Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

and cleaning, areas which are largely dominated by women, that takes a huge toll as well. So, although people automatically think about blue-collar workers being physically exhausted from their work, there is also a cohort of women who are exhausted from their work and who are being asked to be on their feet for another two years. These issues have not been dealt with. The government has not articulated how it is going to look after that group of people who are already on income support and moving through. I have heard the government saying, ‘We are going to be doing more training.’ I have some issues with that because at the moment I do not think it is well targeted to that group of people that are coming out of employment around the age of 55 and trying to find more work. There are a lot of people that are continuing to work beyond the age of 65; I absolutely acknowledge that. But there is a group that is not. I do not think the training packages are there yet. I would like to know what the government is doing beyond what it is already doing and how it is going to help those people that are already on income support.

Minister, you touched on an issue around the work bonus. I have a specific question on the work bonus that I was going to ask later, but since you have touched on it I will ask it now. Could the government explain why the work bonus will not apply to people on the disability support pension? As we know, there is a big push to get people on the disability support pension into the workforce, and where they can enter the workforce and they have got support that is a really good idea. I am just wondering what the rationale was for not providing the work bonus to people on the disability support pension.