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

The Employment and Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Welfare to Work and Vocational Rehabilitation Services) Bill 2006 is a follow-on bill to try and tidy up some of the mistakes made with the initial so-called Welfare to Work legislation. I have to start out by saying the whole phrase ‘welfare to work’ is one of the great cons of this government’s current term of office—and that is probably saying something, because there are a few there.

I can well remember when the so-called Welfare to Work package was initially being put forward by the government and was being justified with all their rhetoric. It was examined by Senate committees and question after question was asked in question time of relevant government ministers. I remember counting about 12 different questions, I think, over a number of months, to various government ministers, all asking simply: how does reducing people’s welfare payments get them into work? The only response we got from government ministers was a parroting of the cheap propaganda line that anybody who is opposed to this measure somehow wants to keep people on welfare. That is how dishonest, how shallow and how bankrupt the government’s approach is in this whole area. That simple label of Welfare to Work is a dishonest label that completely misrepresents what the government has done and is used to smear anybody who disagrees with them—and the government is persisting with it.

It is disappointing, frankly, that the government majority on the Senate committee simply saw their role as to parrot that propaganda line further. We had the nonsensical so-called finding that the committee majority saw these amendments as the latest measures to improve workforce participation and improve employment rates. What a farce! The source they quoted for this finding was the second reading speech of the Minister for Workplace Participation. Just parroting propaganda and then repeating it as fact does not make it true. It just makes it repeated propaganda. That is all the committee members from the government side did with regard to their assessment of this piece of legislation.

The government members of the committee made the conclusion that a key objective of the government is to maximise the ability of people to find work, particularly those who face the most severe barriers to work, and to reduce welfare dependency. That is nice to know. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the legislation and it has nothing to do with the parent act either. I fully acknowledge and note that there have been a range of measures put forward by this government, at some cost, aimed at extra services—employment services and other support—to assist people to re-enter the workforce. I fully acknowledge that and I welcome that in as far as it is appropriately applied, and I think there are some questions about aspects of that. But spending extra money to assist people into the workforce and providing employment programs is good, as long as the programs are appropriately operating and they are not just circular training programs with no jobs at the end of them. But that has nothing to do with reducing the income of those people who remain on welfare.

Where does this notion come from that reducing people’s income is going to help them into the workforce? It is an age-old fallacy that to help welfare recipients find jobs you give them a bit of ginger, you give them a bit of spice, by reducing their income and making them scratch around in the dirt; whereas you give the people who are well off more incentive to work harder by giving them tax cuts and more money. That is the total double standard that we have here, and it is being reinforced by some of the changes in this legislation.

The legislation itself goes only to some parts of the totality of the dishonestly named Welfare to Work measures. I will run through those now. It does what is euphemistically called clarifying the definition of the transitional group of disability support recipients and their entitlement to keep the pensioner education supplement if moving to Newstart or youth allowance. It clarifies it by removing it. This will only apply to a small number of people, but it is part of the time-honoured jargon that we have seen since way back before Centrelink days in the social security arena. I can well remember that any time you saw a piece of social security legislation that said ‘clarifying the definition’ or ‘improving the efficiency of’ then you could be pretty sure that somebody’s income was being cut along the way—and that is what we have here. Nowhere is it explained how clarifying the definition and removing the eligibility of a small number of people to the pensioner education supplement actually meets the so-called goal of the government to get people into work. How does reducing their income and cutting the pensioner education supplement, reducing their income even further, help them get into work? That is not answered.

The legislation also allows for financial case management debts to be deducted from social security payments. I will go to the principle involved in that in a moment, but, regardless of whether or not you think it is an appropriate mechanism, how does getting back an overpayment help someone get into work? It has nothing to do with getting into work. But if you raise that point all you will get is the blanket, universal smear from the government: ‘You want people to stay on welfare. You’re against people getting off welfare and into work.’ The government simply refuse to acknowledge the core reality of what they are doing to some of the poorest people in Australia.

