Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I am sure it is self-evident to everyone here that public policy should constantly be checked and improved where it can be. Change in itself is not a bad thing, and reform is often a good thing. When it comes to getting people back into work in this country, we should be constantly looking for ways to improve the situation, to improve their lot and get them back into work. Regrettably the unemployment rate in this country is stubbornly persistent. Seasonally adjusted, the current Australian unemployment rate still sits at 6.2 per cent, and it is somewhat higher than that in Tasmania at 6.4 per cent. As high as those figures are, the real figure is undoubtedly much higher. Because of the way we measure the unemployed rate in this country, in essence if someone works at all, even an hour a week, they are not recorded as being unemployed and they are certainly not recorded as being underemployed. I have heard it said that the real unemployment rate might even be double the reported unemployment rate, and the underemployment rate might be double that again. If you start to add that up, a quarter of the work force could be either effectively unemployed or genuinely underemployed. So we do need good public policy to create more jobs and to get these people into jobs or into more work. This is especially the case in Tasmania, where the unemployment rate is higher and in particular the youth unemployment rate is higher. Nationally the youth unemployment rate sits at about 12.2 per cent, but it is 17 per cent in Tasmania, according to the official figures. According to community organisations in south-east Tasmania, around the Hobart area, it sits at almost 20 per cent—one in five young people in southern Tasmania are unemployed. That is not good enough.

I want to put a human face to those statistics. Too often in this place we talk about grand public policy and big reforms and big money and big dollars. I remind honourable members that we should always be putting a human face to these conversations. Every one of these people is a real human being. Some of them are struggling mightily against the odds and, to their great credit, are often achieving. I will give some cases of people who are not being well served by the current arrangement and will find things much more difficult if this Social Security Legislation Amendment (Further Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2015 is to become law.

The first example is a 58-year-old female constituent of mine who is on Newstart. She simply does not understand how to apply for jobs online, and the job service provider has not taken the time to explain it to her. Even if the job service provider were to explain it to her, she could not apply for jobs at home anyway because her internet has been cut off because she cannot afford to pay for it. That brings me to the point that, according to ACOSS, Newstart currently is about $280 a fortnight below the poverty line. If we want to help these people, if we want to help this 58-year-old woman from my part of the world, a good way to start would be to increase Newstart to a level that allows her to live a better life and to have the resources to actually get a job—to have the internet on at home. This woman, to her credit, is doing volunteer work at the botanical gardens, but that is only nine hours per week as opposed to the required 15 hours. She has applied for volunteer work with the Salvos, but she simply cannot get the 15 hours a week that she is required to achieve. The very sad footnote to this particular story is that this woman's adult child is disabled and, because of the obligations that are already on her before this bill becomes law, she simply does not have enough time to spend with her disabled child and cannot do the things that her disabled child desperately wants to do, like going camping, because of the requirements that are already on her.

Another human face of the current unemployment situation in this country is a 25-year-old Iranian woman with limited English. She does not understand the changes that were made in July and has been repeatedly cut off from her payments. The issue for this woman is that she keeps reporting late, but no-one has bothered to get a translator to explain this to her. She thinks that her payment rates just vary and that is just the way things are. She has been underpaid and no-one has helped her out. We are talking here about an Iranian woman with limited English. The Multicultural Council of Tasmania has raised with me that they are getting a number of complaints with regard to the new requirements, as people not only do not understand them but also do not have the English or computer skills to comply with them.

Another example, another human face, is a 26-year-old female constituent who is enrolled in a two-year fast-track nursing degree that must be done full time. Because she is doing it as a second degree she is not eligible for youth allowance, so she is on Newstart. She was told, until we remedied it, that she had to drop her full-time degree—the pathway to becoming a nurse and getting a great job—so that she could meet the Work for the Dole requirements. I am pleased to report that in this particular case my office raised the matter with the department and her situation was eventually remedied. But what about the people who do not have the wherewithal to get their situation remedied or to talk to the very good staff that I have? These people fall through the cracks.

Another example, another human face to these figures, is a 63-year-old man who is expected to apply for 10 jobs a week. That is 40 a month, but in the last four years he has only ever had seven replies to his applications. He recently did receive a reply thanking him for his application but saying he was unsuccessful as they had received over 300 applications.

These are the human faces of the current situation, and it is a very sad collection of human faces. Will this bill remedy things? Regrettably, it will not. These are not malingerers or bludgers. These are not people who are trying to rort the system. These human faces, these individuals I have described, do not deserve additional legislation that could, at best, be described as punitive—and that is how I would start to describe this bill—or could even be described as vindictive. The underlying philosophical base or foundation for this bill is an assumption that most job seekers are out there trying to rort the system. The reality, of course, is that most job seekers desperately want a job and will do everything in their power to comply with the government's existing requirements and new requirements, but they cannot always do it.

