Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to oppose this bill. As the chamber is aware, Labor has put forward amendments tonight. As Senator Siewert has said, this bill has to be seen in a much broader context; it is not a stand-alone bill. When you look at everything the Abbott government is attempting to do to long-term job seekers under 30, you have to wonder what their real agenda is. What is the motivation for the harsh and cruel attacks on most Australians?

I want to first of all look at those under 30. We have seen the sorts of provisions that the Abbott government wants to put in place. They want to deny people access to a benefit for at least six months, which in and of itself is a harsh measure, leading people to fall back on families—if they have them—or become homeless, or who knows what. That measure in and of itself is a shocking measure and one that Labor clearly does not support. But it does not sit there on its own. It lines up with a whole lot of other harsh and cruel measures.

We have seen some very good programs slashed—programs that get young people re-engaged in work, or re-engaged in education. We know that from this month on Youth Connections is going to lose its funding. I must say that I held out hope that somehow the government would see that this is a program that you would never cut, because it has an enduring success rate of getting young people either back into education or back into school. But it seems there is no backing down from this government on Youth Connections. It will lose its funding, and a program that has a proven track record out in the community will disappear. And what do we have in its place? Work for the Dole. Work for the Dole is, firstly, very expensive and, secondly, a failed program. It does not offer the sorts of supports to young people that programs like Youth Connections do.

The other advantage of Youth Connections is that it is not even expensive to run. It is a very economical program; much more economical than Work for the Dole will be. Nevertheless, the government has just run the red pen through it without any analysis or research. They have just decided it has to go, because they think their Work for the Dole program is the one to go for. Last week at a Senate inquiry we heard evidence about another program—Reclink—which also indirectly gets people back to work.

It is not good enough to say to people who are on the margins of society or who find themselves unable to get back into work that a punishment regime is going to work. There is no research to suggest punishing people is going to work. But that is in fact what the Abbott government wants to do with this bill—abolish Youth Connections, cut funding to a program like Reclink—with its harsh regime for those under 30, saying 'You're on your own for at least six months; it could be more.' These sorts of penalties are not about mutual obligation. They are not. It does not matter how the government likes to dress it up; it is not about mutual obligation. They are going too far. It is one-sided and it is about saying to people: 'You are on your own. Government is not there to support you.' It is a 'lifters and leaners' agenda. The government has said that themselves.

We have heard some really shocking comments from the Abbott government; that young people are 'sitting at home on the couch, eating Twisties and playing on the Xbox'. For goodness sake! That brush tarnishes all young people. And where is the evidence for it? There is none. It is just a throwaway line, like 'lifters and leaners', like this view that people need 'a kick up the backside' to get them out the door to work. What work? Sadly, we are seeing climbing unemployment in Australia. None of us in this place wants people to be unemployed; that is our common motivation. No-one here wants to see people unemployed. But how we get people into employment differs quite markedly between Labor and the government. It seems that the Abbott government's agenda is about punishing people and about saying to people, 'You are on your own. We are here to only help those who are able to help themselves.' And it is a very narrow agenda unfortunately.

When this bill came to us, we were given a very short time frame to examine it. There was a real disincentive for us to hold public hearings. We were asked if we wanted to do a report on the submissions. Of course we did not. We want people to come before the Senate face-to-face. Again and again what we have seen is a failure by the Abbott government to recognise that there are experts out there in the community. I am not an expert on jobs—I am the first to admit that. I do not pretend to be an expert in the employment field. But there are experts out there and we can learn from them. They deal with people who are unemployed, they deal with people who are making tough life decisions every day. That is their expertise yet it seems to me the Abbott government does not want to hear from them because trying to get committees up and giving people a respectful time in which to give their evidence is not something that is at the forefront of the Abbott government's agenda.

We had very little time to examine this bill. In fact, during Senate estimates, because this legislation was not in place, the department was not able to really give us a lot of information. When we held the public hearing a couple of weeks ago we had at best a couple of hours. That does not do justice to any of the evidence that we took. The National Welfare Rights Network has years and years of expertise in this area and we have a lot to learn from them. We do not have to agree with everything they say—I am not suggesting that for one moment—but to dismiss their evidence as somehow 'on the left' or 'not worthy' is a disrespect to that service because they do have something to tell us. We gave them something like 45 minutes. Equally we gave the ACTU and the department 45 minutes each and that was the end of the time that we had. I would like to thank the staff of the committee for doing their best.

But when we time and time again are crammed and get legislation at the last minute, a lot of pressure is put on us to not have an inquiry and it is just not on. The public has a right to know. The government should be open and transparent and these matters should be well ventilated throughout the community because the people who will be the recipients of the outcomes of this legislation, if it gets through the parliament, are ordinary Australians who have a right to understand the motivation behind the legislation.

But this legislation does not sit there in and of itself. It sits in a very harsh regime, which is underpinned by 'you are on your own'. It sits in a regime that is very much a right-wing Tea Party conservative agenda. We are seeing more and more from the Abbott government this Americanisation of a whole range of issues including our social security system, and this is the start.

We are more are more in this country, under the Abbott government, taking the safety net away. We have always had that safety net in place in our country and it is what we pride ourselves on in Australia. We are a fair go country. We look out for each other and that includes having a fair and just social security system, one that has mutual obligation. I have not heard anyone in this place saying 'no mutual obligation'. Of course there has to be mutual obligation. But this is not mutual obligation. Taking away a person's right of appeal, putting very harsh penalties in place and penalising a person so that if they miss appointments they are not entitled to have back pay goes way beyond mutual obligation. It is the beginning of an attack on our social security system in a much broader context of saying, 'No, you are a leaner and therefore you are not entitled to payment.' That is clearly where we are heading with this. When you take a step back and take a long-term view of what the Abbott government is putting in place here, it is an agenda which smacks of: we are going to take the safety net away; bit by bit we are going to remove it. That is what we have seen the Abbott government do with this bill.

