Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Hansard source

In rising to speak about the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Employment Services Reform) Bill 2008 I reflect on the comments made by Senator Abetz in his contribution, which I thought was quite outstanding. He mentioned the rushed and flawed legislation that has come to characterise this government. There is no greater exposition of this than with respect to the tough economic times that Australia now finds itself in. It exposes policy weakness and it exposes the weakness of depth in the line-up of the Rudd government. Indeed, this bill goes some way to adding to that infamy that they are already developing quite a reputation for.

There is an old saying in investment markets that when the tide goes out, meaning when the investment markets start to fall, you can always tell who has been swimming naked. I can tell you that the economic tide is going out on this government and on the Australian economy. The tide is going out on the record low levels of unemployment that were achieved under the Howard government and inherited by the Rudd government administration.

This bill exposes the fact that this government has given up on the accountability associated with getting people off unemployment benefits and into actual jobs. But that should come as no surprise. Labor are no virgins in this regard. They have form on this. Previous Labor administrations have always seen unemployment rise and they have delivered economic woe to the Australian people. And, unfortunately, we are seeing more of the same today. This bill, among a number of changes, proposes to change the compliance regime. There are changes for unemployment benefits and job obligations. They are changes that would significantly roll back the mutual obligation requirements that currently exist, that have provided enormous benefits to so many people, enabling them to go out and get a job. In the last 10 years or so, unemployment in this country, under the coalition government, has fallen—from around eight per cent in May 1998 to under four per cent in February this year. But it is now rising. It is rising as the economic tide is going out.

Let me for the benefit of the Senate explain the current system. Currently, job seekers who do not attend a job interview, who miss an appointment with their provider or who fail to participate in their Work for the Dole or mutual obligation activity without a valid reason have what is called a ‘failure to attend’ recorded. If a job seeker has three recorded failures without a valid reason in a 12-month period, they undergo an eight-week non-payment period. This system was introduced to reduce welfare dependency by reiterating the concepts of mutual obligation and personal responsibility. They are concepts that every parent tries to teach their children and that every country in the world that has maintained a modest welfare system has sought to implement, because it goes to the very nature of our human spirit. We understand that we have obligations not only to ourselves but also to our communities and that we also have responsibility for the choices that we make. For any job seekers experiencing severe financial hardship, an opportunity for financial case management was always available. But, under these proposed changes, financial case management will no longer be available. So, whilst the previous system brought down unemployment from eight per cent in May 1998 to 3.97 per cent in February this year, it is now being tossed out by this government—a government with a very poor employment track record.

The proposed changes in this bill weaken mutual obligation quite significantly and allow for an enormous amount of discretion that will, in all probability, fail to encourage job seekers to look for work and get off welfare. There is a system in this bill called ‘no show, no pay’. The new system proposed by the government is based on ‘if you don’t show up you lose a day of pay’. This is a contradictory approach by this government, who has based its entire premise on an ‘all show and no substance’ approach to legislation—and it has succeeded in this regard. So, for each day that a job seeker fails to attend Work for the Dole, a mutual obligation activity or a job interview, they lose one-tenth of their fortnightly welfare payment. It was suggested in the minister’s second reading speech that this was more work-like in its contribution and people would be in a more work-like environment. Let me say for those who have not employed people: when people do not front up to work, you do not just dock their pay; if they do it repeatedly, they actually lose their job—as is appropriate to any fair-minded person. Under this principle in the bill, the Labor government is saying, ‘We’re just going to dock you $44.93’—a day’s pay for an unemployed person—‘because you didn’t front and you didn’t have an excuse.’ How is this a powerful incentive for job seekers to do their bit to find a job?

Further, under this bill, if a job seeker gets six failures within six months, they are referred for what is called a ‘comprehensive compliance assessment’—long words that sound very impressive but unfortunately do not have much substance to them. The comprehensive compliance assessment will result in one of five outcomes. They will have a new job seeker classification instrument, a job capacity assessment, a review of their employment pathway plan or an eight-week non-payment period—or no action at all could be taken. And, once you have been through the comprehensive compliance assessment, no matter what the outcome, the slate is wiped clean—you start again. So, even if no action was taken or if they just made a decision to let you off the hook for absolutely rejecting any notion of personal responsibility, they let you go and you can start again. The financial penalty of $44.93 a day may not actually deter job seekers from not turning up for the job interview that they possibly had a chance of winning. In fact, it may encourage an increase in the number of people who forego this amount of money to undertake other activities that are outside of the regular employment markets.

I would like to take you back through a bit of history. Since 1945, when the unemployment benefit was introduced, firm compliance measures have always been a part of it. The Chifley government introduced sanctions for not taking reasonable steps to find employment—you lost between two and 12 weeks of benefit. The Keating government penalised people for not attending a job interview by withholding their payment for a period of between two and six weeks. What we are looking at here is such a watering down of the existing obligations that one could say that they are the softest sanctions since the unemployment benefit was introduced in 1945. The measures that have served us so well—most expressly demonstrated in the 11 years of the Howard government—are now being watered down to unprecedented levels.