Let us not forget that the financial case management system was implemented as a last-gasp attempt to put a disguise over the reality of what was being done to some of the poorest people—people who have breached or seem to have not met their obligations and have their income removed. To try and cover up the fact that they were putting people basically into destitution, the government give people who are in absolutely impossible situations case management to help them manage not having any money. It is an interesting concept. The way they would help them would be with food vouchers, paying the rent or paying the electricity. It is people at that level of poverty who need help, and the government want to regain their overpayments. I am disappointed, frankly, that Labor have seen fit to support that measure. I will be moving an amendment relating to it in the committee stage, and I hope they change their mind. I note that there are some criticisms made about the inadequacy of the financial case management system, but how supporting the recovery of so-called overpayments from a non-transparent system is a good idea is beyond me. But, again, it has nothing to do with getting people into work.

The other measures in the legislation just clarify or reflect changes in terminology—for example, replacing the term ‘pension period’ with ‘instalment period’ and removing references to the redundant payment of rehabilitation allowances. The legislation makes changes to the income test arrangements for the Community Development Employment Projects scheme to reflect the new higher rates. It clarifies the intended treatment of indexation decisions. How those amendments are ‘the latest measures to increase workforce participation and improve employment rates’ is a total non sequitur. What is being put forward and what is being argued is just repeating and parroting propaganda lines. It is quite extraordinary.

We see that in the section of the government members’ report that talks about the pensioner education supplement. The report notes the concerns expressed in a number of submissions about the proposed amendments that will remove the eligibility of a small number of people to the pensioner education supplement, which is $31.20 a week to assist people with the costs of study whilst they are on the disability support pension. The clarification of the definition has the consequence of a small number of people not continuing to receive that supplement. It is one thing to say that that is necessary, it clarifies the definition and it improves consistency—all those sorts of things that get used as justification—but at the end of the report, in paragraph 1.22, the committee majority ‘commends the government’s ongoing commitment to supporting people to undertake study in preparation for work’. I am speechless at the gall and the barefaced cheek in making a statement like that straight after a section dealing with the fact that some people are going to lose the pensioner education supplement. And yet the committee majority ‘commends the government’s ongoing commitment to supporting people to undertake study’. It is just ludicrous.

We hear statements from all sides of politics, quite welcome statements, about the importance of improving people’s skills to get new jobs, to get into the workforce, to get better paid jobs and to fill gaps in the workforce. We all talk about those things, as we should, but the rhetoric does not match the reality as far as the government’s legislative approach is concerned. The simple fact is that, because of the government’s dishonestly named Welfare to Work changes, there will be, according to the Australian Council of Social Services, over 80,000 people with disabilities who will be put on lower payments and will have their income quite substantially reduced. I might add that if they do happen to get some part-time work occasionally then they will have their effective marginal tax rates dramatically increased and they will keep less of that money. Those people will predominantly be put on the Newstart allowance because the disability support pension is now available only to those who are unable to work at least 15 hours a week, instead of the previous 30 hours.

People on Newstart allowance can only undertake short courses of study or training, whereas people on the disability support pension can be supported through the pensioner education supplement to undertake a university or TAFE course. We have this double standard where people who can benefit just as much from a university or TAFE course are not getting that significant assistance of up to $31 per week. At least 80,000 of them are people with disabilities, yet government members still want to commend ‘the government’s ongoing commitment to supporting people to undertake study in preparation for work’. It just does not quite match the reality here, I am afraid.

The simple fact is that there is no evidence to demonstrate that reducing people’s income support payments will increase their rate of workforce participation. These so-called statistics that have been trotted out from time to time by this government to demonstrate that it does are being fraudulently presented. The statistics of people entering the workforce may be accurate, but, as to saying that those people are getting jobs because their potential income support has been reduced, no such connection has been made at all and, beyond just a rhetorical flourish, there has been no such attempt to make such a connection.

