Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

The Social Security Legislation Amendment (Further Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2015 seeks to amend the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 to support measures that the coalition government announced in its 2015-16 budget. The bill contains five measures which the government says will improve job seeker compliance with participation obligations: firstly, remove the possibility of waiver of the eight-week nonpayment period imposed on job seekers who refuse a job offer; secondly, provide for job seekers who fail, without a reasonable excuse, to enter into an employment pathway plan to have their payments suspended immediately and for the suspension to continue until they enter into a plan, with no back payment for the period in which they fail to comply; thirdly, provide for job seekers who fail, without reasonable excuse, to attend all required appointments to have their payments suspended immediately until such time as they attend a rescheduled appointment, with no back payment for the period in which they failed to attend the appointment; fourthly, provide for job seekers who act in an inappropriate manner to such an extent that the purpose of a required appointment is not met to have their payments suspended immediately and not reinstated until such time as they attend a scheduled appointment and conduct themselves in an appropriate manner, with no back payment for the period of the suspension; and, fifthly, provide for job seekers who fail, without reasonable excuse, to undertake adequate job search efforts—which are to be specified in a legislative instrument—to have their payments suspended immediately, the suspension to continue until they meet their job search requirements. In this case, the job seeker will be back-paid when the suspension period is ended.

Labor will support some of the proposed measures in this bill that more closely align the date of reasonable penalties and suspensions with the date of noncompliance, but Labor will not support punitive measures which will put vulnerable people at risk, and we will never support measures that undermine the capacity of Australians to participate in meaningful work. It is in this area that the coalition has a record of vindictiveness towards job seekers. Labor will always fight to protect job seekers from unfair attacks on them from those opposite. This is what we did last year when we opposed the government's proposal for job seekers who are under 30 and on Newstart to go without any payment at all for six months. We did it again when this government tried just last month to get the Senate to agree to leave job seekers with nothing to live on for one month. Labor opposes having job seekers live with no support payments for long periods of time. Unlike those opposite, we understand the consequences of having no money to live on. We also fought the government's ridiculous attack on job seekers when it tried to force job seekers to apply for 40 jobs per month. In that case, there was clear evidence that it would create a large and unnecessary administrative burden on businesses and, at the end of the day, achieve nothing. Labor stood up for vulnerable job seekers when the government sought to change the definition of what constitutes a reasonable excuse for job seekers who are not meeting their obligations. Labor has a proud record of standing up for the basic rights of the unemployed.

As I have said previously, there are a number of measures in the bill which Labor will support because there is clear evidence that they will lead to better employment outcomes for job seekers whilst ensuring adequate support: namely, Labor will support the proposed measures in this bill that more closely align the dates of suspensions and penalties with the actual date of noncompliance—that is, job seekers will become aware sooner of their noncompliance and will be in a position to respond to it much faster. The Social Security Legislation Amendment (Stronger Penalties for Serious Failures) Bill 2014 legislated the 'no show, no pay' principle to provide a stronger incentive for job seekers to attend their appointments. Labor supported the bill on the basis that we were able to protect the right of job seekers to review decisions in which payments were suspended. It is again worth noting that this is a right that the Abbott government sought to remove. Labor acknowledges that a more immediate and apparent connection between a breach of a job search requirement and any penalty or suspension that is a result of a fair process is a better outcome for the job seeker than a penalty or suspension applied much further down the track.

I note that the former assistant minister, in his second reading speech, advised that the less punitive measure, as supported in the past, has been effective in ensuring job seekers are continuing to engage and get support designed to assist them into work. As a result, the average payment suspension duration fell from 5.2 business days in September 2014 to 3.1 in March 2015. This is also a win for the broader community, as it means more Australians are engaged in looking for work. It is a benefit for job seekers because it means they are spending less time without the support that they need. These measures also appear to have increased the engagement of job seekers, with the former assistant minister advising that over 90 per cent of job seekers attended a rescheduled appointment after missing their initial appointment, compared to 65 per cent in 2013-14. It is for these reasons that Labor will seek to support the measures in this bill that will ensure that a timely suspension or penalty is most effective and will encourage job seekers to re-engage more quickly.

Similarly, Labor will support measures in the bill requiring the imposition of more immediate penalties when a job seeker fails to undertake adequate job search efforts. Currently it can take many weeks after a noncompliance before a penalty is applied. This bill will allow payment to be suspended immediately when a job seeker fails to undertake adequate job search efforts without a reasonable excuse

This will again encourage job seekers to re-engage more quickly and will also result in immediate and full back pay. Again, with the safeguard that a job seeker is able to provide a reasonable excuse for their conduct and with a timely and adequate notification of a breach, this amendment will support job seekers and the broader community.

However, this is where Labor's support for the bill ends. I turn to one of the smaller—but no less significant—amendments in this bill relating to what is known as a jobs plan. The government is proposing that a recipient of Newstart or another relevant payment will be financially penalised if they refuse to sign their job plan at their first employment service provider appointment. Currently the system only allow participants to be financially penalised by an employment service provider for failing to agree to their job plan after the second refusal to sign. Such a penalty can be imposed until a job seeker does enter into a job plan.

It does not appear unreasonable to allow a job seeker to refuse immediately to sign and agree to a job plan. A job plan can require a person to make significant changes to their daily routines for the period that the job plan is in place. The current provisions are adequate and appropriate, and the government has provided no real evidence as to why this measure should be supported. A job plan clearly sets out the mutual obligations that a job seeker and a service provider must both meet. It would therefore promote greater engagement with a job seeker to allow them time to review and reconsider their obligations under a job plan, rather than requiring immediate agreement. It is difficult to conceive of any other transaction where a person is required to agree immediately to a set of obligations without having at least a reasonable time to consider them and the impact they may have on their daily routine. The current system provides job seekers with the right to take their job plan home and review it carefully before being required to sign it.

