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

I rise to continue my contribution on this particular bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015. Just to recap, I remind the Senate that the Greens are strongly opposed to this legislation. We think it demonises and seeks to punish young people who have been unable to find work, when we know that the youth unemployment rate is at its highest level it has been for a long period, probably around 13 years, and that young people do want to find work.

In fact, the government yesterday released outlines of their Transition to Work Program that seeks to help young people find work. At the same time as saying they want to put resources into helping people find work and actually try to address some of the damage that they did by getting rid of Youth Connections—they have not fully amended that damage but at least they are taking some steps in the right direction—they have this measure in place. It is counterproductive because poverty, having no income support, no means of visible support, means that young people are in fact going to face another barrier to finding work.

We know from the evidence that poverty is a barrier to finding work. Living on thin air for five weeks—because this four-week waiting period is on top of the current ordinary waiting period of one week—living on nothing will be another barrier to young people finding work.

There are also other measures in this bill that I will go to in a moment because, when I am talking about the ordinary waiting periods, the government is attempting to apply those in what are inappropriate places. We strongly disagree with this measure because there is no evidence from overseas— we found that during the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry and I went through this in my previous contribution—to show that this type of measure works. The Department of Social Services admitted that, in response to my questions during the committee inquiry. It does not work; there is no evidence. Therefore, you have to go to this ideological approach by the government, which is in line with the comments that the Prime Minister and other coalition members have made around young people being couch surfers, bludgers and some unwilling to work. That is certainly not my experience. My experience is that young people in fact do want to work. They need support and some training and assistance to find work. But when you have upwards of sometimes 1,000 young people applying for one job you know that there are issues here. This is an issue around trying to actually find jobs for young people.

I would like to go to some of the evidence that we received in the committee inquiry where Mission Australia described in detail the impacts that this proposal could have by making young people wait five weeks for income support. This is how Mission Australia described to the Senate committee some of the potential impacts:

Suppose that you are a young person and you have got work. You have felt reasonably confident, so you have got rental of some sort or you are sharing a house with someone; you are paying rent or you have your own tenancy. Then you lose your job. In that situation you are only one or two weeks pay away from disaster. And if you have to wait five weeks to get benefits then that is when there is a real risk of falling into homelessness if you do not have the back-up support of your family or somewhere else to go and stay. That is the same for the adult population but in this case we are talking about also reducing the Newstart Allowance down to the Youth Allowance (other) level—

and I will break out of the quote to say that of course that is less—

so they are already getting a reduction in payment. That is where the risk comes in.

Submitters to the inquiry also pointed out that by providing emergency relief funding to help those affected by this program the government is demonstrating quite clearly that it understands that the policy will lead to significant financial hardship. The government is so certain of this that it has signalled to service providers that around $8.1 million in additional funding will be available to emergency relief providers to provide assistance for those impacted by this measure. What the government is saying to young people is this: 'You're expected to live on nothing. We know we're going to hurt you. You go round to emergency relief providers and try to find some sort of relief or food or a little bit of financial support if you have to pay your rent.' We know that usually those providers cannot afford to do that; they usually provide emergency relief in the form of food relief. This is unbelievable; this is ambulance-at-the-bottom-of-the-cliff thinking. Rather than helping people when they are still relatively hopeful and are still close to education or employment, this government is saying, 'No, we're going to abandon you for five weeks.'

The government is not correct in its claims that this measure is what is being used in New Zealand. The Department of Social Services do not have evidence from other countries, as I have just pointed out, despite the fact that they tried to quote, and the minister has made references to, what is happening in New Zealand. I have checked what happens in New Zealand, and I have confirmed that in fact 20 days is the exception. As I pointed out in my last contribution, even if you do end up serving the 20 days in New Zealand, you do get back pay, which the government is not proposing to do here. It is more likely that they will do five working days; that is the approach that they ordinarily take. That is what we do already. We already have the ordinary waiting period, and New Zealand does five days. My understanding of what they do in New Zealand is that they also apply the rules compassionately.

The government say they are going to do this compassionately, that it is only going to affect 70,000 to 80,000 people. They say, 'We've created all of these exemptions.' Seventy thousand to 80,000 young people is a large bulk of our youth. It is a large number of people that we are talking about. This sort of measure will have not only short-term impacts on their ability to gain work but it will also potentially have long-term impacts on their futures. The standard period in New Zealand, if I understand it correctly, can be one week and then up to two weeks, but as I understand it—and I have double-checked this—20 days in New Zealand is clearly the exception, so the government simply cannot use New Zealand as an example. If you are going to use New Zealand as an example, how about looking at the other forms of support that they have been addressing there? They also—get this—increased their income support payments, something that a number of us have been campaigning on in Australia for years! If this government are so intent on copying New Zealand, then how about, if they are serious about helping people, recognising the inadequacy of the Newstart payment and the youth allowance payment? Report after report has found that if people are on Newstart they are living in poverty, so why not also copy the income support payments measure? Notice they have not done that.

They also have not brought in their social investment framework, which is also what New Zealand has done. So New Zealand has brought in a comprehensive package. Our government have not done that; they have brought in a 'let's punish young people and make them live on thin air for five weeks at a time' package. It simply does not work. It is not going to work; it is going to punish people. That is really clear, and it is sending a really bad message to our future workforce. This is our future workforce we are talking about. It is our future workforce, and right from the beginning we are saying to them, 'We are going to take a punishing, demonising approach to you and provide another barrier for your finding work.'

Young Opportunities Australia told the committee:

Youth unemployment is at a 13-year high in Australia. Failure to acknowledge the complex and varied reasons for this fundamentally distorts the policy debate towards an individualised view of unemployment, rather than one that considers the broader social and structural reasons, such as job shortages, skills mismatch, over-qualification, increased levels of competition, geographic and socioeconomic inequity, employer prejudices and inexperience … Fifteen per cent of Australian graduates are working in jobs for which they are over-skilled within three years of graduating and 25 per cent are not using their university degrees in their employment at all, which represents 790 million hours or $15.6 billion in lost economic productivity to Australia. It is in this light that any policy addressing the youth unemployment problem must be viewed.

This policy is clearly counterproductive, as are the measures to change the age requirement for various Commonwealth payments. In fact, it will make young people exist on youth allowance for even longer, and youth allowance is even lower than the inadequate Newstart. We are also concerned about the removal of the low-income supplement, given that this is vital money that tops up people who are living in poverty.

While the government claim there will be a few exemptions to the income support waiting period, they are making women who may be subject to domestic violence wait longer for access to income support payments. They say, 'It's okay, there's four weeks if someone has been subject to domestic violence in the last four weeks.' We know from the evidence that sometimes it takes family members and women longer than four weeks to make the break, to find the necessary resources and take the necessary steps to make that break and to leave a situation where there is family violence. These are very complex issues that we are dealing with when we are talking about family and domestic violence, and to not acknowledge that in our approach to the way we provide income support is a massive failure and a flawed approach by this government. Then, of course, we have the government cutting indexation on payments that are already too low. What that means for people who are already living on substandard, inadequate payments that are forcing them to live below the poverty line—as the government does not index these payments—is that they fall even further behind. If the thresholds are not indexed, people slip further and further behind the cost of living and into poverty.

But the overwhelming measure here is this measure to force young people to live on nothing for five weeks. It is a flawed approach. It is counterproductive to the government's own initiative that they announced yesterday. We will be strongly opposing this measure. We will strongly oppose any measure the government bowl up that makes the lives of people trying to find work even harder. If they bring up another waiting period, we will again vote no to it. The government's punitive approach to those on income support is counterproductive and they need to rethink this approach.