Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

Once again, we have the Australian Labor Party trying to suggest that our Welfare to Work initiatives that have been so well received by the Australian community have this implicit trend for less income and that people would get $1.66 per hour. What she deliberately fails to say is that these people will be better off, because they are not working for $1.66 per hour but are working and gaining a lot more. What the Australian Labor Party are saying to the people of Australia is: ‘If you are on welfare and you have the capacity to work, don’t bother going to work. Let the Australian taxpayer keep funding you, because we like to keep the pool of unemployment up.’ Those on the opposite side are absolutely aghast that we now have an unemployment rate of only 4.9 per cent. They want to return to the good old days of one million Australian being unemployed. That was their great boast as a government. After 13 years, that is what they could point to: one million Australians unemployed.

The vast majority of Australians are in fact aspirational. The vast majority of Australians on welfare do in fact want the opportunity to work. That is why we have a deliberate strategy of Welfare to Work, unlike Senator Wong and her party, which has a policy of welfare to nowhere. We know exactly what the social consequences of welfare to nowhere are—that is, generation after generation living off welfare without any suggestion that they should in fact be making a contribution if they are able to.

The simple fact is that those previous welfare recipients will not only be better off financially—as Senator Wong well knows—but also socially and health-wise. Every other indicator that you can look to shows that those who are engaged in mainstream society, in employment, are much better off—personally for their own mental and physical health and wellbeing, and for their social interaction, and children in those household are better off for the next generation. And yet the Australian Labor Party, without a policy of their own, come into this place and seek to grossly misrepresent that which we are doing for our fellow Australians who have every right and entitlement to a job.