Senate debates

Wednesday, 3 February 2016

Committees

Social Security Legislation Amendment (Further Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2015; Second Reading

5:14 pm

Photo of Doug CameronDoug 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.

5:34 pm

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

I rise—for the third time today!—to speak on a bill.

In this instance I do very much want to make a contribution to the debate on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Further Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2015. It is little over a year ago that we debated the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance Framework) Bill 2014. As I said at the time of that initial bill, rather than supporting people to find work what this is really about, once again, is keeping the compliance burden on people—demonising vulnerable people and increasing hardship. We see, yet again, the government taking an approach that seeks to demonise and vilify and, by the nature of the measures in this bill, attempt to blame those on income support and job seekers for not being able to find work. As if it is their fault that they cannot find work, when we know that the work simply is not there!

These measures are unacceptable to the Greens. We will not be supporting them. Unlike Labor, we will not seek to amend this bill, because it is not fixable! The measures in this bill will have unfair impacts on some of the most vulnerable members of our community. They will not help people to find work; they will, in fact, have a counterproductive impact on job seekers and make it even more difficult for people to find work. In fact they will plunge people into absolute poverty, with no means of support.

If you ask anybody on income support, it is already difficult enough to survive without having these extra burdens piled on them and without extra threats of being dumped off income support completely. In particular, many of the measures in this bill, if it gets the support of this chamber, will make job seekers even more subject to the whim of job service providers and now, in fact, to third-party providers. Unlike Labor, we will not be helping to facilitate, in any way with any of these measures, the government's punitive approach to job seekers. We will not be supporting this bill.

We are here again, having a go at job seekers. We in fact have a different Prime Minister this time but we have the same agenda. Here is Malcolm Turnbull pursuing the Abbott agenda that demonises job seekers. Let's not forget all those comments about people just sitting on the couch or their attempts to throw people off income support for six months at a time. This is the same agenda. The only reason that that did not get through is because this chamber held strong. The Greens, the crossbench and Labor said, 'No, we will not support those harsh measures.' And yet here we are again, with the Turnbull government pursuing policies that are counterproductive and will hurt some of the most vulnerable members in our community—attacking vulnerable people, singling them out for cruel and punitive measures. There is not one measure in this bill that is worthy of support.

There are in fact many things the government could be doing to help people on income support in our community. They could, for example, fix Centrelink. I talked for some time in the chamber last night about the problems we are seeing in this country with Centrelink and the Department of Human Services. The Senate has just passed a motion calling on the government to fix Centrelink.

People on income support struggle to get by. I have spoken on many occasions in this place about the need to increase Newstart by $50 a week. In fact I have been calling for that for a number of years. Each year, the situation for people on Newstart gets worse as they fall further and further behind the cost of living. This measure to increase Newstart is not only supported by the peak community bodies in this country but is also supported by the Business Council. They can see the sensible need for those sorts of increases. They also, I presume, look at the evidence that shows that people living in poverty find it even harder to find work. It is yet another barrier to work; hence my concern that these measures are counterproductive. Dropping people into poverty and even further entrenching poverty by dropping them completely off income support—clearly the government aims to drop as many people as possible onto nothing—will not achieve their supposed aim of trying to help job seekers into work.

Instead of helping the most vulnerable members of our community, this bill yet again takes a punitive approach which will hurt vulnerable people on income support even more. The first measure that I will talk about is the measure that suspends people on income support if they do not agree to enter into an unemployment pathway plan. I should also add that I did participate in the Senate inquiry. We had some very valuable evidence during the Senate inquiry into this bill. Some of that evidence was focused on all the measures, but it also talked about employment pathway plans and canvassed the various reasons why somebody may not in fact agree to their employment pathway plan. If they refuse to enter then their payment is suspended.

There are a number of reasons why people may not enter into an employment plan, and one of those is because a lot of service providers just cookie cutter them out. They are not addressed to a person's particular needs. 'We've done this for Fred, so we'll do it for James.' I come to this next example because it has also been used as an example for another measure in this bill. You have a service provider that has a training arm, and the service provider recommends in the employment pathway plan that the person goes for training—heavens above!—in that training organisation. What happens if that person is savvy enough to realise they are being sold a pig in a poke and says no? What happens if the service provider does not listen to the person about their employment pathway plan? Perhaps they have undertaken activities that they were suggested to undertake anyway and think that is a waste of time, preferring to do something else?

This puts too much power in the employment service provider's hands. It makes them the decision maker over that person's future. They have the capacity to drop them off income support. What do you do when faced with that? Maybe you sign up to a plan that is completely useless and that is just a fundraising process for the organisation that is referring that job seeker to the training organisation which happens to be part of their business. Once again, it is putting service providers in positions they should not be put in and also putting job seekers in positions that they should not be put in.

Job seekers deserve the right to consider a plan. They deserve the right to ask for amendments. They deserve more than simply being told to sign whatever they are given, which is what this is designed to do. They deserve to have input and to have a meaningful plan that meets their individual needs, because the evidence of what works shows that addressing somebody as an individual human being is part of how you help people find work. This particular measure will make it harder for job seekers.

This bill also has measures about inappropriate behaviour and the penalties that will apply there. I will note at the outset of my comments in this area that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights noted that this measure would limit human rights and that the statement of compatibility does not sufficiently justify the limitation for the purposes of international human rights law. This change fundamentally shifts the dynamic between the job seekers and those who are supposed to be helping them. It gives the powers to others in this situation, without appropriate safeguards. There is not enough protection for the job seekers. It reflects the mindset of a government that believes that anybody who is down on their luck should just be told what to do and suck it up. This will not help job seekers and it puts them at the mercy of the service providers.

What is the determination of 'inappropriate behaviour' that may be applied? It is a fundamental concern. The National Welfare Rights Network made a very valuable submission to this inquiry and presented valuable evidence. In their submission, they pointed out a case example, of a particular customer's complaint:

John had been seeing an employment services provider for two years with no problems but had to change providers when he was forced to find new rental accommodation after the house he was in was sold.

When John began to see a new service provider, he was frustrated by the service he received. He felt that his caseworker was forcing him to do a course that would not improve his work prospects and that some sort of work placement, or another course which builds on his existing skills would be more appropriate. He was concerned that the only reason he was being sent to the course was—

this refers back to the other point I was making—

because the course is run by the same company as the provider. When he raised his concerns with the caseworker, she became defensive and hostile. John then became upset as well and began to raise his voice. He asked to see the manager but was told that the manager was in a meeting. John told her she was incompetent and unprofessional. She replied that he had behaved inappropriately and she was making a recommendation to Centrelink that his payment be suspended and a financial penalty applied for inappropriate behaviour at an appointment.

That is just one example of what could go wrong. There is another example provided in the papers as well, and the National Welfare Rights Network make points about the potential impact of this particular measure. It is an inappropriate measure that should be rejected and not supported. We oppose it because this measure is cruel and unnecessary. It limits the discretion available and is not supported by the Welfare Rights Network and others that that made submissions to the inquiry.

One of the measures that I understand that the Labor Party is supporting is to suspend payments immediately when job seekers do not attend any appointment. This will extend the existing penalty to third-party-type appointments. Currently, where a job seeker misses their appointment with an employment service provider, their payment is suspended until they attend another appointment. They do not receive back pay. This bill will extend that penalty to other types of appointments. We understand this might include appointments with career advisers, training providers or for medical or psychological assessments. This is a much broader penalty and it applies more widely. It is another example of this government making things harder for those on income support and for job seekers.

