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

I move Greens amendment (1) on sheet 8260:

(1) Schedule 15, item 1, page 209 (after line 14), after section 42AS, insert:

Division 3AB—Compliance with participation payment obligations: review

42AT Independent review of the participation payment obligations compliance framework

  (1) No later than 6 months after the commencement of this section, the Minister must cause an independent review to be undertaken by an eminent person with expertise in social services or employments services of the operation of Divisions 3AA and 3A of Part 3 of this Act and instruments made for the purposes of those Divisions.

  (2) The review must:

  (a) assess the effectiveness of those laws in enabling people to undertake activities or take action to gain employment; and

  (b) assess whether any provisions of those laws should be amended or repealed to increase the effectiveness of those laws in enabling people to undertake activities or take action to gain employment; and

  (c) consider any other matters specified by the Minister.

  (3) Before completing the review, the person undertaking the review must be satisfied that any consultation has been undertaken:

  (a) that is considered by the person to be appropriate; and

  (b) that is reasonably practicable to undertake; and

  (c) that drew on the knowledge of persons having expertise in fields relevant to the operation of the participation payment obligations compliance framework; and

  (d) that ensured that persons affected by the operation of the participation payment obligations compliance framework, and any other interested members of the public, had an adequate opportunity to comment on its operation.

  (4) The review must be completed, and a report of the review must be prepared, before the end of 12 months after the commencement of this section.

  (5) The person undertaking the review must give the report of the review to the Minister.

  (6) The Minister must cause a copy of the report to be tabled in each House of Parliament within 15 sitting days of receiving it.

42AU Independent annual reviews of the participation payment obligations compliance framework

  (1) The Minister must cause annual independent reviews to be undertaken of the operation of Divisions 3AA and 3A of Part 3 of this Act and instruments made for the purposes of those Divisions.

  (2) An annual review must be undertaken by an eminent person with expertise in social services or employment services.

  (3) An annual review must assess the matters mentioned in subsection 42AT(2) and any other matters specified by the Minister.

  (4) A person undertaking an annual review must be satisfied, before completing the review, that consultation of the kind mentioned in subsection 42AT(3) has been undertaken in relation to the review.

  (5) An annual review must be completed, and a report of the review must be prepared, before the end of 24 months after the commencement of this section, and before the end of each subsequent 12 month period.

  (6) A person undertaking an annual review must give a report of the review to the Minister.

  (7) The Minister must cause a copy of the report to be tabled in each House of Parliament within 15 sitting days of receiving it.

This would amend item 1 of schedule 15 and provides for a review. I'm aware of the government's comments on review in 18 months of the legislation, and I want to come back to that, but this would be a quite detailed process. In relation to the compliance focused amendments of schedule 15, as you can see, there's a detailed outline of an independent review of the participation payment obligations compliance framework. That's one part of the amendment. The second part relates to independent annual reviews of the participation payment obligations compliance framework. Again, it goes into quite a bit of detail about how that independent review would be undertaken. Again, I touched on this last night, and I also talked about it in my second reading contribution in December. We also had a second reading amendment about it.

We're deeply concerned that these changes have been brought in before a full review of the compliance framework was completed. We agree with the government that the compliance process at the moment is outdated. It's also very punitive and it's not producing the results that are effective in terms of helping people to find work. We believe that, in setting up this process and changing the compliance framework—and I think there is pretty universal agreement that we do need to change the compliance framework—we didn't undertake that full independent review. So we thought it was really important, given that that wasn't done. Even though we had a second reading amendment about it being done, that wasn't going to happen before the government brought on their legislation. That's why we feel very strongly that there needs to be an independent review carried out of the operation of the framework, and we also believe it's important that there are more independent annual reviews.

That's the outline of this particular set of amendments on sheet 8260. The government articulated and the minister articulated again yesterday some aspects around the review. I'd like to ask some more detailed questions about the nature of that review and whether the government is prepared to put anything more formal to the committee about how the review is going to be carried out, whether it is going to be independent and on what basis that review will be undertaken.

The CHAIR: Just before we go on, may I remind the committee that, last year when this bill was under consideration, the committee agreed to incorporate into Hansard the statement of reasons accompanying the requests.