Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to thank the many constituents from Melbourne's west who have contacted me in recent weeks about the Turnbull government's proposed trial of the mandatory drug testing of social security recipients. I want to make it clear to everyone who has contacted me that Labor opposes this immoral, misguided and politically motivated trial.

Were the government to deny social security support to individuals who are suffering from substance addiction and, as a result, failed a drug test, the consequences would be borne by the whole community. Vulnerable Australians would be driven to poverty and crime as a result of this trial. Indeed, the program would quickly become an engine for sharply increasing homelessness in our community. And it wouldn't work. As the Royal Australian College of Physicians and the Australasian Chapter of Addiction Medicine have stated, 'These measures are not based on evidence of what works, either at a policy or a clinical level.' Similar drug testing programs have been tried and abandoned in the United Kingdom and in Canada. Indeed, a 2015 drug testing program for welfare recipients in New Zealand found that only 22 of 8,001 participants tested returned a positive result for illicit drug use. A blunt-force approach of this kind would also put extra pressure on an already stretched drug addiction treatment system, adding more people to already lengthy queues for treatment and forcing those intrinsically motivated people that bring themselves to treatment, who stand the best chance of successful treatment, to wait even longer.

A government that was serious about helping people suffering from substance abuse and about protecting the broader community would listen to expert health advice and prioritise its resources on treatment and community policing. As the Australian Medical Association said:

… the AMA considers these measures to be mean and stigmatising. The AMA considers substance dependence to be a serious health problem, one that is associated with high rates of disability and mortality. The AMA firmly believes that those affected should be treated in the same way as other patients with serious health conditions, including access to treatment and supports to recovery.

Unfortunately, this trial seems to reflect the Turnbull government's attitude to people suffering from addiction—that they can simply be punished into good health. The same budget that announced these drug-testing trials also included proposals from the government to deny disability support payments to people whose disability stems from substance addiction—again, no additional investment in treatment or policing; just an unthinking bureaucratic guillotine on the support these people need to survive, tearing away the modest financial platform that people suffering from addiction need before they can even try to seek medical assistance. Thankfully, as a result of a disallowance motion moved by Labor in the Senate, around 450 vulnerable people will not have the disability benefit stripped because they have a disability resulting from substance abuse. I thank everyone in Melbourne's west who has written to me for their advocacy on this important issue, and I can assure them that Labor will not be a party to this government's attempts to demonise those suffering from addiction.