I cannot understand why the Labor Party is supporting this. During the committee inquiry, very strong concerns were raised about this particular measure, about just who those different third-party providers and entities would be and about the fact that it was giving far too much control over the job seeker to parties that are not strongly connected to the system. At least Job Services providers have, or should have, a very intimate knowledge of how this process works. Third parties may not. We also were provided with examples of where wrong appointment times were made by third parties, where people were not given adequate notice. There are a range of issues that come into play when you start extending these sorts of penalties to third parties.

The Australian Council of Social Service, in their submission, noted that the last review was in 2009, for compliance reforms that were introduced by the Labor government. Since that review, the Liberal government has made major changes to the compliance framework, and they are in the process of being implemented. The impact of these changes is still to be determined and yet we are going ahead—or the government is going ahead—to make a whole series of other amendments that may have very significant consequences. We are particularly concerned about extending to third parties the measures that suspend people's payments.

We are also concerned about job seekers who reject a suitable job offer on an eight-week penalty. We believe that this may have unintended consequences. Senator Cameron referred to a particular example that I would have referred to, which was in a submission and was brought up during the Senate inquiry. What the government is not taking into account is the impact that this has on job seekers who are genuinely looking for work. In our inquiry into this bill, job seekers presented evidence that showed that these measures will have a counterproductive impact on workers. It is not only the examples I have raised here. The measures will also have an impact particularly on older workers—and the example that Senator Cameron explained was about the impact on older workers—on CALD community workers, on more vulnerable community members and on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander job seekers.

We know, from a lot of information that has become available during estimates, that many of these measures have a disproportionate impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members. It is even harder to find work in regional areas. I know that there is another bill that is going to come before this place very shortly on CDEP, so I will not comment on that particular issue. But, of course, most Aboriginal job seekers actually live in the metropolitan area. This could potentially have significant impacts for Aboriginal job seekers.

This bill fundamentally shifts power even further into the hands of job service providers and now into the hands of third parties. It takes away even more rights from job seekers to actually have a say over the programs that impact on them and to have a say over how they interact with job service providers. Now they will just have to sit and take it because they know that if they say anything it will be counted as inappropriate behaviour. If they try and bring up why they, in fact, may have rejected job offer, will they be believed? Unlikely. Will they be able to have an effective input into their employment pathway plan? No. Because they know that if they continue to reject it, they will get suspended. So, of course, they will be forced to accept something that they do not even have any say in or ownership of.

It is important that job seekers have ownership over their employment pathway plan—or whatever we are going to be calling it into the future, whether we keep using 'employment plan' or 'employment pathway plan'. To encourage and be more supportive of job seekers so that they have ownership over the decision making is really important, but these measures discourage it. These measures discourage people who actually engage in that, because what is the point? They will get suspended if they make any comments. None of these measures are worthy of support. We will not be supporting this bill or any of the measures in any way. I urge the government to look again at their approach to how they treat people who are trying to find work because, overwhelmingly, they want work.

5:54 pm

Photo of Dean SmithDean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

At the beginning, I totally reject the accusations from Labor and Greens senators that somehow the government is attempting to demonise people, that somehow the government is trying to blame job seekers for the predicament that they are in and that somehow, through this legislation and other initiatives, we are vilifying job seekers. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just want to challenge Senator Cameron's contribution where he suggested that perhaps the personal experiences and the professional experiences of people on this side, and indeed their families did not allow them to bring any authority or any personal experience to these particular issues. To put it simply: what would Senator Cameron know about that?

You will not be surprised to know that I have got an alternative perspective on this issue. This is an important piece of legislation, one which builds on some of the reforms put in place by this government earlier in its term and which strengthens the support systems in place for job seekers so that they are receiving the support they need but also making sure that support is not being taken for granted. When it comes to providing support for job seekers, I would contend that Australia is a generous nation. We have struck a pretty good balance over the years, particularly when you examine the more limited support available to job seekers in some other places around the globe. But that support is not a one-way street. Certainly since the election of the Howard government almost 20 years ago, there has been a recognition that the support we provide to job seekers rests on a principle of mutual obligation. In other words, the financial support provided to jobseekers, courtesy of Australian taxpayers, imposes upon them a certain degree of personal responsibility.

Certainly this government believes that job seekers in receipt of support from taxpayers are entitled to a reasonable demonstration of good faith from those job seekers. They should be attending appointments with labour market service providers and working with them to make the transition from income support into paid employment as soon as is practical.

The legislation before us today is designed to build on some of the reforms that have already had a positive impact, both for jobseekers and for Australia taxpayers. When this government took office in late 2013, only 65 per cent of job seekers who missed an initial appointment with their job service provider actually turned up for their second rescheduled appointment. That was indicative of a problem, a certain entitlement mentality or, at a minimum, a complacency amongst some job seekers. This government then made changes to the system, which applied a 'no show, no pay' principle that gave a stronger incentive for job seekers to attend their appointments. There were, predictably, howls of outrage—of course, we expect that—about how this was unfair. Perhaps the most misused word in public discourse today is the word 'unfair', but that is a debate for another time. The point the government made at the time was we needed a system that was fair to job seekers but also fair to Australian taxpayers.

Ultimately, of course, the fairest system for job seekers is one that helps them find a job as quickly as possible. Given that employment service providers exist wholly for that purpose, incentivising attendance at appointments can only be of benefit to the job seeker. Remember what I said a moment ago: before the government's changes came into effect, only about 65 per cent of job seekers were attending rescheduled appointments after they missed one. By June of last year, that figure was significantly up to around 90 per cent of job seekers. In policy terms this is very much a win-win scenario, both for job seekers and for taxpayers. In terms of job seekers, it means more Australians in need of work are using the support system available to them to its fullest advantage and working with professionals who are dedicated to connecting them with job opportunities that will best suit them.

Of course, there is also an advantage for the employment service providers themselves. Higher rates of compliance with requirements from job seekers mean providers are spending less time dealing with the administrative tasks that flow from non-compliance. That means they can spend more time doing what they need and want to be doing—helping job seekers find employment opportunities.

There is further evidence that the incentives this government has introduced have been effective in making certain job seekers comply with their obligations under the system. For example, job seekers who have missed an appointment are re-engaging more quickly with their provider. There has been a reduction in the length of payment suspensions by 40 per cent. Between September 2014 and March 2015 the average payment suspension duration fell from 5.2 to 3.1 business days. That is a positive development and it means that job seekers are taking their obligations seriously.

Because the government's initial reforms have shown these encouraging signs what we now seek to do with the legislation before us today is broaden that successful approach and apply the same principles to other aspects of mutual obligation. These changes will further strengthen our system to make it more effective for job seekers and make sure that those benefiting from the system take a responsible attitude towards the support that is being offered to them.

Although mutual obligation was a key element of the reforms to income support made by the Howard government during its term in office, I think it is worth noting that aspects of the Keating government's Working Nation package earlier in the 1990s did place some obligations on job seekers in return for assistance. I note that simply to point out that mutual obligation has been embraced by governments of both political persuasions—it being a measure of accountability to the system and makes it more effective for job seekers.