The current system also provides job seekers with protections from employment service providers who may be seeking to impose obligations that are inappropriate or wrong. Unfortunately, with the introduction of the coalition's jobactive system, this appears to be becoming an all too frequent occurrence. An employment advocate recently reported that a job seeker aged 55 was directed by their provider to undertake work for the dole. In fact, the jobactive guidelines make it clear that job seekers aged 50 to 59 cannot be required to do mandatory work for the dole. Similarly, a constituent as the sole carer of two children—one with a disability—meeting her activity requirements by working casual jobs was told by her provider that she would lose her payment if she did not agree to undertake work for the dole, despite being exempt from these obligations.

Similarly, Labor has significant concerns with the government's move to introduce a power to enable the secretary to suspend a job seeker's payment if the secretary determines that a job seeker acts in an inappropriate manner during an appointment. The government asserts that employment service providers are reporting that job seekers are not behaving appropriately at their appointments. However, there seems to be no concrete evidence of how widespread this behaviour is. For this purpose the legislation appears to be creating a new term—inappropriate behaviour—which currently is not defined and which would be determined in a legislative instrument made by the secretary. Currently, department guidelines give some indication as to what behaving inappropriately might mean, including failing to behave according to commonly expected standards, not following reasonable instructions or being uncooperative. Given the not uncommon report that some job seekers in the jobactive program are being given incorrect advice and are being threatened with payment penalties for refusing to undertake activities despite not being required to, it would seem that there would be many occasions where it would be entirely justifiable for a job seeker to be uncooperative. When there are people within the system acting well outside of the guidelines to the detriment of job seekers, it may not be helpful to provide them with an even bigger stick.

I turn to Labor's biggest concern about this bill: the measure in the bill that seeks to reverse changes Labor made during its term of government, where it improved the former Howard government's measure to ensure that job seekers who suffered a penalty for failing to accept suitable work were encouraged to re-engage in seeking employment and/or training. Under the current job seeker compliance provision in the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999, job seekers receiving a participation payment—for example, Newstart, youth allowance or parenting payment—may incur an eight-week non-payment penalty for failing to accept suitable work. This non-payment penalty may be waived if the job seeker agrees to re-engage and complete extra activity requirements. The legislation also currently provides that the non-payment period may also be waived if the job seeker would be in serious financial hardship if this non-payment period were not ended. These waiver provisions are important because they encourage job seekers to re-engage in the process after noncompliance by allowing the non-payment period to be ended if that job seeker re-engages with their participation obligations.

This bill is the coalition's second attempt to make changes so that job seekers who incur an eight-week non-payment penalty for refusing suitable work will no longer be able to have their penalty waived. Labor opposed that provision previously and we oppose it again. It means that job seekers who have their payment cut for eight weeks would not be able to re-engage at all during the eight-week non-payment period and not be subject to any connection requirements during this period. Surely it would be a better outcome to have job seekers doing more intense job search activities and actively looking for work rather than not doing anything; but apparently not, according to this government.

Labor also believes that an eight-week penalty period is severe and will result in financial hardship. The former assistant minister, in his second reading speech, indicated that the department in the 2013-14 financial year waived 78 per cent of those receiving eight-week penalties for refusing to accept a suitable job. That means that 78 per cent of job seekers are re-engaging in the process of finding sustainable work. Is this not exactly what we want them to do? Why would we prefer to have someone have no payment for eight weeks rather than have that job seeker more engaged?

Labor wants to see every Australian who is capable of work in a decent, safe and sustainable job, and we want the government to provide the support that unemployed Australians need to find work. That is why we support the elements in this bill that show clear evidence of increasing the chances of job seekers to find work and that increase the support they can access in that process. While supporting the second reading of the bill, Labor will move committee amendments to remove the objectionable measures in this bill to which I have referred. Should these amendments not be agreed to, we will oppose the bill at the third reading.

It is about time that the coalition stopped vilifying job seekers in this country. It is about time the coalition stopped targeting job seekers for penal provisions that do nothing to help those job seekers find work in what is a very difficult situation for many job seekers around the country to actually find work. These are provisions that would leave people absolutely impoverished—absolutely impoverished! My problem, and the Labor Party's problem, is when people have never experienced impoverishment. Many in this chamber have never had to struggle to put food on the table. Many in the government have never been unemployed. So simply to target job seekers—to vilify them, to treat them as second-class citizens and to treat them as people who need penal provisions applied against them consistently and even more thoroughly every time the coalition comes to power—demonstrates a lack of understanding of the problems that job seekers face. It shows a complete misunderstanding of how difficult it is to find a job for many Australian citizens. It demonstrates a lack of care towards our fellow Australians, which Labor finds objectionable and reprehensible.

We should stop vilifying people who are down on their luck, people who may have mental health conditions, people who may be in regions where there are no jobs available and people who may have physical disabilities in accessing jobs. What we do continually under this government is simply seek to provide more and more penal provisions, and to attack and vilify these people.

In the DHS portfolio, the only time you hear the minister talk in the public arena is when they have attacked more people, to stop them getting benefits. There has to be a balance in terms of caring for people who are down on their luck—the poorest people in our community; the people who need support to get a helping hand to ensure that they can get a fair go in the future.

To simply say to people, 'We are introducing legislation that will mean you won't be getting any support from government for up to eight weeks,' is just unacceptable. No-one, even in this Senate, would not feel the effect of eight weeks without income. We would survive, but many struggling Australians would not. So this is a bill that is penal in its nature and a bill that typifies the approach of the coalition against unemployed people in this country. It shows that nothing has changed under the new leadership of this government from that which prevailed under the Abbott leadership.