiencing age discrimination gave up looking for work entirely. Indeed, Volunteering Australia, whom I've met here in Canberra to talk about this issue, have said that people more likely to give up volunteering as well.

I pay tribute to the wonderful community organisations in my electorate and to the volunteers who are involved with them—the SES, Emergency Management and a whole range of others. We honour them every year. I want to praise Cityhope Church in Ripley in my electorate that has a day of honour for volunteers who make such a great contribution. When I look around the room when I speak at that particular church service every year—I commend pastor Mark Edwards and his congregation for what they do; hundreds of people were there from all corners of the electorate and beyond—there are many older Australians there who contribute, and I pay tribute to what they do. I was struck by that recently when the The Queensland Times did a photograph of me with Mark. The people who contribute whether in the local ambulance, the rural fire brigades or the SES were lined up there in their orange or blue uniforms. The contributions of older Australians make such a difference. The fact is that this particular legislation will be harmful to the contribution that volunteers make in this country.

But there is another aspect of this particular whole thing that the government is undertaking. That was mentioned by the shadow minister for employment, the member for Chifley, and that is, the Career Transition Assistance program, which is part of the suite of employment participation that's referred to in this legislation. My electorate and the Somerset regional part of it is being picked up as one of the trial sites from 1 July 2018, ahead of a national rollout in 2020. I am deeply sceptical about this, because this is a situation where the government spends $9 billion annually on employment projects. There are about 40,000 employment service consultants in this country. With the sorts of things that employment consultants should be doing themselves, in my view, things like skills audit, training requirements and helping people to market themselves to employers, I can't understand why the government is spending $98 million on this particular aspect. What they should do is have a really good look at the job services network. I don't believe it's working anywhere near as well as it should. We've got a takeover of about 35 per cent of wage subsidies. About one in five people over 26 who get jobs in these areas are actually still in employment after 26 weeks. The government should do a lot better and a lot more. We know they have cut $3.5 billion out of skills and training in this country. We've got 148,000 fewer apprentices than when this government came to power about four years ago. They are simply not doing enough and they are not doing it well across this space.

In the final two minutes, I will talk about the establishment of the trial of drug testing for jobseekers. It's been trialled just down the road from my electorate, in Logan, in the member for Rankin's electorate. Logan is very much like Ipswich. I feel for the people of Logan. I note the mayor of Logan, Luke Smith—who is not always a great supporter of the Labor Party, I might add, but I have a particular respect for him—pointed out that there was no consultation in the fact that they were imposing this on the people of Logan. He called the lack of consultation and the top-down approach 'a disgrace'. He was amazed by it. This won't work. This simply will not work. It's not about love, as the Prime Minister talked about. It's about punishment.

I recall a number of discussions I had when I was the forerunner to—we now call them hospital boards in Queensland—the Ipswich and West Moreton Hospital and Health Service council. We had a number of presentations to ask about what was happening in Ipswich and discussions about what was happening with the health plaza where people get ATODs assistance. But the advice that we got from experts—and this government doesn't seem to want to listen to experts very often—is that this type of approach doesn't and won't work. My colleagues have repeatedly outlined where it's failed overseas. I won't repeat what they have said, but I am deeply sceptical of what this government is doing. This is about demonising people. It's not about supporting them. If they were about supporting them, then they would have correspondingly a huge increase in drug and alcohol rehabilitation. They haven't, so my scepticism is very well-founded. I oppose the legislation and support the amendment by the member for Jagajaga.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are a range of measures that are proposed in the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017. I only intend to speak on one of them—the issue of drug testing welfare recipients and the implications from that that certain penalties will be imposed in respect of these recipients. I also would like to say, if time permits, a few words about the things that aren't in the bill but absolutely should be if the government was truly focused on the challenge of welfare reform. I am absolutely certain that there is not a member in this place whose offices are not inundated on a daily basis by citizens who are trying to get their benefits processed by Centrelink and yet they are faced with delays. I am not talking about days; I am not talking about weeks; I am talking about months and months and months of delays. These are pensioners seeking to get access to a pension benefit. These are carers seeking to look after a loved one who cannot look after themselves and to access a benefit they are entitled to. The government has cut in excess of 1,200 jobs, frontline positions, and forced hundreds and hundreds of other jobs in Centrelink into casual working arrangements. Is it any wonder that there are constant delays and constant mistakes. I make no criticism of the hardworking staff of Centrelink. I make enormous criticism of the minister, who seems either ignorant or unwilling to do anything about it. And it is the citizens of our electorates who are paying the price.