An integral element of that system has long been that in return for receiving income support we expect Australian job seekers to undertake certain tasks which are designed to make their job search activities better targeted and more effective. To take one example, those who are in receipt of Newstart allowance are required to enter into a job plan. It sets out those activities that a job seeker must undertake in return for their income support, such as actively looking for work, attending appointments or participating in activities like work training or work for the dole programs.

Of course, different job seekers have different needs and circumstances and the system does take those things into account. It is neither unreasonable nor inflexible. Regrettably, though, there are some job seekers who flatly refuse to enter into a job plan. Now that is a breach of the principle of mutual obligation, but as things stand there is no penalty for this. If taxpayers are going to provide income support then it is reasonable for them to expect that job seekers will be proactive about taking the steps needed to find employment. This bill will underscore the importance of the job plan by implementing a payment suspension which will apply until the job seeker accepts their plan.

If a job seeker does not have a good reason for refusing to enter into a job plan they may incur a financial penalty each day until they accept their plan. As we have seen with the no-show no-pay changes introduced last year in relation to missed opportunities with job service providers, payment suspension is a very effective way to encourage job seekers to comply with the principles of mutual obligation. More than that it also sends an important signal to taxpayers that their contribution to supporting the activities of genuine job seekers is valued and is not being taken for granted. That is crucial in maintaining general public confidence and support for our income support system because if that confidence is not maintained it can lead to significant problems down the line and undermine the bonds of trust that are critical to maintaining our fundamental social cohesion.

Again I stress that these changes are not seeking to impose a rigid set of rules or a one-size-fits-all approach for job seekers. There are safeguards in the system that take account of job seekers' circumstances and no-one will be penalised for refusing to enter into a job plan that is manifestly unreasonable. Likewise, some job seekers are required as part of their program to attend appointments with training organisations or to participate in work for the dole activities.

Remember these are activities supported by taxpayers in the interests of developing a job seeker's skill set, making them more attractive to a wider range of potential employers. Given that, it is simply unacceptable that some job seekers feel they are entitled to not attend those appointments or behave in a non-cooperative or inappropriate manner whilst attending and yet believe they should still receive the income support that is offered to them in an unfettered way. Again, this is not what mutual obligation is about.

Under the current system it can take up to five weeks for a financial penalty to be applied after a job seeker misses an activity or a job interview. Ultimately, such long lead times end up rendering the penalties less effective. This legislation will remedy that situation by providing that job seekers who do not attend activities and do not have a reasonable excuse for their failure to attend will have their penalties deducted from their next fortnightly payment. Again, this change applies the same principle as in the bill last year to establish a more immediate link between a non-compliant action and its financial consequences.

Ultimately it is in the job seeker's own interests to take advantage of every opportunity the system affords them to support their search for employment, including training opportunities. Our system must be designed so that participation in these activities is incentivised to the fullest extent possible. However, job seekers who currently do not make an adequate effort to look for work rarely face meaningful sanction because the current system is too slow and is ineffective. It often takes months of inadequate job search efforts before a job seeker faces any real payment consequence. This bill will change that process so that job seekers who do not make adequate job search efforts without justifiable cause will have their payment immediately suspended until they demonstrate adequate job search efforts.

It is also a fundamental requirement of our social security system that job seekers must accept the offer of a suitable job when it is made. It is an important principle that a person in receipt of benefits has an obligation to accept suitable work when it is available. Granted, it may not be their dream job but our system was not designed to support people until they find their dream jobs. It exists to support them until suitable work is found. As we all know, once people find a job it becomes easier to source different employment—employment more in line with their personal preferences and perhaps even employment more in line with their dream job.

The government is aware of concerns that exist in the community that some people in receipt of benefits are able to refuse a suitable job. The term 'job snob' is sometimes used—people who feel they should be able to pick and choose while still receiving income support—but that is not the system's purpose and that is not the essence of mutual obligation, and the rules that govern it should reflect this fact. Under current compliance arrangements an eight-week non-payment penalty can be applied to job seekers who refuse work without good reason or who fail to start a job as planned. Unfortunately, amendments introduced by the former Labor government means that job seekers can have this penalty completely waivered just by agreeing to undertake some extra activity. This has led to the system being manipulated, the system being gamed, in ways that were never intended.

There is evidence that suggests, unfortunately, that job seekers are taking advantage of these waiver provisions to remain on income support rather than to accept a suitable job offer. In 2009-10 when the waiver provisions were introduced by Labor only 45 per cent of penalties for refusing a suitable job were waivered and 55 per cent were served by the job seeker. By comparison, in 2013-14, 78 per cent of penalties for refusing a suitable job were waivered. It is clear that these penalties are now failing to provide an adequate deterrent for refusing work because job seekers know they are able to return to payment with virtually no consequence.

Again, it is important to emphasise here that these are not jobs being turned down because the job seekers are physically incapable of performing them, or pose some other risk to health and safety, or massive personal inconvenience. In some cases these jobs are being turned down because the job seeker says the role is beneath them, or the hours proposed would interfere with their social life, or disrupt something else they would rather be doing.

Again, the system that supports our job seekers was never intended to be manipulated in this way. The changes contained in this legislation will help to make sure that it is not. Under the terms of this bill the waivers will be removed so that any job seeker who refuses an offer of suitable work without an acceptable reason will receive an eight week non-payment period. This change will ensure that job seekers face immediate and real consequences for turning down offers of work.

This measure is about fairness for taxpayers. It is about honesty in the pursuit of jobs. After all it is hardly reasonable to ask those people who make the effort to go to work and pay their taxes to support others who are clearly capable of working but believe they have a right to eternal income support instead.

Again, I should stress at this point that the government is not out to make life needlessly difficult for job seekers. These measures are about improving the integrity of our system. Within that we recognise that some job seekers are especially vulnerable and these changes will still take account of that important fact. Job seekers with particular personal circumstances or vulnerabilities will continue to be flagged on the IT systems used by the Department of Human Services and employment service providers. As is currently the case, job seekers who give prior notice of a reasonable excuse for not complying with an obligation will not have payment suspensions or penalties applied. This means the penalties will not impact on those whose failure to meet a requirement is beyond their control. For instance, if they are suffering from an illness or are required to care for family members and where they have given reasonable notice of those personal circumstances. Not surprisingly, this is an element of the reform—a very fair element and a generous element—that has not being mentioned by Labor senators thus far and that has not been mentioned by Greens senators thus far. If they want to make an honest contribution, they will recognise this particular element of the package.

In addition, employment service providers will still have the discretion not to report a failure to Human Services but use other servicing strategies to re-engage job seekers instead. All decisions involving financial penalties will continue to be made by the Department of Human Services. If a job seeker is not happy with the outcome they will, of course, retain options to appeal.

As I noted earlier in my contribution, the principle of mutual obligation has enjoyed support from both major parties in some fashion for the past couple of decades. What the government is proposing in the legislation now before us is to further strengthen those principles to make sure that job seekers are taking full advantage of all the support, including training, that our system offers to them. Compliance with the rules is ultimately in the best interests of job seekers themselves.

At the same time, these changes are a demonstration to Australian taxpayers that the contribution they willingly make to financially support job seekers is respected and appreciated by both the job seeker and the government alike.

