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

I wish to address my remarks initially in relation to the Social Security Amendment (2007 Measures No. 2) Bill 2007. I think this is the third or fourth Howard government welfare bill that we are again debating this year. It was not long ago that the Howard government claimed it had reformed welfare in Australia, yet here we are with another bill. We saw reports yet again in recent weeks of further attempts at welfare reform being cooked up by Minister Hockey. The simple fact is that, when it comes to social security policy, the Howard government has got it wrong for 11 long years and it still cannot figure out how to get it right. That is because, time after time, this government goes for a short-term political fix rather than a plan for Australia’s long-term future. As a result, Australia still has low participation rates when compared with our competitors. We still have two million Australians who are officially unemployed, working part time but wanting more work than they can get or who want to work but do not show up in the monthly unemployment figures.

Also as a result of the Howard government’s failure to plan for Australia’s long-term future, we have a skills crisis in this country. We have businesses desperate for skilled workers, which is a direct result of the Howard government’s failure to plan ahead and failure to train Australians, particularly the jobless Australians, for the available jobs. I want to emphasise that Labor have a different approach. We believe that people who can work should work, and we believe that those who cannot work should be cared for. We believe that work is a foundation of social inclusion. Everybody benefits when more people can participate in the social and economic mainstream. Labor’s approach to workforce participation is to identify the reasons why some people are not participating as much as they could or would like to and to deliver practical solutions.

I want to briefly address the plan recently announced by Labor leader Kevin Rudd to create Skills Australia. This body will play a central role to ensure we lock in a full-employment economy and develop a high-skilled and innovative workforce for the future. It will assess evidence from commissioned research and industry stakeholders to inform Australia’s workforce development needs. It will provide government with recommendations about the future skill needs of the economy and the country. It will identify future skill shortages so that they can be addressed before they negatively impact on economic activity, persistent skill shortages so that current capacity blockages can be overcome, and barriers that prevent skill formation in areas where persistent skill shortages exist. We will also identify industries where retraining and upskilling of workers may be required to prevent unemployment, underemployment and skills obsolescence. In making its recommendations to government, Skills Australia will have regard to a range of factors. These include the objective of achieving full employment, the international competitiveness of the Australian economy, the promotion of innovation through skills acquisition, providing a sufficient number of appropriately qualified workers for industries of critical national importance, and the role of state and regional economies in contributing to the success of the broader Australian economy.

In a survey of more than 760 producers by the Australian Industry Group entitled Australia’s skills gap: costly, wasteful and widespread, it was found that one in two businesses was experiencing difficulties in obtaining skilled labour. Monash University’s Centre for the Economics of Education and Training has estimated that more than four million additional people will need to acquire qualifications from 2006 to 2016. This includes more than two million new entrants and 1.7 million existing workers. Of these, 61.4 per cent will need a vocational education and training qualification and 38.6 per cent will need a higher education qualification. The simple reality is that businesses are desperate for skilled staff, and people only get a job if they have the skills an employer needs.

Yet again, with this bill another opportunity passes to help jobless Australians obtain skills. Beyond this bill, this government has no plan to match current and future needs for skilled workers with the people who could be working. Instead, what we see in this bill is the usual random assortment of measures.

I want to emphasise at the outset that there is one measure here that Labor strongly supports: exempting relatives from participation requirements if they are the primary carers of children. On the basis of this measure, we will be supporting the bill and we consider this exemption long overdue. Under the amendments, the child must be directed to live with the person under either a parenting order made under the Family Law Act, a state child order or an overseas child order which is registered under that act and the person must be complying with that order. Where those relatives are single principal carers, the bill also ensures that they have access to the higher available rate of payment—the parenting payment single. Relatives who have taken responsibility for the care of children are providing invaluable support to their family and their community, and we must support them.

However, it is worth noting that some community advocates, particularly those who made submissions to the Senate inquiry in this matter, have argued that eligibility for these exemptions should be extended further to include other circumstances where a relative of a child may become a principal carer without court orders being made. Indeed, the approach in this bill contradicts the government’s move towards parenting plans and family relationship centres as alternatives to family courts. It would be worth hearing from the minister how the government justifies the narrowness of the exemption which is contained in the bill.

Nevertheless, this aspect of the bill is quite unlike most of the Howard government’s so-called Welfare to Work agenda which, as you know, actually makes it harder for Australians who are struggling to achieve financial independence. There are other aspects of the bill which continue in this vein.

The Howard government appears intent on making life harder for people with a disability. One of the measures contained in the bill removes medical officers from the assessment of a person’s capacity to work. This dramatic change was one of the reasons Labor sought a Senate inquiry into this bill. I want to quote briefly from a couple of the submissions which were made to that inquiry. The Mental Health Council of Australia submitted to the inquiry that replacing a medical officer with a job capacity assessor in the assessment process ‘could have damaging unintended consequences for the person with mental illness’. The Australian Federation of Disability Organisations was similarly concerned with the implications of this bill, saying that even under existing arrangements:

... people whose impairments are not visible have been inappropriately assessed by people with poor knowledge or appreciation of the impact of their condition on their capacity to work, the supports they need to work and the range of work that they can realistically undertake.

Given this current predicament, disability advocates are concerned about the impact of removing the limited remaining role of medical officers from this process. Labor believe there is a role for medical opinion in the job capacity assessment process. I indicate that, in the committee stage, we will move amendments to delete the items from the bill which remove medical officers from the assessment of impairment.