I want to turn to the financial case management system, because I find this quite concerning. I can fully understand the rationale that, if somebody is entitled to an income support payment, they get paid and it turns out they are not entitled to it—leaving aside issues of fraud, departmental error or those sorts of things and just assuming that they were not entitled to that overpayment—they should pay it back. I fully accept that, but it is worth emphasising the reality of financial case management payments. As I said before, they are payments made to people who are in extremely difficult circumstances. They are not a legislated entitlement in the sense that the Newstart allowance, the disability support pension, the age pension and family payments are. It is a discretionary decision made by a Centrelink officer that this person needs financial case management, which is a nice euphemism for ‘this person is going to be in real strife unless we give them at least some degree of financial support given that we have just made a decision to breach them and take away all their income’.

That is the circumstance. As is pointed out in both the majority government report and the minority report, it is a discretionary payment. Therefore there is no scope for appeal and there is no transparency. If people think they should be getting more support or people think they should have gotten support and did not get it, there is no scope for appeal at all. What the government is seeking to do here is to put in place a legislated requirement and entitlement for the department or the government to take the money back. I assume this circumstance would arise if somebody is breached, loses their payments, is therefore assessed to be in need of financial case management and perhaps their electricity bill is paid, their rent is paid or they receive a food voucher. Meanwhile they are appealing that breach, perhaps with the support of a welfare rights centre or some other community legal centre or a helpful local member of parliament, and they manage to get that decision overturned and their payments are restored. What does the government want to do? It wants to reach in and grab the food voucher or the rent payment back.

At a time when we have a $15 billion surplus, I think that is pretty miserable, frankly. If you are at such a level of poverty that you need to get assistance with those sorts of basic living costs to get through the week, I really do not think it is that much to ask that people are able to retain that money. When St Vincent de Paul give out food vouchers one week and the person gets a job the next week, St Vincent de Paul do not come running after them and say, ‘Give us it back.’ As far as I know they do not. I might say I know that when many people get a job they do donate money back to St Vincent de Paul and say thank you for that support when they feel they are in a circumstance to do so. This is pretty miserable of the government.

You can call it an overpayment if you like, but it is a discretionary payment made in the assessment of the fact that the person is in extreme difficulty; it is not a legislated entitlement. Frankly, it is pretty damn miserable to go running after them and grabbing that payment back again. If they have only just got their payments restored and they were that badly off, I expect most people could benefit from just having that little bit of breathing space to build up a few spare dollars in the kitty for emergencies for a week or a few weeks or a month or two rather than immediately having deductions taken out of the payments that are restored. It shows no recognition of the reality of just how difficult it is on what is already an incredibly small amount of money. I would love to see any of us here try and get by on the basic pension rate or, in many of these cases, the Newstart allowance rate—people who would have been on the pension rate and are now are on an even lower rate. I would like to see how many of us could manage it.

I do not think there is any recognition of just how difficult it is. The last thing you need when you are in that low a circumstance is to have people coming around and grabbing back the money for your food vouchers straight away. I would add again that there is that extra problem of the inconsistency where the right to recover the overpayments is outlined in a legislative way but the making of payments is not and the right to receive those payments is not. It is purely discretionary. That is a real problem. It is an ongoing problem with that system and one that really does need to be fixed.

Apart from the specifics of the concern I have mentioned, it is a precedent. If we get precedents where payments are made in a discretionary manner and that starts building, then we will be moving away from a tradition and from a very sound practice of legislative entitlements, transparent decision making and grounds for appeal. The rationale given for recovering these debts, which the department finally figured out after double-checking its answers, is that these so-called debts incurred under the financial case management system—and I am not sure why you would call them debts but that is what they are called—can be recovered under statute or common law according to legal principles of equity. I am not sure, but it seems to me that ‘legal principles’ in this case sounds like a bit of an oxymoron. It does not sound very equitable when you are looking at the wealth disparity. The government says this is making it easier and simpler for all concerned—well, simpler for the government to get money back from somebody who is not well off but I am not sure it makes it easier for the person who is going to have less money. (Time expired)