6:11 pm

Photo of Catryna BilykCatryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Having spoken on various job seeker compliance bills put forward by this government, I am noticing a very clear and consistent theme in the way they approach this issue. We have a government that tries to move beyond practical and fair compliance measures, and beyond the principles of mutual obligation, to a job seeker compliance regime that is harsh and punitive.

Once again, it falls to Labor in the Senate to try to rein in this government's extreme approach to job seeker compliance and to ensure a more sensible regime is adopted. This is the government that tried to implement a six month non-payment period for young job seekers. That is six months that they expected people to be able to survive with no income and no support. Thank heavens we scuttled that one. Six months in which job seekers would struggle to feed, clothe and shelter themselves before they even began to think about how they would meet their participation requirements. I am still at a loss to understand what possible purpose these non-payment periods could serve except as a punishment for being unemployed. If anything, rather than helping and encouraging job seekers to secure employment, withdrawing financial support would take away their means of seeking employment—printing resumes, making phone calls, travelling to job interviews and buying clothes to be able to look presentable.

I remind those opposite that there was evidence provided to a Senate inquiry that many young job seekers subject to the non-payment period would have no choice but to turn to crime to support themselves. Having failed in their quest to make job seekers starve for six months, the government attempted to make them starve for one month—slightly less cruel maybe than their original proposal but still completely and fundamentally unfair.

It was also this government that tried to introduce the ridiculous policy of requiring job seekers to apply for 40 jobs a month. They pursued this despite evidence that it would place a huge administrative burden on business. This ludicrous idea was defended with comments like those immortal words: 'When jobs are sparse, it means that you've got to apply for more jobs to get a job.' It was a statement that illustrated perfectly how out of touch this government is when it comes to the challenges faced by job seekers in Australia.

I will say it again—I have said it many times speaking on similar bills to this—this government's attitude to job seekers is motivated by one thing: shifting the blame. In opposition the Liberals boldly claimed they would fix the economy when in fact under Labor the economy had experienced strong growth while most other advanced economies were shrinking. Instead, they have doubled the deficit. That is right; they have doubled the deficit. Unemployment is up and continuing to climb while wage and GDP growth have fallen to record lows. It is a symptom of this government's failure to put forward a comprehensive plan that will grow the economy and create jobs. What is the government's answer for their failure on the economy? What is their answer for their failure to create jobs? To try and shift the blame to job seekers and punish them for being unemployed.

I think the government would get better outcomes for job seekers, businesses and job service providers if they acted to help rather than trying to punish job seekers. And job seekers are going to find it harder to meet their obligations with the government closing Centrelink offices like the one near my office in Kingston in Tasmania. Job seekers would also find it easier to meet their obligations if the 22 million phone calls to Centrelink that went unanswered last financial year under the Liberal government were actually answered. Instead of looking to try to 'incentivise' job seekers through punishment, they should look at their own approach to service.

And let us remember: each time that the government have had to back down on their unfair and punitive attacks on job seekers, they did so not because they suddenly found a heart, not because they discovered a conscience and certainly not because they had some road-to-Damascus conversion and realised the error of their ways. No, they did so because they could not get their harsh, punitive measures through the Senate, because Labor forced them to adopt a just and reasonable approach.

Each time the Abbott-Turnbull government puts forward these harsh, punitive measures, regardless of what is ultimately accepted by the Senate, we should remember what the government sought to introduce in the first place. I certainly hope that, when it comes to election time, people out there do remember the cruel measures that would be in place right now had the government got its way. And let us imagine what cruel measures will be in place should the government get its way sometime in the future. The only reason why job seekers are not condemned to poverty, as I said, for six months of every year—or even one month—is that Labor, with sufficient crossbench support, opposed the government's cruel changes.

In considering all the job seeker legislation this government has put forward, Labor has taken the consistent approach of accepting fair and sensible measures which would lead to greater engagement by job seekers and better employment outcomes. Where possible, we have sought to introduce checks and balances to ensure that job seekers' rights are not compromised. Other measures which are so harsh and punitive that they cannot be improved we have, rightly, rejected outright.

For example, the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Stronger Penalties for Serious Failures) Bill 2014 passed the Senate with Labor's support, but only on the condition that the government agreed to our amendments. That bill legislated the no-show no-pay principle, but Labor's amendments protected the rights of job seekers to review decisions in which payments were suspended. We also insisted on protecting the rights of job seekers to justify, with a reasonable excuse, breaches of their obligations and ensured that no job seeker would have their payments stopped without first being notified. I would like to remind anyone listening to or reading this speech that these basic rights were protected because of Labor's insistence, whereas the government had sought to deny job seekers these rights.

We do not share the government's enthusiasm for heavy-handedness when it comes to job seeker compliance. When it comes to the concept of 'mutual obligation', this government appears to understand 'obligation' while unfortunately being deaf to the other word in that phrase: 'mutual'. You see, mutual obligation is a two-way street. We do expect job seekers to do what they reasonably can to give themselves the best prospect of being engaged in meaningful employment, but at the same time there is an obligation on the government to provide a safety net and the necessary support to be able to secure a job.

So Labor will take the same approach to this bill, the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Further Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance) Bill, as we have to previous bills. That is, we will support measures that lead to better employment outcomes while still ensuring adequate support for job seekers. But let me make this very clear: Labor cannot and will not support this bill if our amendments are not agreed to. Specifically, Labor supports those amendments that more closely align the dates of penalties and suspensions with the actual date of noncompliance. We also support the renaming of penalties for consistency, provided that there are no changes to penalties or other unintended consequences.

I will now outline in detail the measures that Labor will not support. Firstly, this bill seeks to allow a job seeker's participation payment to be immediately suspended if that job seeker fails to agree to a job plan at the first appointment. The suspension would continue until they entered into a plan, with no back payment for the period of the suspension. We simply cannot and will not support this provision, because we believe that job seekers should have the opportunity to negotiate a fair and reasonable job plan. Currently, a job seeker does not receive a financial penalty unless they fail to agree to a job plan on the second appointment. This allows job seekers the opportunity to take their job plan home and review it before agreeing to sign it. The provision in this bill means that job seekers could be pressured to sign a plan that they do not understand or do not agree to.

In her speech on the second reading speech of this bill, my colleague over in the other place Julie Collins, the shadow minister for employment services, cited two examples of job seekers who were wrongly directed by their providers to undertake Work for the Dole. One of the job seekers was aged 55, and the guidelines clearly provide that job seekers aged 50 to 59 cannot be required to do mandatory Work for the Dole. The other was the sole carer of two children, one with disability. She was told by her provider that she would lose her payment if she did not agree to undertake Work for the Dole, even though she was exempt from this obligation. In both these cases, these job seekers were able to seek further advice and confirm that the original advice from their providers was wrong. If they had had to sign on their first appointment, they would have been denied that ability.

This bill has been through a Senate inquiry, and I would like to read a quote from a caseworker that was cited in the submission from the National Welfare Rights Network. The caseworker said:

Too frequently we see people who have been told to sign a Job Plan without understanding what is in it or what they are required to do. We have also had people ask to have something changed or added who have been told that the Job Plan can't be changed. Frequently the Job Plans are not individualised and tailored to assist a person to gain employment but rather a standard plan "one size fits all".