This bill has a number of problems that will just make things worse. For example, people will be forced to sign up to a job plan without any opportunity to discuss or negotiate it, and if they do not agree with the job plan they will be penalised. That cannot be fair. The penalties for what is described as 'inappropriate behaviour' will disproportionately target people with behavioural problems or mental health problems. If you do not show up for an interview you will not get paid. So if you are asked to attend a meeting but have something in your personal life that prevents you attending that meeting you will not get paid. Genuine reasons—such as being physically or mentally unwell, having childcare issues or other equally valid reasons—would not be deemed as valid reasons.

We need a better approach to unemployment and underemployment in this country. We are not going to solve it by putting in place increasingly punitive and even vindictive legislative requirements—requirements that basically take money off the unemployed at the first excuse, and arrangements that punish people unfairly. Most of these people desperately want a job. Some of them have very difficult lives. Some of them have complex lives. Some of them are looking after other people—looking after a disabled child, in that example I gave. We need a better approach to helping these people.

For a start, we could increase Newstart. I make the point, again, that ACOSS has found that the current rate of Newstart is $280 per fortnight below the poverty line. When you are paying people that little amount of money—those few dollars—they are not being given the circumstances to lift themselves up out of underemployment and unemployment.

We need better help for the young. I have said that youth unemployment in south-east Tasmania is almost 20 per cent. What are we doing to help them? We are doing less and less to help the very young. In fact, we say that if you are under 22 years of age and your parent or parents have a modest wage you cannot even access Centrelink benefits. That is not good enough.

We need better help for the aged, for older unemployed people. There are a whole range of things that the previous government could have done to deal with the ageism that exists. It is next to impossible for someone over the age of 50 to get a job, and I am sure there are many things that we could do in this place to make it easier. For a start, there should be a cabinet-level minister for older Australians, and there are a whole lot of other ideas that could be implemented to improve the circumstances for older unemployed people.

We need to stop job-killing policies. I spoke in this place just yesterday about the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 that was debated in the House of Representatives yesterday. It is a so-called reform by this government that will kill 2,000 jobs nationally, including 230 jobs in Tasmania. There are 230 jobs in Tasmania that will go as a direct result of the shipping bill that was debated by this House yesterday. This government and the previous government between them axed 198 workers at the CSIRO in Tasmania. This government has axed dozens of jobs at the Australian Antarctic Division in and around Hobart on account of the so-called efficiency dividends that they have had to implement. The University of Tasmania has lost positions because, like all universities around the country, it has had to deal with $4 billion in underfunding on account of decisions of the previous Labor government. Thank heavens deregulation is not going to go ahead, because that would cost the tertiary sector another $5 billion. The now-famous Cadbury money keeps coming up in this place. There was $16 million that was identified as desperately needed for the City of Glenorchy area because that disadvantaged area needs economic stimulus. That has been pulled by this government—with the support of the Labor Party, I add. In regard to Defence contracts, Hobart has a wonderful Defence manufacturing precinct, but the previous government and this government have sent virtually no work there.

In regard to arts funding, Tasmania has a wonderful arts sector and, in fact, is on the cusp of an arts led economic revival. Yet, in the 2014 budget, the Australia Council nationally lost $28.3 million over four years. In this budget the Australia Council has had to implement an efficiency saving of $7.3 million, not to mention the $105 million that has been cut from the Australia Council budget to set up the slush fund, the National Program for Excellence in the Arts. Tasmania has almost entirely small and middle sized arts bodies. All of them—in fact, every arts body in Tasmania with the exception of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra—will bear the brunt of these cuts to the arts sector.

I have already spoken about the shipping bill, which was debated in this place yesterday, shamefully. That will cost another 230 jobs in Tasmania. It will probably cost $100 million of investment by SeaRoad, who have already signalled that they are unlikely to go ahead with the replacement of two vessels because of the bill that was debated in this place yesterday.

We need to stop treating the unemployed as bludgers. We need to understand that most of them, the overwhelming majority of them, desperately want work, and we need to put in place policies that will create that work. We need to stop having policies that are killed jobs, particularly in Tasmania. We have a population of 500,000 people, which is as big as a city on the mainland. When you take a couple of hundred jobs out of a place like Tasmania it hurts, and it is not good enough to then turn around to the newly unemployed and have a vindictive policy against them.

In my last few seconds I will just say that the role of government is to prevent disadvantage and to help the disadvantaged. A vindictive, punitive bill like this does not achieve that. (Time expired)

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