Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is certainly a pleasure to follow Senator Marshall—someone who has an abiding interest in these areas and has demonstrated that time and again in his contributions in the Senate. Let me restate again at the outset that Labor unreservedly support the concept of encouraging people to make the move from welfare to work. Contrary to the coalition’s demonising of these people, welfare recipients do want to change their situations for the better, and this usually starts with a job. We on this side place a great deal of emphasis on work. Importantly, Labor recognise that this process does not happen without the appropriate level of support.

Despite what the government would have you believe, there are still a great many Australians who are failing to see the fruits of the prosperity our economy is said to be reaping. The boom is bypassing tracts of people who are in no position to take advantage of it. I speak of course of the 2.3 million Australians who are looking for work or want or possibly need to work more hours. The government makes much of the unemployment rate, but a significant number of Australians who fall into the category I have just outlined would indicate that they have not been invited to the economic prosperity party.

It is reasonable to assume that a proportion of these 2.3 million people are making the transition from welfare to work. Some of them may also be in danger of reverting back to welfare. I say they are in danger because, firstly, the gradual casualisation of the workforce is removing job stability. Workers who once would have been full-time workers are now employed as casuals and now have no guarantee of receiving a shift. Secondly, these same people are at the mercy of the government’s Work Choices regime under which they may not be reimbursed for overtime or for shift loadings and, more disturbingly, can be summarily sacked with no recourse if they are employed by a business with fewer than 100 employees. Because their tenure is extremely precarious, they are also the least likely to maximise their wages and conditions in an AWA by bargaining with their employers. They have little or no bargaining power and they take what they are given or they get their marching orders.

We have seen these trends emerging over the first 12-month period of Work Choices in sectors like retail and hospitality. Those faring worst are women, who are traditionally at a disadvantage in balancing their family and work commitments, particularly because this government has let the childcare sector degenerate into a shambles in which there are either not enough places for children or it is prohibitively expensive.

These most vulnerable people, an estimated 2.3 million people, are caught in a nexus whereby they are transitioning from welfare to employment and are arguably deserving of the assistance of the government in making the transition and making it a lasting one. A case in point is a woman in Manilla, New South Wales, who has been in contact with my office. She is a sole parent in receipt of Centrelink payments with three children aged between nine and 19. She wanted to return to work but in a capacity in which she could fulfil her duty as her children’s primary care giver. She took the initiative to set up a modest before- and after-school family day care service in her home. She has been doing this for the last seven months and has nine children in her care. She very diligently meets all the standards set out by the Family Day Care Association and the relevant health and safety legislation. She has attended courses at her own expense to make sure she is abreast of things in order to run a day care service. The parents of the nine children she cares for are largely able to work because, thanks to her, there is someone to care for their children. After 11 years of neglect of the childcare sector, regional areas like Manilla have no formal care services available to school-age children. Until my constituent began her day care service, parents had to choose between work and caring for their children.

It appears, however, they may be forced to make that choice again, because my constituent was contacted by her local Centrelink office in Tamworth. They told her that under the new rules to come in after 1 July this year her payments would be stopped if she is not earning more than $202 a week. She would have to become a full-time student or actively look for more work, including filling out an activity statement and attending the fortnightly interviews at Centrelink, a 40-minute drive away, in order to continue to receive support.

The absolute mindlessness of the system is such that it would force a woman who has taken the initiative to establish her own business—and in the process supporting seven other families in their endeavours to remain employed—to essentially forego that business and look for another job so she can meet the $202 a week income test. She in fact earns that each week, working 25 hours during school term and up to 40 hours a week during school holidays. She does have significant outlays while meeting regulatory costs, but she is getting by and having a go. She is working towards being able to make her day care service self-sufficient so that she will not have to rely on benefits to supplement her income. But the heavy hand of this government’s spiteful approach to workforce participation is threatening to force her out of business. I believe her case has been referred to the national office as a test of how the new regulations stand up, and I hope the minister and his department have the sense to realise the pettiness of the government’s approach. Incidentally, I also believe that Centrelink staff are privately dreading the introduction of the post-July regulations, because clients will have to be interviewed every fortnight, meaning the queues at the counters will grow longer and no doubt patience and tempers will be tested.

Hearing stories like this, I find it inexplicable that the government would continue its miserly pursuit of job seekers and as part of this bill deny them a key piece of assistance in the pensioner education supplement. Currently, people moving from parenting payments or disability support pensions to Newstart or youth allowance as a result of last year’s Welfare to Work legislation remain eligible to receive the PES until they have completed their courses, which is a very reasonable proposition. Those people in receipt of the PES are studying or retraining to enable them to better transition to the workforce. But that entitlement now disappears if those same people had applied for the pension payment between May 2005 and June 2006 and, after having been reviewed under the new legislation, they were assessed as having a partial capacity to work, which I believe is currently set at 15 hours a week. This does not apply to people moved onto Newstart or youth allowance if it is their first review following the 2006 changes, but it does if they are transferred upon subsequent reviews.

