Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor Party will be supporting the motion moved by Senator Siewert on the social security regulations. Our view is that there should be no delay in the introduction and operation of these regulations. That is a matter we have had discussions about in communication with some of the welfare groups. Whilst people may not be supportive of everything that is in these regulations, obviously, in terms of the efficacy of the system, it is important that the regulations commence on 1 July, which is when the government’s so-called Welfare to Work changes become operative. However, I understand from Senator Siewert’s motion that it is quite possible for the committee to hold this inquiry without delaying the operation or implementation of the regulations. On that basis, we are supporting the motion.

There are a number of things which are highly problematic in the way the government has approached its welfare changes. I am not going to deal, initially, with the substance of the policy matters, which Labor has already made clear that we have significant problems with. We do not think it is a competent package. We believe that changes which actually reduce the financial reward from working and increase the taxation levied on every single dollar someone earns is hardly a sensible way to help people go from welfare to work. We do not believe that reducing the income levels of some of our most vulnerable Australians is a very sensible way to support people into work. We know from the government’s most recent figures that, for example, someone with a disability faces being worse off by $90 a fortnight from 1 July if they are put onto the lower dole payment. No matter how much the government argues that that is not necessarily the case, because they may get a job, the fact is that that is entirely hypothetical. Even the government’s own figures establish that over 100,000 people are in fact going to be worse off under these changes—and they are some of our poorest Australians.

I do not want to deal at length with the fatal flaws at the heart of the government’s welfare changes. I do want to make some comments about the way in which the government has avoided scrutiny and parliamentary oversight of the implementation of some of the largest changes to social security in a generation. It became very clear through the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee’s inquiry and report into the welfare changes—which was truncated, as was the debate, because the government obviously set an unreasonable time frame and then guillotined the debate—that a great many things which were previously in the legislation were going to be put into guidelines and/or disallowable instruments.

It is clear, from looking at the regulations which have been tabled before the Senate, that in fact there are a great many matters going to people’s obligations, rights and also potential punishment under the system that will be in guidelines which will not be brought before the chamber. This is in the context of the government putting in place the harshest breaching regime that one could probably consider feasible—a breaching regime which will see 18,000 people without any income support whatsoever for a two-month period. I know Senator Vanstone is in the chamber and, while she may not be the most soft-hearted minister this government has ever seen, this is a far harsher breaching regime than anything I can recall Senator Vanstone bringing before the chamber when she was social security minister.

So we have a breaching regime which will see about 18,000 people, on the government’s own figures, without income for two months—even if they try and remedy whatever it was they did wrong. That is probably the key—you get punished even if you then say: ‘Yeah, I did the wrong thing. I needed to go to this interview, I needed to take that job or I missed this interview for these reasons.’