Let me touch again on the matter of mutual obligation. People out in the community accept that, when the taxpayers are supporting you, you have an obligation to the taxpayers. In the case of receiving welfare or unemployment benefits, one of the obligations is that you actually need to go out there and actively seek work. This is about breaking the cycle of welfare dependency. The government’s proposed changes water down this mutual obligation to such an extent that they provide very little incentive for people to do their part and actively look for work. This may indeed herald a return of and a reuse of that old phrase—and I say ‘old phrase’ because it has not been necessary to use it for so many years in this country—the ‘dole bludger’. Do we really want to see a return of the dole bludger, where people are actively opting in for unemployment because the penalties are so slight?

It is also worth noting that this bill offers a contradictory approach by the Rudd Labor government to that of another bill that will be under consideration later on. Whilst on one hand the Rudd Labor government are weakening mutual obligations for job seekers, they are actually planning a tougher regime for parents who are in receipt of welfare payments when their children miss school. There are a number of flaws in that legislation, but I will not touch on them now. It just goes to show that there is an inconsistency in the approach by this government.

Another concern about this bill is that it allows the minister or the secretary to use legislative instruments to classify job seekers and determine whether a job seeker is actually in breach of their mutual obligations. This includes what is a ‘reasonable excuse’ for a serious breach and penalty amounts—and there can be some interpretation as to what the penalty should be for the ‘no show, no pay’ failures. The coalition, quite rightly, believes that these parameters should not be determined by the minister or the secretary but should be set out within the legislation. This provides a consistency to legislation.

I understand that the government may say that the coalition has supported legislative instruments. Indeed, we have when times have demanded it, such as the time before the introduction of a bill and the final detail can be completed, if it was necessary. This is not such a case, quite frankly. The people of Australia like to know that there is a definitive approach and what the sanctions are going to be, rather than leaving it up to ministerial discretion. Allowing so much discretion to reside with the minister or the secretary through legislative instruments may result in job seekers believing that there is no need for them to engage in mutual obligation—and this of course could have a detrimental impact on unemployment levels.

The coalition also notes the concerns raised by Jobs Australia chief executive David Thompson about this new model—concerns that were shared by the minister in the other place, albeit he expressed them in slightly different terms, but the concern is exactly the same. The concern is that this new model only works when unemployment is low and lots of jobs are available. I regret to say that unemployment is now rising in this country. The economic stewardship of the Rudd government has been extraordinarily poor. As unemployment rises and the economic environment sours, there are not that many jobs available. We need to make sure that every job is being hunted down and filled by those who are looking for a job.

It is also interesting to note that in the second reading speech on this bill the Labor Party talked about statistics. There are many phrases about the use of statistics, but there are a couple of things that we need to get very, very clear. I think the government has been toying with statistics regarding the long-term unemployed. The simple fact is that there was a 30 per cent decrease in long-term unemployment between June 2006 and June 2008. There are fewer long-term unemployed because more people have been getting jobs, and part of that has been due to the mutual obligation responsibilities.

It will come as no surprise that the coalition has a number of amendments to this bill because, in its current form, this bill will only see unemployment rise—and that is something we do not want to inflict upon the people of Australia. We want to help develop a culture where people want to, and should be required to, actively seek a job. I am mindful that the Greens have also foreshadowed many amendments, and I understand that the Independent senators also have some concerns. This is an important piece of legislation that has been rushed and it is currently flawed. Quite frankly, a number of people in this place want to work for the betterment of Australia, and we want to get this legislation right. My concern is that we will not be able to have a considered view of this bill because of the lack of time that has been afforded to the Independent senators and others to consider what is wrong with it and how it can be best fixed—if at all. Currently, it is the opposition’s position that, unless our amendments are carried, we will not be able to support the bill. We would like to amend it to see these watered down mutual obligation commitments removed.

I know that the Greens have circulated a number of amendments. We would like a little more time to consider them and to see if we can come to an appropriate arrangement. Most importantly, the coalition recognise the incredible workload that has been placed upon the Independent senators. I say that because, for quite some time in this parliamentary session, there has been a lot of filibustering going on by the Labor Party to eat up time, as they have been disorganised and a bit of a rabble. Now they are trying to push through as much legislation as they possibly can in the last week or so. This puts an enormous amount of pressure on key people in the chamber who do not have the resources available to them. I would like to let the Senate know that—because we are a compassionate party and a party that wants to get this right—we are not interested in rushed and flawed legislation. We will be opposing the move into the committee stage and we will be voting no at the second reading stage, because we want to make sure that the Australian public and the Australian community do not suffer unnecessarily due to this rushed and flawed legislation.