Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

The Social Security Legislation Amendment (Increased Employment Participation) Bill 2014 is about helping young people find ongoing employment. It creates the Job Commitment Bonus for young Australians aged from 18 to 30 who have been receiving Newstart Allowance or Youth Allowance for a period of at least 12 months. The bill provides a tax-free payment of $2,500 if a recipient remains in work and off income support for a continuous period of at least 12 months. Recipients will also qualify for a further tax-free bonus payment of $4,000 if they remain in continuous gainful work for a further 12 months. That is 24 months of continuous work.

The bill also replaces the current Move 2 Work program with what will be known as the Relocation Assistance to Take Up a Job program. The program will provide financial assistance to long-term unemployed job seekers with participation requirements who have been receiving Newstart allowance, youth allowance or parenting payment for at least the preceding 12 months to relocate and obtain ongoing employment. The program will provide up to $6,000 to support eligible job seekers who will relocate to a regional area or up to $3,000 to support eligible job seekers who relocate to a metropolitan area either from a regional area or, in certain circumstances, another metropolitan area. Families with dependent children will be provided with up to an extra $3,000.

The bill also allows for non-payment periods for participants who leave their employment without good reason within six months after receiving a relocation payment to be 26 weeks rather than 12 weeks, which currently applies to relocation payments made under Labor's Move 2 Work program. This more than doubles the non-payment period that applies under Labor's Move 2 Work program. Labor opposes the increase in the non-payment period and we will be moving amendments in the committee of the whole that will retain the current 12-week non-payment period. Labor is very concerned about the doubling of the non-payment period for those recipients of the relocation assistance where unforeseen circumstances may prevent the recipient working. Twenty six weeks does seem particularly harsh.

I know that there is the hardship provision for people adversely affected by this and I trust that this will be used. According to the explanatory memorandum, affected persons will still have the benefit of the usual operation of existing hardship waiver provisions so that the non-payment period would not prevent a person from accessing essentials, for example, basic levels of health care, housing or sanitation. In particular, the current subsection 42S(4) provides that a person's unemployment non-payment period may be ended on the grounds of severe financial hardship if the person is within a class of persons specified in a legislative instrument made under subsection 42S(5), the ending unemployment non-payment period instrument. This will continue to apply. We do not believe that the hardship provision will provide sufficient protection to prevent the likelihood of young people from sliding into poverty under circumstances that are out of their control. Labor does not accept that a young person can receive no income support payment for six months and continue to be job ready.

In government, Labor focused on supporting young people to finish school to get the training and higher education they need for jobs. In government, we considered a whole range of different policies to address the issue of youth unemployment. It is one of the most important issues any government will face. Governments cannot expect young people to gain well paid jobs without providing good education, training and support for young people. Governments cannot expect young people to easily find work with the current unemployment rate. This bill seems to be based on the premise that young Australians do not want to work rather than the reality that many face—that is, difficulty in obtaining employment.

We have sadly seen the increase of youth unemployment in this country after many years of a downward trend. In my home state of New South Wales, youth unemployment has jumped alarmingly in the year to February 2014. Recent ABS data shows that youth unemployment has risen by 73 per cent in Baulkham Hills and in the Hawkesbury to 11.6 per cent. In the capital region, including Goulburn, Yass and Queanbeyan it has reached 10.2 per cent. In far west New South Wales and Orana, it has hit 15.1 per cent while in Parramatta and Blacktown it has hit scandalous levels of 17.6 per cent and 16.6 per cent respectively. If present trends continue, in many parts of New South Wales youth unemployment will exceed 20 per cent. In many parts of the state it will be approaching 30 per cent and in parts of Western Sydney we will reach 30 per cent by 2016.

Many other parts of the country are facing a crisis in youth unemployment. Youth unemployment rates of this order are a road to long-term intergenerational poverty and welfare reliance, sapping the hope and aspirations of everyone affected.

I know, from discussions I have had in the western suburbs of Sydney, it is not just the youth who face this sapping position; it is the family who are desperate to help their young boy or girl get access to a job. So it is a family issue, not just an individual issue, for some young people. These young people are the lucky ones who have got families to support them. Many young people do not have families to give them that support. For a prosperous nation like ours, this is totally unacceptable. We need to intervene and that is what Labor did when were in government. See there is a role for government and that role is to help those that cannot help themselves, to help those that find themselves in trouble and to help those that find themselves needing some support to get a job. To simply diminish the size of government on a continuous basis is to deny the role that government plays in assisting young people, pensioners and others to access a decent life in this country. We do, as Labor, see the need for the government to intervene.