When Labor was in government, we did have mutual obligation and we did have penalties in place; there is no doubt about that. And there is no reason to make anything harsher on a job seeker. I could not imagine being unemployed for a very long period of time and through perhaps an accident of mine or not being able to get to an appointment suddenly being penalised. It would be completely unfair.

We are seeing now in our country, very sadly, very high rates of youth unemployment. We know from the inquiry that significant numbers of those who currently fall foul of the sorts of obligations that Labor put in place are largely young men. So it is not as if we do not know who these people are that are currently being penalised. We do know who they are. Of course, there are no prizes for guessing that overrepresented in that group are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people, who are also overrepresented in our jails and overrepresented in the unemployment numbers. Why would we then think that applying a harsher penalty to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders will somehow make things better?

This legislation is about generations of disadvantage, marginalisation and racism. It needs a better answer. It needs a much deeper understanding. Yes, have some penalties there but not of this nature, not of continuing to punish people who are already marginalised in our society. It does not make any sense and it will not get people into work because in many places there is no work. I think of Kwinana in Western Australia, which is a beachside industrial town about 40 kilometres from the CBD. It has got an appalling rate of unemployment. It is shocking. So what are we going to do? Will we go into that community and say to young people, 'It is your fault'?

The jobs are simply not there for those young people—they are just not there.

Obviously, where there are high rates of unemployment—whether it is for males of a particular age or young people—that should signal to us that we need to do something else, that we need to have more supports in place and that we need to look at what else we can do to make sure that people's self-esteem and their self worth remain in place. We know, as a society, that long-term unemployment has lots of other consequences. People start to doubt their self worth. If you are up against someone who is newly unemployed and you have been unemployed for a much longer period of time, you are probably thinking, 'Well, it's the same old same old—I won't get this job either.' And yet these are the very people the Abbott government wants to penalise. To what end? If there are not the jobs there these people will not be able to get them.

Again in my home state of Western Australia we are now seeing—with mining turning more out of the construction stage—higher rates of unemployment. That is a fact, and it is not through the fault of the job seeker. We do not suddenly in Western Australia have a whole new group of 'leaners'. We certainly do not. We have a changing labour market situation, and for a period of time—and let us hope that it is not a long period of time—we will have a higher rate of unemployment. So what are we going to do? Penalise a whole new group of people? To what end?

Are we going to have them all working for the dole? Are we going to have them all penalised with no back pay the minute that they miss an appointment? All of us in this room have missed, I am sure, significant appointments in our lifetime. I know I have. I am the first to hold my hand up and say that I have missed significant appointments, and I have certainly done it more than once. What we are saying to people like this is, 'You miss an appointment and that's it! That's it: we will fine you. You'll be penalised and not only that, we won't give you your back pay.' I have to say, as someone who has a very strong sense of natural justice, that to take someone's money away and then, when they do the right thing, get back on track and make their appointments, not to pay them that money is inherently unfair. It is really unfair to have that sort of punishment regime—to say to someone, 'Even if you fix up the missed appointment we're still going to penalise you.' It does not make any sense to me.

The other issue of concern to Labor is this longer list of what people can be penalised for and the lack of review. Our society—our democracy—is based on a belief that if you feel that a decision has gone against you that you have the right of review. That is something we should cherish. It is a strong part of our democracy and it is not something that we should take away from people—that principle that if you have been wronged, or you think you have been dealt a harsh blow, that you have a right of reply. Anyone, regardless of their political persuasion should support something like that. So we want this right of review period to remain in place. For us it sets a dangerous precedent, where people are denied their natural justice and denied their right to appeal. That is inherently unfair as well.

We have heard in this place that Aboriginal people are likely to be penalised and that people with some sort of disability will no doubt fall foul of this, because we already know that those people already fall foul of the current mutual obligations that are in place. Why would we make it harder for them? What is behind the government's motivation here? It is saying to people who are unemployed, 'You really are on your own.'

If we just look at the numbers: last year Centrelink applied more than 13,000 smaller daily no-show no-pay penalties for job seekers with known vulnerability indicators. We knew that those were job seekers who are vulnerable. That included more than 4,000 with psychiatric problems or mental illness. Here is a group with known issues that we sought to penalise last year. More than 2,000—in fact nearly 2,500—with a homelessness flag on their file were penalised. Almost 400 released from prison, almost 300 who had experienced a recent traumatic relationship breakdown and another almost 300 job seekers with cognitive or neurological impairment were penalised. These are some of the groups who, again, will fall foul of this harsh penalty regime. Why would we do that as a community? Why are we not getting underneath those issues and trying to work through what is in the best interest of these groups of people? We should be supporting them, not punishing them. Obviously, whatever we are doing currently is not particularly working with these groups of people, but we are going to make it worse.

We did see from the inquiry that giving the job service agencies the opportunity to be the first point of call when people miss appointments is having an effect. Getting that call from someone who you know and who says, 'Hey, Sue, you've missed your appointment—what happened?' is working. That is already working; it has not been in place for very long but we are just going to chop that out and say, 'No, we can't be bothered doing that. We're just going to put these penalties in place.'

I would urge the government to look at this and to really come clean on what its agenda is; to drop its Tea Party ideology and to start to give job seekers a real opportunity in Australia. The opportunity of support and proper, fair and even mutual obligation is really what we are seeking tonight. I would urge the government to support Labor's amendments.