Before I say more about that, can I talk about the drug-testing initiative. If ever there was a policy that was all about press release and not about outcome, it is this one. This is, indeed, a press release in search of an evidence base, in search of a policy prescription; it is entirely without substance. Many of my colleagues have spoken about the fact that similar measures introduced overseas have not worked; they have cost the taxpayers of other jurisdictions millions and millions of dollars with no perceivable benefit to either the individuals or the taxpayers as a whole. I will not go through that evidence because others have put it on the record. But I would like to have a look at the supposed objective of this measure. If the objective of the measure is to reduce the incidence of substance abuse in this community, there is not a member of this place who would not agree with it. There is not a member of this place who would not say we would be a much better country if we were able to reduce the incidence of substance abuse in our community. And I am not just talking about illicit drugs; I am talking about alcohol abuse as well. We know that the No. 1 drug of concern to people in the front line of substance abuse and rehabilitation is alcohol. There are problems with all the other illicit drugs but alcohol is the No. 1 drug of concern. It is present in just about all of the presentations that they see.

It might surprise people to know that Australia currently spends somewhere in excess of $1.7 billion combating illicit drugs. This, of course, includes police detection and arrest for drug crimes. It includes policing the borders of Australia for importation and prevention programs. It includes treatment programs and harm reduction strategies as well. If this bill before the House succeeds, it will be adding more to that annual bill and what we are spending on drug detection and prevention and combating illicit drugs. We do have to ask ourselves whether that money is well spent, because the results do not seem to suggest that it is. Of the total pot of $1.7 billion, almost 65 per cent is spent on what is known as supply reduction—basically, law enforcement. The bill before the House could in many respects be seen as an additional element in that—an enforcement activity. Just 22 per cent of that $1.7 billion is spent on treatment, 9.5 per cent is spent on prevention and about 2.2 per cent is spent on harm reduction.

The thing that hasn't been thought through by the government in relation to this policy is the fact that the treatment services that will be inundated as a result of this government's policy are already strapped. They cannot meet the current demands. The problem is greater in regional electorates like mine. I speak to the treatment centres down my way. There are not enough of them and they do not have the staff and the facilities to deal with the problems they are dealing with. There is already a waiting list in excess of six months for most of these sorts of services—not everywhere; there some exceptions. But on the whole there is already a waiting list of about six months. And for specialist services in NSW alone, there is one, maybe two, specialist services dealing specifically with women with a drug addiction problem—absolutely strapped. And if they are in need of residential care, even fewer places are available.

So I really do fear that not only has the government not thought through the policy and the resources that are going to be needed just to meet the current demand but whether this is going to have the result of pushing people out of the queue who are currently sticking up their hand and saying: 'I know that I've got a problem with substance abuse and I want to get treatment and turn my life around. I'm sticking my hand up and I want to turn my life around.' That person has willingly presented themselves to a treatment centre only to be told: 'Good on you for taking the first step. We're going to get back to you in months,' not weeks, 'because we don't have the residential services available to us at the moment.' My fear is that these people are going to get pushed back further down the queue because of the results of this ill-thought-through policy.

Is it any wonder that the Australian Medical Association, all of the expert drug and alcohol treatment services—through their peak bodies—and just about anybody who knows anything about how this sector works and what is going to work has said that this policy is nuts and is not going to work? A government that was moved by evidence, as opposed to ideology and a government that was moved by evidence and purity of purpose would take heed from the submissions that have been put through the Senate process—the very public submissions that have been made by many of the advocates—and then say: 'This isn't the right way to go. We're going to withdraw this provision from the bill.' They would have our full-bodied support if they were to do that.

Before I came into parliament I spent a lot of time as a community worker. I worked as a lawyer for many years and in those jobs I had a lot of face-to-face experience with the issues that this bill is purportedly attempting to tackle. It was clear to me then, as it is now, that what we're doing at the moment isn't working and that we need to build our policies on the best available evidence and the best research, not only from Australia but from around the globe, about what is likely to work—particularly when it comes to treatment and how we help people to turn their lives around. We do need to adopt a health based approach, and this bill is anything but that. We need to adopt a health based approach rather than relying on measures which will have the end result of filling our jails with people who have a health problem but which does very, very little to stem the supply of drugs or the harms caused. If those opposite were driven by evidence, not politics, they would direct resources towards the policies which were going to have the best result.

A few years ago I remember visiting the Solaris Therapeutic Community Program. It's a voluntary treatment initiative for adult males at the Alexander Maconochie Centre. For those who don't know it, it's the jail which is about five kilometres from where we are standing today. I had the opportunity to talk to a group of men who were, obviously, in jail and who were going through the program on a voluntary basis. I was talking to them about their substance abuse problems. I asked each of them: 'How old were you when you first saw your life going off the rails? How old were you when you first started substance abuse, whether it was alcohol or illicit drugs?' There were about 11 or 12 guys there. What struck me was that most of them didn't get to double digits. That is, most of them had not turned 10 before they had their first experience of an illicit drug. If those opposite dug deeper and asked what was going on in the household of that young person and in the lives of those young people—if they bothered to take the time to find out what was going on—they certainly wouldn't present the sort of bill which is before the House today.