We were investing in vocational training, we were investing in trades training centres in schools and we were intervening with youth connection programs. In our last budget we gave a commitment to continue to invest in the urgent task of job creation and assisting disadvantaged job seekers into work. Unlike the current government, Labor's last budget maintained funding for employment services, disability employment services and the working age payments program. Labor introduced a system with the flexibility to match services to individual job seekers and prioritise resources for those with the greatest need. As a result, we achieved significantly better outcomes and for the most disadvantaged job seekers outcomes have improved by 90 per cent. Across employment services Labor helped over 1.6 million people to secure jobs. Our employment services system was recognised by the OECD as playing a central role in keeping unemployment low in the wake of the global financial crisis. Remember that global financial crisis that no-one on the other side of the house seems to remember, that no-one on the other side of the house actually thought happened? We were told it was a North American problem, that it was not a problem for Australia. The economic incompetence of the then opposition on this issue is astounding. Yet what happened during that period is that government intervened, government supported jobs, government supported communities and government did the right thing.

One of the most disturbing targets of the budget that we had last night is the attack on our young people. The new rules announced last night will deny income support to young people under 30 for six months of every year and then force them onto Work for the Dole. It will deny them Newstart allowance until 24. That is a loss of $48 a week. It will move more young people on disability support pension to Newstart or Youth Allowance, a cut of at least $166 per week. The budget will mean spiralling university fees for young people and demonstrates that the government has broken its promise not to increase fees or to cut funding to higher education.

In his budget of twisted priorities, Tony Abbott is telling young people, 'You're on your own.' Promises prior to an election mean nothing to the coalition. Promises from the coalition mean nothing to any group in this country. The message that you are on your own, the message that the Abbott government has sent young Australians looking for work with its savage cut of $1.2 billion to income support for people under 30, will create huge hardship for young people in this country. And young people under 24 will be shifted from Newstart onto the lower Youth Allowance, making them $48 a week worse off. As a result of the government's twisted priorities, this budget will see an unemployed 24-year-old lose almost $2,500 a year. At the same time they are providing $50,000 to wealthy families under their unaffordable, stupid Paid Parental Leave scheme. That is $50,000 to the rich and wealthy and $2,500 cut from those that can least afford cuts. If the government doesn't address the training and education deficiencies that lie behind youth unemployment, we are failing our kids and the cost will be huge. We are missing out on $1.5 billion a year when young people fall through the cracks between school and further education or work, and this is why the government must commit to jobs and training and education first and foremost.

Prior to last year's election, Mr Abbott promised he would create one million jobs in five years. That is 200,000 jobs a year. By now, total employment should have increased by 100,000 full-time jobs. The government is way off target, and the current figures do not include the many job losses that have been forecast with the downturn in the manufacturing industry, jobs that have basically been told to go away by the federal government in the manufacturing industry, cuts to the Public Service and the negative effect on economic activity the government's austerity budget will have. The government cannot continue to do nothing—it needs a detailed plan for jobs. The government should explain to the Australian people how it plans to create the one million jobs that it promised. Where is the industry and innovation plan for Australian businesses; where is any plan at all?

Australians need a government that will fight for jobs and support job seekers. While we support this legislation and the principle of encouraging young people to find employment, Labor does not want to see these payments to job seekers replace wage subsidies or support for employers to employ young people. Nor do we want it be at the expense of investments in training and higher education, particularly for young people. This government needs to fight for jobs for workers, but it won't. It needs to do more. It needs to intervene where necessary and support jobs, training and higher education. The government must address the decrease in full-time jobs in this country and ensure that workers affected by recent job announcements are supported, as is the economy in those regions that are more affected by these announcements.

There is a further provision of this bill that is of concern, and that is the exclusion of protected special category visa holders from access to the job commitment bonus proposed in this bill. The bill redefines what it means to be an Australian resident in an unprecedented and highly specific manner. It excludes from the meaning of 'Australian resident' those New Zealand born residents of Australia who are protected special category visa holders. New Zealanders enjoy the right to live and work indefinitely in Australia—a right that was formalised under the 1973 Trans-Tasman Travel Agreement—and for a long time they were essentially treated as permanent residents. That changed when the Howard government amended the definition of 'Australian resident' in social security laws to exclude New Zealanders. New Zealanders who arrived before the changes are deemed to hold a protected special category visa while their countrymen who arrived after the changes hold a non-protected visa.