This may result in a scenario in which people, part way through a course of study, will now lose their entitlement to the financial support contained in the PES. More than likely they embarked on that study under the fair assumption that the support they were receiving through the PES would not be ripped out from under them. I can see no benefit in this move for the government other than as a further expression of its spite and total disregard for the genuine Australians who are just looking for a fair go but are falling through the cracks.

I am not alone in my criticism of this provision. Catholic Social Services Australia shared these sentiments in their submission to the Senate inquiry into this bill. They said:

Many individuals in difficult circumstances who have invested considerable time and effort in furthering their employment prospects are likely to be forced to jettison half-completed courses—courses commenced and continued in good faith in the expectation that the Commonwealth’s Pensioner Education Supplement would be available for the duration of the course. A person so affected could be forgiven for some scepticism, disillusionment and even bitterness during their next phase of complying with participation requirements. Employment prospects would be impeded, educational resources wasted, and motivation far from enhanced—thereby undermining the Government’s objective of increasing paid labour force participation by people with a disability.

In other words, we have a government willing to take away the opportunity to retrain and re-enter the workforce from those who most want to. We are talking here of people who have suffered from a legitimate disability for an extended period of time, long enough that they have received a DSP and been reviewed at least once post 2006, and have still been in receipt of that pension. These are people who are making overt efforts to get back into work by skilling themselves so they can make the transition.

That is the ultimate irony of the Employment and Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Welfare to Work and Vocational Rehabilitation Services) Bill 2006 and the government’s approach to welfare to work. On the one hand they say they want more people to get back to work, particularly disabled people, and on the other hand they rip away an important subsidy that was helping them do just that. The conclusion of Catholic Social Services Australia is, I think, extremely accurate: you will have people in the middle of study suddenly unable to support that study and losing an opportunity they had to be an attractive potential employee.

The rhetoric and the action do not match up. The government keep shifting the goal posts for job seekers—‘Get off welfare, get into the workforce,’ they say, ‘but don’t look to us for help. In fact, we will make it harder for you to achieve the standards we set.’ If only job seekers got as much leeway and as many second chances as government ministers!

I think another disturbing provision in this bill is that people who have been breached and subject to an eight-week non-payment period can be liable to pay back the money it cost for their financial case management. This case management may include receiving funds to pay for bills and other essential items like food. The government has already, by putting in place the case management system, acknowledged that its breaching policy is sending families to the wall. A two-month non-payment period for a family can mean they cannot pay rent, they cannot pay for food and they cannot clothe their children. They then have to go to charity for assistance, charities like the Exodus Foundation, which I have spoken about before in the Senate.

Very few organisations actually volunteered to sign up to the government’s case management system. Major charities like St Vincent de Paul, the Brotherhood of Saint Laurence and the Uniting Church all refused to take part in the scheme because they opposed the principle underpinning it. One of those groups that did agree to take part was Hillsong Emerge. They receive $650 for each person referred to them by the government. It says much about them that no other major charity would sign up because they detest the policy. Hillsong Emerge have a history with government grants and their use of them, so I am not surprised they were quick to sign on the dotted line.

But now the government wants people who have been breached and referred to organisations like Hillsong Emerge for financial help to pay them back. This adds insult to injury. Breaching a benefit recipient places that person in a situation where they have no means of surviving, where they can no longer pay for accommodation or medication. If they receive assistance via case management, they must then be subjected to the indignity of repaying those costs.

I challenge senators from the government to stand in this chamber and argue the merits of this system. As we know from Senator Marshall’s contribution, only you, Mr Acting Deputy President Barnett, have had the courage to at least stand up for your convictions. What do I say to people like my constituent from Manilla, who could be left high and dry by a cruel system or to the dozens of families trekking in, some by foot and over long distances, to the Exodus Foundation at Ashfield just to give their children a hot meal?

Senators on the other side, and their colleagues in the other place, will come to their day of reckoning later this year, and I predict the cruel spite they have visited on Australian families will come back around. I conclude by relating the sentiment expressed by my constituent in Manilla, New South Wales. She said that she had voted for John Howard three times but neither she nor any member of her family will be voting for him again. In her own words, ‘I voted for John Howard, and look what he’s done for me.’ This government should have a close look indeed at what it is doing to Australian families.