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

The Greens will be supporting the motion to disallow this reasonable excuse determination. We do not support this regulation. It is more of the government's attack on the most vulnerable in our country, attempting to blame those that cannot find work, to demonise them, to imply that they do not want to seek work—which seems to be the government's approach from the comments they have made about people without a job sitting at home on the couch collecting their unemployment payments. That simply does not reflect the truth. I have spent a lot of time talking to people who are, unfortunately, unemployed, and I have not met anybody that does not want a job. I am aware of the very large number of Australians who are desperately seeking work—but there are just not enough jobs on the market for everybody. There is a little bit of context here, which is that the previous Liberal government, under Mr Howard, brought in Welfare to Work, and they significantly tightened up the regulations relating to people who are unemployed who are on Newstart—bearing in mind that Newstart forces people to live below the poverty line. They were harsh requirements. Later, the Rudd government did change some of those rules: for the better, we thought; in fact, the Greens thought that they did not go far enough in some instances.

This is an attempt to wind back a more humane approach to how we support and work with the unemployed. The approach of, 'punish, punish, punish', does not incentivise people to find work. People want to find work; in fact, they get significantly depressed about continuing to be blamed for not being able to find work. I mentioned earlier today some of the evidence that was presented to an inquiry into the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Stronger Penalties for Serious Failures) Bill—which is another piece of the government's puzzle, in terms of wanting to put more and more pressure on to those that are looking for work—as well as evidence to the inquiry into the government's other proposed changes to social security legislation——these are the bills that contain about 20 measures, including a measure dumping young people off income support for six months and expecting them to live on thin air. In that particular inquiry, held just last week, we heard evidence about the high number of people who are on the Disability Support Pension, Newstart or Youth Allowance and who are looking for work. At the moment, there is just no way that there is work for all of those people.

As Senator Cameron was just outlining, this particular regulation winds up the pressure on those people who are looking for work. The Explanatory Statement to the regulation says that 'the department will implement a policy to clarify that a person should not typically be found to have a reasonable excuse if the circumstances in subsections 6(3) or 6(4) are not present, or if they are present but did not directly prevent the person from meeting the requirement that was the subject of the failure.' That is the bit I think is particularly important: it is 'not directly to prevent the person'—who is going to make that decision? As Jobs Australia has pointed out, that question is causing a great deal of concern for providers, because they are being put in the position of making that call, and putting that information through to the department. I think this is bad policy. Again, the motivation is to seek to demonise job seekers and to imply that they are not genuinely looking for work.

When we consider this regulation, we have to consider it in the context of all the other changes the government is making to social security. I cannot get past this issue: the huge mistake the government is making, or wants to make—hopefully this Senate will not pass this measure—that is, dumping anybody under the age of 30, subject to some exclusions which I will get to in a minute, onto 'nil payment'. It is a really cute term: 'Newstart nil payment'. It means people will still be subject to the rules of Newstart, but they will not get any payment for six months, and then they will go on to Work for the Dole, and then they will go back on to 'nil payment' again. I ask anybody how they could survive for six months on nil payment.

Job seekers will still have to apply for 40 jobs. I know that there has been speculation again in the media today—and Senator Abetz might want to clarify this in his contribution to this debate—that the coalition are rethinking that requirement to apply for 40 jobs. They have actually realised that it is totally unrealistic to require people to find 40 jobs to apply for, and they have realised just what that meant for the community. They misread that. It showed a clear lack of understanding about the sorts of jobs that are out there, about how people apply for jobs, and about what that requirement would actually mean. I keep saying this: they either get it, and they are just being indescribably, outrageously mean and cruel to people under 30, by subjecting them to no income support; or else they are bad policy-makers.

Even if they were just looking at this particular measure, that measure in itself is terrible enough. But then we look at this measure—the regulation that we are talking about—in the context of forcing people off Newstart. We know that the evidence shows that when you are subjected to living in poverty—and in this instance they will have no visible means of support—it becomes yet another barrier to employment. Living in poverty means they may not be able to remain in accommodation; they are likely to get sick because they can't eat—their diet will be inadequate, to say the least; they will be in quite vulnerable circumstances; and it will definitely affect their mental health. They may then, for example, miss applying for 40 jobs, or make some other mistake in their participation—living on nothing is, very clearly, going to affect their ability to participate. And then how will they be able to demonstrate that it does 'not directly prevent the person from meeting the requirement'—to participate—'that was the subject of the failure'? In this instance, that means that they will be put on a no-income support period for even longer. That is just one interaction that I think will have some significant problems. There are also issues around caring, and around single parents being able to find work, now that more of them have been dumped off Parenting Payment onto Newstart. This also affects Parenting Payment obligations. We are subjecting job seekers to even greater problems and barriers to finding work.

This is clearly about penalising people. It is not about helping them into work. Again, the cute explanation in the statement of compatibility with human rights for this particular measure talks about article 6 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and recognises the right to work. This includes the right to the opportunity to gain a living by work which a person fully chooses or accepts and is considered an inherent part of human dignity. Then it seeks to justify this by the determination:

… encourages participation payment recipients to engage with their right to work by incentivising those people to actively participate in statutory requirements and mechanisms designed to encourage them to obtain work.

What a lot of nonsense! If I was not in this place I would probably be using more creative language, because this is a pack of nonsense. What an absurd attempt to justify being cruel to job seekers by saying it is 'incentivising those people to actively participate in statutory requirements'. It is a load of codswallop. This is nothing short of the government's continued campaign of harsh, cruel, blaming and demonising treatment of job seekers who want to find work. They face many barriers to work, but they want to find work. We should not be demonising people. We should be helping and truly incentivising people. This is not incentivising. This is cruel and harsh treatment as part of the government's extended campaign to demonise people who are genuinely trying to find work. We will be supporting the disallowance and not supporting this regulatory change.