The examples I just cited and the submission from the National Welfare Rights Network demonstrate why it is important for job seekers to have the right to initially refuse to sign a job plan without any financial penalty. While Labor accepts that the bill will retain the 48 hours 'think time' before any payment suspensions or financial penalties are submitted, we do not believe that 48 hours think time is sufficient to allow a job seeker to reflect and seek assistance to determine the appropriateness of their job plan to their personal needs.

Labor also has concerns about the provision of this bill that allows the secretary of the department to determine that a job seeker has acted 'in an inappropriate manner'. While the government asserts that some job seekers are treating service providers with contempt by not behaving appropriately at appointments, we have yet to see evidence of such behaviour. The term 'inappropriate behaviour' is not defined in the legislation, so the secretary will be given a great deal of discretion to determine what constitutes appropriate behaviour.

Labor are especially concerned at the potential for a subjective judgement of inappropriate behaviour that could put vulnerable job seekers at risk. What if there are factors not being taken into account such as mental illness or things happening in a job seeker's personal life that are causing them to be distressed or upset? What if the job seeker is justifiably uncooperative because their service provider is giving them bad advice or acting outside the guidelines? Similar concerns were raised about this provision by the National Welfare Rights Network, and we will be opposing this provision.

Finally, the government is making its second attempt to change the provisions around penalties for refusing suitable work, and Labor will be opposing these changes. Currently, job seekers receiving a participation payment will incur an eight-week non-payment penalty for failing to accept suitable work. This penalty may be waived if the job seeker chooses to re-engage and complete other activity requirements or if they were to experience financial hardship if the non-payment period was not ended. We see no compelling reason to change the current arrangements.

Penalties for refusal to accept suitable work are quite rare. Out of 800,000 job seekers, only 699 received a penalty for refusing suitable work in the last financial year. Furthermore, the majority of job seekers penalised for refusing suitable work—about 73 per cent in the last financial year—had their penalty waived, meaning they re-engaged in the process of finding suitable work. Surely, this is what the government wants—to encourage job seekers to re-engage.

As Jobs Australia pointed out in their submission to the inquiry:

If the argument is that too many penalties have been inappropriately waived, then that is something that may best be dealt with by reviewing the training and guidance offered to the decision-makers rather than simply removing the waiver altogether.

This proposal is typical of the sort of approach this government takes to penalising job seekers. It seems to be less about encouraging engagement and more about dishing out punishment.

As I mentioned earlier, there are measures in this bill that Labor will support, but we will only support the passage of this bill if our amendments are accepted. We support the provision that a job seeker's payment be suspended if they fail to undertake adequate job search efforts, and it is appropriate that a job seeker receives full back-pay once adequate job search efforts are resumed. We support provisions that provide a more immediate link between non-compliance by job seekers and the penalty for non-compliance, applied through an appropriate and fair process. And we also support the renaming of penalties in regard to consistency.

I reiterate what I said at the beginning of this speech that Labor supports fair and sensible measures which encourage mutual obligation for job seekers and lead to better employment outcomes. But what we do not support are heavy-handed, punitive measures—measures which trample on the rights of job seekers, deny them fair process, drive them into poverty and hardship and cause them to disengage from participation. Like many such bills the government has introduced to this place, this bill has elements of both.

Labor will seek to amend the bill to ensure that only those measures which are fair and effective pass the parliament. If our amendments are not accepted, then we will not be voting in favour of this bill. I must conclude, however, by pointing out that the best way to get unemployed Australians into work is to create more jobs, a task this government has comprehensively failed. Recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that for the first time in over 20 years more than 800,000 Australians are unemployed. Over 100,000 Australians have joined the jobs queue since this government came to power. By contrast, when Labor was in government, we created one million jobs while dealing with the greatest global economic downturn since the Great Depression.

The problem with this Abbott-Turnbull government are that they have no plan for jobs and no plans for the Australian economy. They failed to save jobs in our automotive industry; in fact, they practically dared the auto industry to leave our shores. They failed to stand up for Australia's submarine workers by sending work on our submarine fleet offshore. They failed our renewable energy industry by attacking the renewable energy target and causing investment to fall by 90 per cent. They failed Australia's digital competitiveness by switching to a second-rate broadband technology, at the same time causing the construction of Australia's National Broadband Network to grind to a halt. And they failed Australia's trainees and apprentices by cutting $1 billion from traineeships and apprenticeships.

The government takes a heavy-handed approach to job seeker compliance because Australian job seekers are being used as a scapegoat for this government's economic failures. That is this government's strategy: blame the unemployed, blame penalty rates, blame the trade unions, blame everybody else—blame anyone you have to if it helps divert attention from the fact that you have absolutely no strategy for growing the economy and creating employment in Australia.

We on this side of the chamber know that this government's failure to create jobs is their own fault, not the fault of Australia's job seekers, the overwhelming majority of whom are trying as hard as they can to gain meaningful employment. We will seek to excise harsh and punitive measures from this bill, while supporting the passage of the more sensible elements. At the same time, we will continue to remind job seekers, some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people in Australia, how they would be treated if this government had its way.

In closing, for anyone considering voting for this government at the next election, I remind people that this is the government which proposed subjecting young Australian job seekers to six months of abject poverty. And remember that they only abandoned this plan not because they realised it was too cruel to even contemplate but because they could not get their cruel plan through the Senate—thank heavens. Given their continued failure to create jobs and their continued quest to punish job seekers for this failure, imagine what depths of cruelty they will plunge to if they win the next election.

6:29 pm

Photo of Nick XenophonNick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | | Hansard source

I cannot support this bill, the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Further Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2015, in its current form. At the outset, I acknowledge the importance of and bipartisan political support for the concept of mutual obligation. Mutual obligation means that if you are a job seeker you have an obligation to look for work. The government, on the other hand, has an obligation to support you, the job seeker, to find employment. This support is financial but also practical. Job seekers expect and deserve to be able to access practical assistance in identifying suitable jobs and then applying for them.

I suggest that there is another concept that needs to be part of the debate. That is the role of government, the sensible, targeted role of government to ensure that our country has a strong manufacturing base. Contrasting what has happened in this country over a number of years with, say, Germany, we see that manufacturing as a share of GDP in this country has gone down from some 12 per cent in 2004 to under seven per cent now. We are bumping just above Botswana at six per cent and Rwanda at five per cent. I do not pick on those countries. They are wonderful countries, I am sure, but they are countries that have not had a large industrial base, as we have had in the past. Yet it seems that, in the next few years, unless we are careful, with the demise of the automotive sector we are going to go below countries that have never been manufacturing or industrialised countries. That is something we need to take into account and something I will refer to shortly.

I think government has a role to play in targeted, sensible investment to assist industry. By contrast with what has occurred in this country, the German government has an industry policy. It understands the importance of manufacturing. Today in Germany, the industrial powerhouse that it is, 22 per cent of that nation's GDP is based on manufacturing. Germany exports its technology to the world. It exports its motor vehicles and other industrial output to the world. It value adds. It has advanced manufacturing. It has a highly skilled, well-paid workforce. That is a model that we in this nation should be looking at, not a race to the bottom. We got lazy and complacent with the mining boom. I am not against the mining boom, but we got lazy and can placement. The warnings of the great Donald Horne, the author of The Lucky Country, before he died in 2005, in his last interview with Peter Hartcher from The Sydney Morning Herald, said that the mining boom made us lazy and complacent in terms of planning for the future, pushed up the exchange rate and made manufacturing less competitive. These are factors that we need to take into account in the context of this bill.

