Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

At the outset of my contribution in the debate, and my contribution in it, I'd just like to acknowledge the work of Senator Siewert over many years in this area of Newstart, disability, advocating for some of the least advantaged Australians in our society, and she's been consistent, passionate and vehement about that.

I do detect a sort of more political ploy at play here. If we go back through the work of this parliament in respect of JobKeeper and jobseeker, it was the Labor Party's work in the parliament that provided the amendments which allowed the social services minister to provide support to others who'd been excluded from JobKeeper, jobseeker and other appropriate social security payments with the stroke of a pen. That spirit of unity that we started out on in this pandemic appears to have evaporated. But it is true that the social services minister can ameliorate some of the unintended outcomes in this particular set of circumstances, unprecedented circumstances, which we face.

This motion and the Greens' bill would do nothing to ensure that Australian workers and businesses get the support they need, because, as every senator knows, we can't appropriate finance in this chamber. Everybody knows that we can't appropriate finance in this chamber. So what we really need to do is keep focusing on the areas of concern, and the areas of concern are myriad. There are a number of really important sectors where people are doing it extremely tough. One of those areas, which my colleague Senator Pratt touched on, is dnata.

In a world where Qantas is getting subsidies to run flights, Qantas is getting $75 million to do international relocations, Virgin is getting $70-odd million to do flights and subsidies and they are also getting JobKeeper there are 5,400 workers in the same sector getting zero. I've heard the passionate stories of workers in that sector in South Australia in recent times. One woman's story is tragic but quite common in this sector. Her husband had been made redundant at Christmas and she had taken increased hours to fill that gap in the family income. Then along came the pandemic and the shutdown of dnata. They were promised jobseeker and they were on jobseeker, but with the stroke of a pen they were off jobseeker. Now they are five months into having no income.

It is not easy to qualify for jobseeker. It's fine for people to say, 'You can go on jobseeker.' I challenge anybody to try to get on it. You virtually have to prove destitution. You have to have no savings or anything. It is not just the case that, if you cannot get JobKeeper, you can get jobseeker. Nothing can be further from the truth.

The real intent and good stuff in JobKeeper is connection with an employer. Anybody who knows anything about the airline industry would realise that there are over 60 million domestic passenger flights a year. Up until March there were about 59 million of them and then they almost completely stopped. If you look at the air traffic movement indicator in Australia, you'll see passenger activity up and down the Pilbara and the rest of the place is almost silent. If you really want to kickstart the economy again and snap back, bounce back or even crawl back, you have to keep these people connected with their employer. If you don't do that, they have to go somewhere else or do something else to survive and you are going to incur more economic demise. We understand this. We'll continually point to the gaps and point to the fact that the social services minister could ameliorate this damage.

I listened to the ABC on the way home last time I left this place. The stuff in Bendigo and in the university sector in regional towns is appalling. If you take 400 jobs out of Bendigo, Shepparton or the like, that will be catastrophic to those regional communities. The philosophical position this government has taken to the university sector is quite mystifying. Over the 29 years of uninterrupted economic growth you can point to the education sector, the intake of international students and the fact that more Australians are getting well-trained, experience and degrees in regional areas, whereas before there were low-paid jobs and low outcomes in terms of productivity. With the education sector in regional Australia going well, the whole area booms. We're taking 400 jobs out of those sectors. It's quite mystifying.

You get conservative commentators say: 'I don't know what has happened to the Public Service. There is no accountability anymore.' These are conservative commentators. Someone managed to give advice that was catastrophically wrong. Senator Cormann bats up every day and keeps putting on a fine front and all the rest of it, but it was catastrophic advice they were given. They have the opportunity to fine-tune this excellent program—and JobKeeper is an excellent program. I have seen firsthand it work in a small business and it has done exactly what the government wanted it to do. It did have a few warts in that it overpaid a few people—it gave people who only ever worked one Sunday, basically $750—but that will wash out. They have an opportunity to fine-tune it.

Someone made a catastrophic recommendation and has paid no penalty. No-one has taken the hit for that. No-one has said, 'Look, I got that so wrong that I think I'd better tender my resignation.' That used to be how the Public Service worked. I don't think anybody has ever made such a historically large blunder, and apparently it was just at the upper end of estimates, and apparently the fact that people put '1,500 employees' on a taxation form was not checked. The Taxation Office, I must say, has been extremely diligent in checking every detail of my tax return for every year that I've put one in, and I've never ever found them not to be entirely correct. But, in this circumstance, I really can't explain it.

But it's becoming exceedingly clear: you can use this program, as large as it is, to get better economic outcomes. If you were to let it go till September and turn off the tap, and if you were to try to reduce the people on jobseeker to half of their current income in September, that is not going to have a very sensible economic outcome, because, for once, people on jobseeker can actually afford to buy some clothes and can probably afford to get their affairs in order and get into shape so they can present for a job interview and maybe even look forward to engaging in some useful work. But we do know this: once people are on jobseeker, if it gets to 12 months or longer or if they are in an older demographic, it's extraordinarily difficult to move them off it.

We know that, for lots of people who've been thrown on the scrap heap because of the pandemic—through no fault of this government; I accept that—you're going to have to have a new set of lenses on the solutions. With a properly skilled task force from Treasury looking at this, there is so much work that could be done to get people back to normality. It would tie 4,000 or 5,000 dnata workers to their employer, giving that company the capacity to bounce back, because if, as our Premier in South Australia says, we have no border conflict on 20 July, then I expect Adelaide Airport will go back to where it was, which is flights every hour or every half an hour. I would expect those cargo terminals to be booming and loading and I would expect those people who are currently starving because they have no income and are living off whatever savings they have and off support from family and friends to go back into the workforce. You've got to keep that workforce loyal and tied to the employer, and the social services minister and this chamber should allow the disallowance on that dnata decision. It should be done.

We should be looking at all the regional employment in universities. We should be looking very carefully at the economic impact on those regional communities. If you take 400 jobs out of any regional community, it will be catastrophic. You will set that town back decades. It will not bounce back. It won't snap back. In fact, it'll be crawling back for decades. If you have the wherewithal to do it, you should be targeting, very selectively, the greatest economic return and the greatest compassion. Let's be fairly clearly about this: no-one in the workforce is at fault here. The pandemic has happened. The government has risen to the challenge, but it hasn't been selective, targeted and nimble enough to respond to all of the things that are pointed out by the various groups in this place. The opposition is not bereft of ideas, nor are the Australian Greens. When there is some articulated research policy position, it should be considered by the other side. Let's face it, if it's a good decision, claim the victory and do it. Just move on. Get people back onto JobKeeper when they've been unfairly rubbed out. Look at the university sector and ensure there's no detriment.

Look at those people—and I know a few people who were on Newstart, which is now jobseeker—who lives have all of a sudden been transformed. Those people now have new-found confidence because the increase in the supplement they got has lifted them immensely. I fully expect lots of those people will go out and be able to get employment, because what it takes is a bit of pump priming. It doesn't take robodebt. It doesn't take cashless welfare cards. It's hope you give them. When you give them a couple of bucks over what they've had, they've got hope that they can resurrect things. I implore the other side to think carefully about all of this and put in place some of the genuine things that have been suggested.

Debate interrupted.