I've visited lots of drug and alcohol treatment centres around the country over the time that I've been in parliament—I visited them in my professional capacity before I was a member of parliament. When you talk to people who are receiving treatment, one of the things you hear that are remarkable is that over 90 per cent of those people will tell you that there was some pre-existence, some underlying trauma, that set them on the path that they are now on, whether it was abuse in the family or the households that they grew up in; whether it was family violence; or whether it was, as is so often the case, that somebody had a horrific injury, took a course of opioids as part of the treatment process for that injury and went from a licit source of opioid use to an illicit source of opioid use. The stories were so common and so repeated as to allow us to draw the conclusion that in the majority of these instances there is an underlying trauma which causes or leads somebody into substance abuse. From that you can also draw the conclusion that, unless you deal with those underlying traumas, those underlying psychological, mental and physical health issues, you aren't going to be able to get to the root cause of the drug addiction and you certainly aren't going to be able to help those people turn their lives around.

You don't have to be a researcher in this area to know that we've got a lot of people in our prisons. I won't say it is the cause of the crime, but for a significant majority of the people in there—I wouldn't say the overwhelming majority, but a significant majority—drugs and alcohol are on board in a significant number of those criminal incidents. It's why people in the sector often refer to prisons as the rehabilitation service of last resort. At $300 a day, it is a very expensive way of dealing with a problem.

So my message, my heartfelt message, to the government today is this: if you are truly committed to doing more than grabbing a headline; if you are truly committed to doing more than making a cheap political point, than playing a populist card; if you are truly committed to doing something about the insidious problem of illicit and other drug abuse in this country; then you won't be introducing measures like the one before us. Instead, you will take the time to talk to the people whose lives have been affected. You will take time to talk to people who are attempting to turn their lives around or who have attempted to turn their lives around and have succeeded. You will take the time to talk to these people. You will invest in the most effective place, which is in treatment and prevention. If you do that then you will ensure that we go a long way towards reducing the problems that we have in our community.

These punitive measures have been tried overseas. We know they don't work. It is of the utmost arrogance for this government to believe that repeating the same mistakes that have been made overseas is going to have a different result in this country. I can support some measures in this bill, but not this one.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend and support the comments of the member for Whitlam in respect of this legislation, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017. The government's spin in respect of this bill is that it has been brought to the House as a measure that might help get people's lives back in order. The truth is that this bill is nothing more than a budget savings measure.

We know the government's deficit at the end of last year was $37.6 billion, and we know are they heading for another deficit of $30 billion or thereabouts this year—and that's if their figures can be relied on. To date they have proven that they cannot be relied on. We know full well that the net effect of this legislation is for the government to save some $370 million over the forward estimates. Out of that might come some money that they will require in order to pay for the drug-testing provisions that are contained within this bill. We don't know what those amounts are because the government won't tell us. But even when you allow for whatever costs they incur in respect of the drug testing, the fact remains that this is a measure that is going to save the government possibly $100 million a year.

Again, it is the vulnerable welfare recipients that have been targeted by this government. It has been become a characteristic of the coalition government to target the poor. It started with the Abbott-Hockey government, with their first budget in 2014, which was considered so harsh and so cruel that it was soundly rejected by just about everyone across the country, including most of the members of this parliament. We then had a change of Prime Minister and a change of Treasurer, but the same strategy continued. The same harsh measures continue to be seen in the legislation that comes before this House time and time again. If people's lives were truly the focus of this government's legislation, then the $370 million that will be saved would have been put into other welfare assistance programs that might actually have some real effect of helping those people's lives get back on track, but that is not the case. Were it the case, we might be looking at this legislation with a different perspective.

This is a government revenue measure. Whilst I accept that some of the 18 or 19 measures in this legislation are worth considering, I also know that many of them are indeed harsh and should not be supported. That is particularly the case with the drug-testing trial. I note that that trial has been criticised widely, not just by the usual welfare support groups but, indeed, by health professionals and drug rehabilitation specialists across the board. If the measures were going to help, I am sure that those people who have the most experience in helping people with a drug addiction change their lives would be supporting this measure, but they're not. Indeed, if the government were serious about helping those people, then the first groups they should have asked advice from are the very specialists in the field and the health professionals who have to deal with people who have a drug addiction each and every day. They should have sought advice from them, but it seems they didn't.