The government argues that this bill will create a simpler and more effective compliance framework to ensure job seekers are meeting their obligations under the mutual obligation requirements. However, I believe that this bill is too harsh on job seekers. I believe it goes too far and will result in vulnerable people having their Centrelink payments suspended for inconsistent and potentially arbitrary reasons.

Let us start from the beginning and put this bill in context. In my home state of South Australia we have the highest unemployment rate in the country. In December 2015, unemployment was at 7.2 per cent. That is 62,300 men and women who do not have a job to go to, who are missing out on not only the financial benefits of work but also the sense of dignity and self-worth that flows from having a job. A job should be a social right in a good society. We ought to do everything we can to make sure that those who are willing to work hard have a decent job to go to.

These unemployment figures are actually quite misleading, because a number of years ago the criterion for determining whether a person was employed or not was changed. The benchmark used to be working some 15 hours per week, as I understand it. Now if you work more than one hour per week you are no longer deemed to be unemployed. The level of underemployment can be very material as well, because you are not going to be able to afford to buy a car or take out a personal loan, let alone take out a home loan, unless you have a job that is not casual but is full-time and pays well.

The level of youth unemployment in South Australia is reaching crisis point. In December last year, the unemployment rate for South Australians aged between 15 and 24 was 20.1 per cent. That is the unemployment rate for those who actually do not have any work at all. If you have more than one hour of work a week you are in the underemployment category. That level can be much greater. The South Australian youth unemployment rate of 20.1 per cent compares to the national average of 15 per cent. The Conversation in a piece published in 2015—I do not have access to it now—talked about the underemployment, underutilisation and unemployment rate amongst young people being in the order of 32 per cent for females and 25 per cent for males. Those are significant figures. They are figures that we cannot ignore.

General Motors Holden, along with Toyota, is expected to close its doors as an auto manufacturer at the end of 2017. Ford in Geelong is only a few months away in 2016. There is still uncertainty as to where our fleet of future submarines will be built, whether it will be a local, hybrid or overseas build and whether the coalition's promise of 12 future submarines being built in South Australia will be honoured or not. These are uncertain times in my home state, but they have national ramifications. We need to work hard to identify ways to stave off this jobs crisis, to try and stop the tsunami of job losses that is looming not only over South Australia but over the nation, particularly in Victoria. We know about the Bracks review. The University of Adelaide studies by Professor John Spoehr talk about something in the order of 200,000 jobs being lost in the automotive sector unless we act urgently to stem those losses and their flow on effects in the automotive components sector. These are big issues.

At this stage, I thank my colleague Senator Kim Carr, who has worked with me to advocate for Australia's car-making industry. I acknowledge the work that the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Christopher Pyne, has done in relation to this. Along with Senator Carr and me and others, he has been quite hopeful that we should do everything we can to encourage the proposal by Punch Corporation of Belgium and its CEO, Guido Dumarey, who was here in Australia, in Canberra, on Monday and Tuesday meeting with a whole range of people. He met with the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Mr Pyne, he met with the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, and he met with Opposition Leader, Mr Shorten, as well as a number of others. Hope has not been lost in relation to this. It is difficult to try to revive a sector where a decision has been made by General Motors Holden to end manufacturing. But Punch Corporation, and there are others out there, genuinely want to engage with General Motors Holden to see what can be done to take over that plant and to revive auto manufacturing. With the Australian dollar hovering around 70 cents to the US dollar, this is something that we should not dismiss and this is something that we should encourage.

I hope that, when members of the South Australian government and the South Australian Premier meet Mr Dumarey and his team tomorrow in Adelaide, they will be doing all they can to encourage—to fight for an opportunity to explore this and to give it a fair go, an opportunity to succeed. This will require the involvement of state and federal governments, but we should not give up on our auto sector. We should not give up on a sector that is so important to this country and that has such a long history—it does have a future. I will not give up on it.

There are those who say, 'Don't give workers at General Motors Holden false hope'. I understand that, but how are you giving people false hope if you are giving it your best shot to try to revive the auto sector in this country and, with it, save many thousands of jobs?

I believe that the federal government will do all it can and I believe that the federal opposition will do all it can to encourage this proposal. I am encouraged by that. I hope that the South Australian government will do all it can and not take a negative approach to this, because this is very important. They should listen to their federal counterparts, both the government and the opposition, in terms of their approach to this proposal.

Job creation is just one piece of the puzzle; what the government does to support job seekers into employment is another. This bill aims to strengthen and streamline the job seeker compliance framework. That, in itself, is not a bad thing. Amongst other things it does this by enabling job seeker support payments to be streamlined, but it also has a number of nasties in it: it seeks to support a job seeker's support payments to be suspended immediately if they fail to comply with a number of requirements. Mutuality requires that you do your best to find a job. But under the current framework payments will only be suspended in the fortnight following a no-show no-pay failure. The rationale behind this delay was to give job seekers time to organise their finances and their budget so as to reduce the negative impact of the penalty, because there are others involved in relation to that: family members who rely on these payments, including children.

The government has argued that this delay is problematic. That it places too much distance between the behaviour that caused the penalty and the penalty itself. I understand what the government is trying to do by changing the system so that payments are suspended immediately, but I have real problems in agreeing with it. I have reservations about the consequences of this and the unintended consequences of this. For example, a job seeker may have children or other dependants who rely on those Centrelink payments. Stopping those payments immediately may place families in a situation in which food and other necessities cannot be bought.

During the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee's inquiry into this bill, the National Welfare Rights Network also raised concerns that immediate payment suspension may, in fact, result in additional penalties from third parties. This would be the case where there is not enough time for a person to vary the timing of direct debits. It has a cascading effect. It could be that they have something that they are paying on a lease or a rental arrangement, where they have their goods repossessed. It could be that they are evicted from their home and forced into homelessness—and goodness knows what the social and economic costs of that would be.

Another aspect of this bill that causes me concern is the requirement for a job seeker to enter into an Employment Pathway Plan within 48 hours of their first appointment with their employment service provider. Currently, a job seeker is able to negotiate their plan with their provider and is given the opportunity to consider it in detail before they sign it. In my view, imposing an obligation on job seekers to sign an Employment Pathway Plan within 48 hours of their first meeting or risk having their payments suspended immediately does not lend itself to realistic and workable plans being agreed to. Additionally, a job seeker will not be paid back any of their missed payments even once they have entered into an Employment Pathway Plan.

Jobs Australia, the national peak body for not-for-profit organisations that assist people into work, raised concerns during the Senate inquiry in relation to this measure. In their submission Jobs Australia wrote:

In relation to the failure to enter into a Job Plan, there is some risk that frontline employment services staff may seek to use the new rules to compel job seekers to enter Job Plans that have not been adequately negotiated and explained. A Job Plan is meant to be a document that is negotiated with the job seeker and tailored to their needs, rather than a standard set of requirements dictated by the provider.