The bill also reinforces the role of the job capacity assessment in another way. It replaces the guidelines for making these work capacity assessments from those made by the secretary, with guidelines set out in the legislative instrument by the minister. The secretary will be required to comply with these guidelines, as will the Social Security Appeals Tribunal and the AAT. So, whilst Labor acknowledge and understand the concern that some in the disability community have about the guidelines and, in particular, how detailed and prescriptive they will be, we support the increased ability of parliament to scrutinise the guidelines as a legislative instrument. However, these guidelines have not been released and Labor will watch very closely to ensure they do not make life harder for people with a disability.

This bill, like all the Welfare to Work bills put forward by this government, does not address Australia’s participation challenges. Clearly, the Howard government does not actually understand the scale of the participation challenge. This government simply relies on the mining boom continuing forever. But, as we know, no boom lasts forever and a prudent government would invest in Australia’s people in order to secure our ongoing and future prosperity.

Australia needs a long-term approach to workforce participation and welfare reform. It needs an approach that tackles the reasons that some people are not working and delivers practical solutions. I have indicated that Labor, at the committee stage, will move two amendments to this bill. However, I will flag that, ultimately, Labor will support this bill principally because we support the amendments to participation requirements for relatives who are caring for children.

I want to speak briefly, because we are in a cognate debate, on the Social Security Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007. This bill makes a number of minor changes to social security law, most of which provide more access to financial assistance. It does provide some additional support to parents who have been adversely affected by the recently implemented welfare changes and, amongst other things, it enables the non-primary carer to access a higher rate of income support than has previously been available.

In addition, there are enhancements to the provision of mobility allowance. It is unfortunate that the government did not include those previously as part of the original Welfare to Work package. There is the enhancement of access to supplementary payments for recipients of parenting payment partnered who have a partial capacity for work and there are a range of changes to participation rules relating to mature age unemployed job seekers. Again, I indicate that Labor will be supporting this legislation primarily because of some of the additional benefits contained in it.

I want to briefly comment on the report into the Social Security Amendment (2007 Measures No. 2) Bill 2007. I want to emphasise that this was a very short inquiry process because obviously, with the government’s restrictive timetabling of this legislation and its desire to get this through in this session of parliament, we were very restricted in the amount of inquiry that could be undertaken. In fact, the committee determined that no public hearings could be undertaken. I indicate our thanks to the 11 community organisations which, at short notice, provided input into this bill. Particularly, given how short the notice was, we were most appreciative of their input and they can be assured, certainly from the opposition’s perspective, that some of the issues that they raised were taken into account in formulating the opposition’s position on this bill. In particular, we note, as I said, the concern that was raised about the removal of the phrase ‘medical officer’ from some aspects of the assessment process. We share the concerns of the organisations which made submissions in relation to that issue.

I want to make a brief comment about one of the concerns raised by submitters to the inquiry in relation to replacing existing administrative guidelines with ministerial guidelines contained in legislative instruments. There was quite a significant amount of concern raised by these community and representative groups about that. I understand the concerns which were raised. They primarily relate to a concern that this would affect appeal rights and review rights and also there was a fear about what would be contained in the guidelines, which obviously may affect people’s rights and be overly proscriptive or unduly harsh. These were some of the concerns raised.

Taking a step back from the opposition’s perspective, we are not opposed in principle to issues being included in ministerial guidelines contained in legislative instruments. We note that, in fact, there is the capacity for greater public scrutiny, because legislative instruments can be disallowed in this chamber or in the other place. In fact, one of our criticisms earlier of the government’s original bill was that there was far too much which had been taken out of the act and placed in the guide. My recollection is that the Senate committee inquiry actually identified some of the concerns with the transparency of that process and the placing within instruments, which were not to be considered by parliament, of issues affecting people’s rights. As a matter of principle, Labor are not opposed to these matters being included in this situation in legislative instruments but we do, as I said at the outset, put the government on notice that we will inspect most closely and consult with community groups in relation to the content of such legislative instruments. I propose to move two second reading amendments, one in relation to the Social Security Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 and one in relation to the Social Security Amendment (2007 Measures No. 2) Bill 2007. I understand that they have been circulated in the chamber. I seek leave to move the two amendments together.

Leave granted.

I move the second reading amendment to the Social Security Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 standing in my name:

At the end of the motion, add “but the Senate:

(a)   condemns the Government for:

(i)   making it harder for Australians to move from welfare to work,

(ii)   reducing the financial rewards for people who move from welfare to work, and

(iii)   restricting access to training and education for job seekers; and

(b)   calls on the Government to allow people with part-time participation requirements to fulfil those requirements through real training or study”.

I also move the second reading amendment to the Social Security Amendment (2007 Measures No. 2) Bill 2007 on sheet 5405 on behalf of the opposition standing in my name:

At the end of the motion, add “but the Senate:

(a)   notes the additional parliamentary scrutiny of legislative instruments in place of administrative guidelines; and

(b)   calls on the Government to:

(i)   listen to the concerns of the disability community regarding the quality and fairness of their Job Capacity Assessment system, and

(ii)   consult with stakeholders, to ensure that these new guidelines do not make life harder for people with a disability and that they have fair and reasonable opportunity to appeal decisions relating to job capacity assessments”.