There will always be people who rort the welfare system, just as there are always people who rort the tax system or any other government initiative out there. That is a reality. Such people will always be found, because if a person has an intent of rorting whatever government system it is that they rort, they will find a way of doing so. We would not oppose any measure that genuinely sought to close down loopholes if they exist. But, again, this legislation is not about closing loopholes; it's simply about making it more difficult for welfare recipients to get the support they need and about denying them the payments they would otherwise receive. Regrettably, this legislation will punish far too many people for whom welfare support is not their choice—those whom, for reasons possibly beyond their control, find themselves in the situation that they are in. In the situation that they are in, they need some kind of welfare support.

When we talk about welfare support, we are not talking about even the minimum average weekly wage of $694 a week; we are talking, in most cases, of payments of around $268 a week. I wonder how many members opposite could live off that sort of money or have ever had to live off that sort of money. Perhaps if they had to walk in the shoes of the very people they are trying to make decisions about, they might see this legislation for what it is and perhaps they would not be so supportive of it.

People on welfare payments, in my experience, already feel as if they are being treated in a humiliating way and quite often find so much of their time wasted because of the hoops they have to jump through in order to get the payments that they are entitled to or that the government provides to them. Indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas, I am sure that your office, just like the offices of most MPs in this place, would regularly have people that are seeking welfare support come to you for assistance out of sheer desperation, because they can't seem to navigate the demands that are put on them by the different agencies they have to deal with in order to get some meagre payment. It is a fact of life for most MPs' offices. Regrettably, it seems that MPs' offices have become nothing more than an extension of the Department of Human Services. From my experience in my office, on a regular basis we are trying to help people with their claims.

When we look at the employment situation in Australia, the reality is there are some two million people who are either unemployed or underemployed. That means there are simply not enough jobs out there right now for those people who are genuinely looking for work. So even if one was to accept that some people are not trying as hard as they could, the reality is that there are simply not enough jobs out there for them. Even if and when there are jobs, many of the people who have been unemployed for a long time—there are reasons, in most cases, that are beyond their control. The jobs that are out there are perhaps asking for skill levels that people who are unemployed simply don't have, or the jobs may be outside of the region from where these people come from. It may be there are serious transport difficulties for these people in order to get to the jobs available, or they simply don't have any work experience at all. At other times it might even be a case where there are personal family or health circumstances that are totally beyond their control that limit their ability to either travel or commit to a full-time job. At the end of next month, there will be even more people unemployed as a result of the ending of car making in this country, so it will be even more difficult. We are bringing in this legislation at a time when, as the government must surely know, it is going to become increasingly difficult for people to find work.

I have personally spoken with families and individuals who have been looking for work for months and, in some cases, years. I have no doubt whatsoever that these are genuine people who are looking for work and who are trying their hardest, and the reality is they simply cannot find a job because the jobs are not there. When they have found employment, sometimes it's been in a field totally outside of what they were qualified for or skilled in or they've had to move to a different region, and it's been months or years later. For them, in that intervening time, what were they supposed to do, other than what they have done? And yet we are now saying: 'We want you to do more because, if not, we're going to find ways to cut an additional week of payment to you. We'll find a way of cutting that out.' This legislation is indeed harsh.

I want to speak briefly about a couple of the matters within it. When we talk about people being on welfare, again, my experience is that most people who are on welfare payments would prefer not to be on welfare payments. They would prefer to be in paid employment, where they can perhaps achieve and have some of the things they have always aspired to have. I want to refer just briefly to the drug trial proposal in this legislation. As I said earlier: firstly, there is no evidence to support what the government wants to do and, secondly, it has been widely criticised. Again from my experience, and as the member for Whitlam said earlier, most people who are drug addicts would very much prefer not to be. For some it might be their choice, but I suspect that for most it is not a choice they would willingly make, and if they could get off the drugs they would. And yet we see nothing in this legislation that is truly going to assist them get off their drug addiction. That would be the best way to get them back into the workforce, not to say, 'If you don't pass a drug test you will be automatically taken off.' In addition, for those people who are not drug addicts to be called in and told, 'You are going to have to pass a drug test of some sort', it would be humiliating and embarrassing. Again, I believe it is totally uncalled for and unjustified.

There are other matters in this legislation that I briefly want to go to. One of them is the start date and another is the removal of intent to claim, which are both provisions within this legislation. Both of them have the effect of delaying the commencement time for a person to receive any payments. Both of them are miserly ways of cutting payments to them. When you look at the way it is intended to introduce these provisions, it simply says that when you make a claim or contact the office to make a claim, your payment won't start then. Your payment will start later, after you've jumped many other hoops and brought in forms and all the rest of it.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order. The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member for Makin will be given an opportunity to conclude his contribution at that time.