I acknowledge the government has indicated that job seekers will be allowed 48 hours 'think time' before any payment suspensions are imposed. However, I am concerned that this, in some cases, may not be a reasonable amount of time for a job seeker to obtain advice or assistance in renegotiating a plan.

The bill also states that a job seeker's payments can be immediately suspended if they act in an 'inappropriate manner' during any required appointments and the purpose of the appointment was not achieved. Worryingly, the bill does not define what behaviour might be considered 'inappropriate'—I think it ought to. The bill does provide that the secretary is able to determine, by legislative instrument, matters that must be considered by the secretary when deciding whether a job seeker has acted in an 'inappropriate manner' at an appointment. However, the bill does not require that such an instrument be made, and that concerns me. The bill ought to require that such an instrument be made so that we know what the framework is and we know what the rules are. If there is going to be a new set of rules, we at least need to know what they are—rather than being completely ill-defined.

The Department of Employment has advised that there are various safeguards in place to ensure job seekers are not unfairly penalised. According to the department, penalties would not apply where the inappropriate behaviour was outside of a person's control due to a psychological or psychiatric condition. That, in itself, could be problematic as to how that is determined. Would there be appeals to the Social Security Appeals Tribunal or would there be appeals to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in order to settle what those conditions would be and how it would apply? Despite this assurance, I remain concerned about the application of this measure. I agree with the Australian Council of Social Service, who say that sanctions for inappropriate behaviour 'are likely to be applied inconsistently and to penalise behaviour related to underlying mental health, alcohol and drug or other underlying complex issues'.

Can I just say that we do have a significant issue with substance abuse in this nation. OECD reports indicate that we have very high levels of substance abuse and that our level of crystal methamphetamine use, particularly in some communities, is quite shocking. These factors need to be taken into account. It breaks my heart to speak to constituents who have had to take out loans on their homes or have cashed in their super because they cannot get help for their loved ones with a serious crystal methamphetamine problem, and they need to get them into a proper and decent rehabilitation program. These are people who do not have money to throw around but who, in desperation, take out large loans, in the tens of thousands of dollars, to get their loved ones in a comprehensive rehabilitation program either here or overseas.

The Australian Unemployed Workers' Union were similarly unconvinced by the government's proposed safeguards, raising concerns that the ability to impose sanctions would exacerbate the already uneven power dynamics between job seekers and employment services providers.

Another measure in this bill which makes me uneasy is the removal of waivers for serious financial penalties applied under the act when a worker refuses to accept a job. I think there must be some reasonableness and some flexibility in this. Under the current system, a person is subject to an eight-week nonpayment period when they refuse to accept a suitable job. However, a waiver to that nonpayment period can be obtained. I acknowledge that there does appear to be a concerning upward trend in the number of penalties applied to job seekers who fail to accept suitable work. Figures from the department of education show that the number of serious failures for refusing or failing to accept suitable work has more than doubled from 644 in 2008-09 to 1,412 in 2014-15. I think we need to look at how that waiver system works, but I believe that removing the waivers altogether is not necessarily the best way to go about addressing the issue of job seekers not accepting jobs, particularly some of the entrenched underlying issues at stake. In fact, removing the ability to grant waivers may have the perverse outcome of job seekers becoming further disengaged from the system, as there is no opportunity for them to engage in an activity to address their noncompliance and deal with those underlying causes.

To me, this bill seems to be all stick and no carrot. It does not provide encouragement for job seekers to improve their engagement with employment service providers. I have real difficulty in supporting this bill in its current form. If I can go back to what I said at the outset, the best way to deal with this issue is to make sure that we have good jobs—real jobs—and that involves governments being involved at a state and federal government level to ensure that there is appropriate industry support, taking a leaf out of the book of the German government. Manufacturing is 22 per cent of that nation's GDP. It is an industrial powerhouse with good, well-paying jobs, where they make things that the rest of the world wants, with advanced manufacturing. Here we are slipping to well under seven per cent of our GDP being based on manufacturing, compared to 12 per cent just a decade ago, and that could slip to well below five per cent in coming years unless we have an active jobs plan that involves not just manufacturing but a strong approach to government procurement policies so that there is a 'buy Australian first' policy in respect of the tens of billions of dollars that Australian governments—state, federal and local—spend on procurement in this nation.

With those remarks, I can indicate that I believe the bill needs to be amended significantly in order for it to pass. I will support the second reading of this bill, but I have real concerns about the third reading in its current form.

6:48 pm

Photo of Zed SeseljaZed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I am pleased to add my voice in support of the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Further Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2015 today. Before I get into some of the detail of the bill, I would like to go to the more general and important point about the motivations of the government in encouraging people into work, why that is so important, and why it is so corrosive, in my opinion, when we see creeping into parts of our community and our society an anti-work culture—a reluctance to work. This is not the overwhelming experience of Australians who are seeking work, but there are some who do not seem to have that willingness to work, and I think that that is a real concern.

When I look at measures like this—measures that are about encouraging people into work and encouraging people to fulfil their mutual obligations when they are receiving support from the taxpayer—of course there are fiscal considerations when we seek to encourage people into work, because someone working and contributing is going to create wealth not just in the short term but in the long term for themselves and for our community and, of course, will not be a burden on taxpayers if they are able to look after themselves and their families. The ability to do that is so fundamental to who we are as human beings. It is not possible for everyone, of course, and that is why we need to have such a generous welfare safety net, but that safety net is not designed to be there for people who are capable of looking after themselves but appear to be unwilling to look after themselves. It is not only taxpayers who suffer as a result of that. As I say, I do not look at it primarily as a fiscal issue. Human dignity suffers. We only have to look at the worst examples, where we see massive amounts of welfare dependency in communities and how soul destroying that becomes for individuals and families. So for me, when I look at these challenges, this is about the value of work to human dignity. Those who are capable of doing it, of course, are much better off in a job, working hard, looking for opportunities, bringing in an income and growing that income over time. That should be our focus, and that is the focus of this government. It should be the focus of these measures.

We should always look after those who cannot look after themselves. That is not what this is about. This is about some people who unfortunately are not taking responsibility. They are capable of work and for whatever reason they are choosing to reject perfectly good jobs. I will get into some of the detail of that. It is an important project for us as a nation to continue to value work. As I say, it is important fiscally, but that is not the most important consideration. It is important to our communities, it is important to individuals and it is important to families because of the dignity that comes with a job—even, in some cases, jobs that would not be our first choice or our second choice, necessarily. But those jobs are important.

This bill builds on the previous work of the coalition in strengthening the rules around job seekers receiving government payments, particularly the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance Framework) Bill 2014, which was passed by the parliament at the end of 2014. These bills are founded on this basic principle of Australia's welfare system—that of mutual obligation. We support a proper, targeted and generous welfare system. When someone loses their job, when someone cannot find work through circumstances outside their control or when people are simply in need for other reasons, we want to look after them. Australians want to look after them, and our system seeks to do that.

Of course, that safety net also comes with responsibility. Those who are able to work have a responsibility to be looking for work. They should be accessing the services available to find work, and if a job offer comes they should be taking it. I think this is a completely reasonable expectation. I think those who go out there and work hard, sometimes in very difficult jobs, to look after themselves and their family and who then pay taxes have a very legitimate expectation that others in the community will always seek to do their bit, will seek to look after themselves and will seek to better themselves as best they can. This does mean accepting an appropriate job offer even if—as I say—it might not be their first choice. Many of us have taken jobs that were not our dream jobs. I recall taking jobs in the cleaning industry, in fast food, in retail and in various areas. Some of those are great jobs, some of those are very challenging jobs that are not always where you want to be but they are jobs. They are valuable, they provide a service to other people and they come with a wage and the dignity and skills that go with that.

