Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

The aim of Welfare to Work laws like this one is twofold: to find jobs for unemployed people and to save taxpayers’ hard earned money. While someone is receiving income support from the government it is fair enough that the public be satisfied that they are doing their best to find a job. But I think we should be clear about one thing: this law should not be just about improving work participation rates so that we can help the economy. This law should also be about helping people improve their lives. This is about steering them to a better life, helping them avoid poverty, giving them the satisfaction of decent employment and giving their kids a chance to have a good life.

The bill sets out a new compliance framework for job seekers on income support to try to keep them focused on searching for work. It introduces a new one-day pay penalty and keeps the current eight-week non-payment period as a penalty for people who persistently refuse to seek or stay at work. Ultimately, Family First thinks that employment services should concentrate on ensuring that at least one parent in every family is in paid work so that the children have a role model and are less likely to be living in poverty.

Part of helping people lead better lives is to focus on what is important to them, and what is important to most people is relationships. We are defined by our relationships with other people, such as husbands and wives, mums and dads, brothers and sisters and sons and daughters. So parliament’s actions should be focused on strengthening families, not weakening them. We must promote stable families that are focused on the needs and best interests of their children. Giving kids the best opportunity means making sure that at least one parent is employed, but it also means keeping marriages and relationships intact.

Catholic Social Service Australia, in their submission on this bill, pointed to a report from the Social Policy Research Centre which said that the current Welfare to Work system increased the risk of family breakdown. The report said that the system of penalties for breaching the rules meant that 26.2 per cent of respondents reported that their ‘marriage or relationship came under stress’ and 21.3 per cent reported that they were ‘involved in a serious household argument’. The report said breaching put further strain on already difficult family relationships.

When I spoke to the Australian Institute of Family Studies earlier this year, Professor Hayes nominated:

... communication, family conflict and violence, financial management, differences in values and differences in expectation of and satisfaction with relationships

as the top five drivers of relationship breakdown. A survey by the department also found that:

Over 50 per cent of job seekers serving eight week penalties had failed to pay rent or board on time during the penalty period and around 15 per cent of this group were evicted.

So we should be careful to make sure there are sufficient safeguards so that such rules do not cause homelessness or marriage and relationship breakdown. That is particularly important because we know that relationship breakdown can lead to further risk of joblessness and poverty.

OECD figures show that the number of jobless families in Australia is at 13 per cent, which is relatively high among the OECD countries. The reason Australia continues to have a relatively high number of jobless families is that there has been an increase in the number of single parent families which are less likely to have an employed parent than couple families. In 2007, Australia had a low rate of employment for single parents of 50 per cent compared to the 70 per cent OECD average.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies has identified key risk factors that restrict the life chances of children, including parents being unemployed and a child’s dad not being around. Family breakdown causes great hurt and suffering on an emotional level, but it also can lead to poverty and a lifetime of disadvantage for children. So family breakdown is a very important factor in Welfare to Work laws because, when families break down, it increases the number of families without employment and it puts children at risk of living in poverty.

So are the current arrangements successful in getting people into work? The department told the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations during its inquiry into this bill that ‘job seekers are less likely to meet their requirements than they were five years ago’. That is despite the department reporting that, in 2007-08, there were 32,000 eight-week non-payment penalties, which had doubled from the previous year. The department also gave evidence that the proportion of the job seeker population who are very long-term unemployment benefit recipients or who are disadvantaged has increased significantly.

Australia has had some success with getting people into work, halving the number of people in long-term unemployment from 128,000 just five years ago to 66,000 today. Over that time, the general unemployment rate has fallen from 5.9 per cent to 4.2 per cent or by just over 120,000 people. But the task will get more difficult with the world financial crisis and with people who are more easily employed coming off the unemployment lists first. The people on income support are already characterised in many cases by very difficult lives. The department noted:

… 32 per cent of job seekers on Newstart and Youth Allowance have a reported mental illness. Other barriers to participation include drug and alcohol problems (18 per cent) and unstable accommodation (five per cent). Almost 13 per cent of job seekers are ex-offenders.

So the task of helping people get jobs in an economic downturn will be difficult, but it is crucial for the futures of so many people and so many children. Work is vital for the physical and mental health and wellbeing of people. The government’s proposal has a strong focus on employment, but it should also have a focus on supporting people after they get a job and not just before. First jobs can be menial and uninteresting and may not last, so employment services need to help people stay in employment and move on to the next step up the ladder. In 2005, speaking about the Welfare to Work bills, I said the issue was about:

... trying to get the balance between personal responsibility and community obligations right.

That still remains the case.

I also stated that I can only imagine how difficult it must be to be a sole parent. For sole parents, there is often no-one to help on those long nights with a sick child or with just trying to get through the daily routine of keeping children bathed, dressed, read to and settled to sleep. I was pleased then, when speaking with the minister this week, to be assured that single mums and dads have done relatively well under the system and, to date, only about 20 single parents have been breached.

Family First has had some concerns about the eight-week non-payment period as a way of changing behaviour but has been assured by the government that this penalty is a last resort for people who persistently refuse to look for work. The minister told me that concerns over the risk of homelessness and the risk of punishing people with a mental illness or parents who have children to support should be taken care of by what the department calls, in bureaucratic language, a ‘comprehensive compliance assessment’. The assessment is designed to find the particular problems of job seekers so they get the help they need rather than an unnecessary punishment. Family First believes that, on balance, the government’s changes appear to be a reasonable response to the skyrocketing rate of eight-week non-payment periods, the fall in the number of job seekers meeting requirements and the increase in very long-term unemployment.