Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I am not sure if there is going to be a government speaker to this motion; I hope there is. Unfortunately, since the government gained control of the Senate we have seen a trend amongst the government of often not even bothering to put a position on the record about Senate committee references that they reject. I hope this is not another such occasion. We do need to remember—and I genuinely say this to all senators on all sides of the chamber—that debates on these sorts of references are not primarily opportunities for scoring political points or highlighting political positions. They are opportunities to examine important areas of law that directly affect the lives of millions of Australians. That is what this reference is about and that is what the primary purpose of this chamber should be: to look at issues and consider how they affect people in the real world. It should not be about who is winning the rhetorical debate, who has got the best witty put-down or who has got the best stunt for the evening news. The crucial task we have to do is to examine the measures that pass through this place, examine how they are administered by this government and examine how they affect Australians and Australian families. That is what this reference is about, and I congratulate Senator Siewert for putting it forward.

There are two aspects to this issue. We have all had our say on the so-called Welfare to Work legislative regime. This is yet another in a long line of grotesquely misleading Orwellian slogans that the government are using. I need to put on the record once again—and I should not have to do this but I do need to, because of the continual distortion of this fact by at least some in the government—that when I express concern about the potential impacts of the so-called Welfare to Work regime, it does not mean that I, or anyone else who expresses concern about it, do not want to see people get off welfare and into work. We all want to see that. The concern that I and many others have is: what about the impact on those who are not getting into work, or those who are getting into only part-time or intermittent work who are not going to be any better off? Those are the people I am concerned about, and those are the people who are not covered by the misleading label of ‘Welfare to Work’.

The 11 different social security determinations that have been put forward as worthy of examination by a Senate committee are not just rhetorical devices. They are not just mechanisms for each of us, on any side of this debate, to use as political clubs to beat each other into submission with, or to use to manoeuvre our way into a better political position in the political marketplace leading up to the election. These are legal determinations that have a direct impact on the lives of Australians.

Regardless of who did and who did not support the legislative changes that put in place the so-called Welfare to Work regime, we do need to see how it works in practice. From a point of view of just good governance, even those who supported the so-called Welfare to Work legislative changes should be supporting a reference such as this. For the sake of good governance, good public policy and good public administration, regardless of our philosophical viewpoints, we should be examining how these things work in practice.

I remind the Senate and those who are listening to this debate and who may have forgotten—or may not have been aware in the first place—that the Welfare to Work legislation that was passed is another of an unfortunately growing number of pieces of legislation which put in place a framework but do not include details of how they are going to work in practice. When we had the Senate committee inquiry into this—a very limited inquiry, I emphasise—it was clear that the departmental officials themselves did not know the detail of how these broad measures would be implemented in practice. The determinations, the regulations and the administrative procedures were yet to be worked out. When these matters were followed through by some senators at Senate estimates committees—for a shorter period this year than we have been able to do in the past, which is another example of the slow reduction in the opportunities for scrutiny—again it was clear that in some areas it was yet to be decided what the detail of some of these determinations would be and how they would operate in practice.

This should not be a philosophical or ideological debate about the merits or otherwise of the Welfare to Work changes. We have all expressed our views on those changes. It should be a matter of a straightforward public policy operation. It should be a matter of doing our basic job of examining how things are working in practice—whether they are operating in the way that the government has assured us they would, whether there are unintended consequences, what the real impacts will be, and what the human impacts will be of a particular group of words on a piece of paper. That is what our business in the Senate should be about more than anything else: examining the impact of policies on the Australian people, on families, on people with disabilities, on sole parents, on children. That is what we should be looking at. We should be looking at the real-world impact, not the impact on the make-believe, rhetorical world that too many of us inhabit. That is all that this motion proposes: that we have a look at the extent and the effectiveness of the regulations.

Frankly, if government members believe that the so-called Welfare to Work changes are as good as they say they are, they should be supporting an inquiry like this, because I would assume that they would believe that it would demonstrate that these changes are being effective, that they are having the desired effect, that people are getting into work, and that all of the concerns that people like the Democrats and others on this side of the chamber have expressed are not being borne out. Here is the opportunity for that to be demonstrated. Here is the opportunity for the nay-sayers to be proven wrong by the government by having a proper investigation.

I should point out, without going into the debate that was had yesterday, and is still to be resolved by this chamber, about Senate committee structures, that this is proposed to go to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee, a committee chaired by the government, where government members have a majority. So we cannot have all those furphies that were run yesterday that this is just some stunt to refer this to an opposition controlled committee that will beat up on the government. It is going to a government controlled committee chaired by a government member. There is simply no way that this could be seen by any objective observer as just some political stunt. It is a genuine and very important attempt to look at the consequences and effects of these regulations and these determinations.

It would be an extremely poor move by government senators if they did not support this, because I believe it would reflect, once again, a reinforcement of the concerns and the belief that many of us have that this government do not want real scrutiny of what they are doing. They are happy to have the opportunities for press conferences outside, and media doorstops where they can mouth their rhetoric, and they are happy to use taxpayers’ money to run nice television advertisements that make everything look good, but they do not want genuine scrutiny of what is really happening.

If the government votes against this motion, that is what we will be seeing—another action to consciously and deliberately prevent genuine objective scrutiny by a government chaired and controlled committee of what is actually happening on the ground to people in the community. I would be extremely disappointed if no government senator was prepared to support this reference.