John Howard used to say it often: the best form of welfare is a job. During one of the hearings we had into this, I questioned Lin Hatfield Dodds about this and she said words to the effect of, 'The best form of welfare is good welfare.' No. The best form of welfare is a job. It is much better for an individual—where they can—to be working and to be earning a living rather than to be on welfare. Welfare should be there only for those who need it, not for those who are choosing not to take steps to look after themselves—legitimate and reasonable steps that we expect for people to look after themselves and to look after their families. The community should come with them to assist them, to provide opportunities, to provide training, to provide support and guidance—that is legitimate and we do that. There is money there from the government for all of those sorts of programs, but there are some people who unfortunately do not take those opportunities and who deliberately choose to reject those for various reasons.

There are numerous examples out there. Let's go through some of the examples provided by the department. These are the kinds of instances we are talking about: a 19-year-old male refused a job because he wanted to follow his dream and become an actor; a 25-year-old male refused a job because he was going on holiday; a 22-year-old male refused full-time work because he only wanted part-time work so that he could continue flying lessons; a 32-year-old male stated he was too busy to start work; a 26-year-old female refused a cleaning job because she believed it was below her; a 58-year-old male refused part-time Monday to Sunday work because he plays golf on Sundays and stated he would be better off on the dole; a 33-year-old male refused a car washing job because it was too difficult; and a 19-year old male refused work after one day labouring, stating that he was too sore and also wanted to concentrate on getting fit to apply to the Navy.

Again, I would stress that this bill is targeted at those who can work—those who are deemed to be job-ready—but who, through their own choices, are not fulfilling their obligations to their fellow Australians to genuinely seek work. That is a legitimate expectation of our community. It is a legitimate expectation of those who do pay their taxes that those who are receiving benefits will do all they can to help themselves before they seek assistance from the taxpayer. We understand that a job will not always come straight away. It does take time, and in some areas in Australia it is more difficult than in others. We know that. That is why it is important that we assist and that we also have policies to grow the economy and to create those jobs. That is what we have seen in recent times. There were over 300,000 jobs created just in the last year. That is something to celebrate. We heard statistics from the Department of Employment survey of employers that 30 per cent of employers found it difficult to fill positions in low-skilled jobs. So in many areas there are positions to be filled and there are people—in some cases, on benefits—choosing not to fill them for various reasons.

I want to go through the elements of the bill. There are a number of elements to further strengthen the system so that people can get into work. The first measure is a technical one that aligns compliance arrangements for failures to attend appointments with specialist providers or refusing to enter a job plan with the new rules for provider appointments. In 2013-14: 18,099 failures were reported and 6,890 failures were applied for failing to attend a specialist provider appointment; 1,973 failures were reported and 980 failures were applied for failing to enter an EPP; and 19,140 failures were reported and 14,333 were applied for not attending a CCA appointment.

Secondly, this measure provides for cancellation of payments when there is a second refusal to enter a job plan. The additional step of cancelling payment for a second consecutive refusal to enter a job plan is warranted because it is a basic qualification requirement that a job seeker must enter a job plan when required. The job plan sets out all of the job seeker's mutual obligation requirements, and refusal to enter one indicates that the job seeker is not willing to meet their requirements.

Again, I would ask senators: isn't it reasonable to expect that a job seeker receiving a payment from the government enters into a job plan? That seems to be a basic part of mutual obligation. But I go back to my first point: this is about this person helping themselves. This is about this person being encouraged to help themselves so that they can have a better life and so that they do have a better chance of getting a job—of getting a job and making their way through the world, looking after themselves and looking after their loved ones. That is an integral part of the lives of most Australians. Those who are capable of working go out there, find a job and face all the challenges and difficulties that go with that, but get the fulfilment of being able to achieve things—of being able to learn new skills and to learn how to lead people; to learn to deal with people and customers and to learn new skills. These are critical to most peoples' lives and are a way that people get ahead. They are a way that people improve their lot in life and become great contributors to our nation.

And so when there are policies that look the other way or excuse the behaviour of people who simply refuse to take basic steps to try to seek work then it is undermining human dignity. We as a nation and we as a government are entitled on behalf of taxpayers to say that we will have some basic standards. We will have some basic requirements of people; we will require certain things. These are not onerous requirements. Entering into a job plan is not an onerous requirement; it is just a basic building block if you are fair dinkum about getting into the workforce. I think that taxpayers have every right to expect that people will do that. When we have low standards and expectations, not only does that end up costing taxpayers it also ends up failing those people who should be getting out there and helping themselves.

The bill also allows for payment suspension and possible penalty for job seekers who show up to appointments but who behave inappropriately. We have seen examples of this. I think that Senator Xenophon talked about the definition not having to be included in the disallowable legislative instrument. But my expectation would be that it will. I note that there are existing penalties for misconduct in some of these situations and that the definition of 'misconduct' is not contained in the legislative instrument. The government's view is that 'misconduct' is a more clearly-defined concept. Generally, it includes serious things, like being uncooperative, violent, offensive or disruptive, harassing other participants or behaving in a dangerous manner. Determining inappropriate behaviour and activities is potentially more subjective and therefore requires a clear and agreed definition.

This bill also allows for more immediate penalties for job seekers who fail to attend activities they have been designated to. It has long been the case that in addition to job-seeking requirements welfare recipients who are capable of work are required to attend certain activities, such as training or Work for the Dole. Work for the Dole is a key part of the government's agenda to improve employment services and to improve job seekers' employment prospects. To ensure that this is successful we need to make sure that job seekers are attending their activities through effective penalties applied in a timely manner when they are not doing so.

In 2013-14, 99,167 no-show no-pay failures were applied to 51,824 job seekers, primarily for failing to attend activities. This component of the bill would not introduce any new penalties. Job seekers who fail to participate in an activity without a reasonable excuse will still lose one day's pay for each day they fail. The bill will just mean that the penalty can be deducted straight away. Under the current arrangements it can take up to five weeks from the day a job seeker fails to attend an activity until the penalty is actually deducted from their income support. It can be longer if the job seeker is difficult to contact. Again, these are fairly basic requirements.

I was quite interested when I quizzed the department on these issues to hear about the number of opportunities that people get before penalties are applied. These are not people who just fail to do the right thing once; in most cases these are people who are simply showing an ongoing reluctance to cooperate and to take basic steps in terms of their mutual obligations or to take basic steps to genuinely seek work and to accept jobs that are on offer. This is not onerous.

Similarly to what I have just described, this bill allows for more immediate consequences for inadequate job searches. Getting job seekers into jobs is the key purpose of employment services, but despite this there are significant weaknesses in compliance arrangements for job seekers who have not made real efforts to look for work. The numbers clearly show that there are issues with ensuring compliance in this area. In 2013-14, 4,342 job-search-related failures were applied, though none resulted in the application of a financial penalty. Under the current system it takes months to apply a financial penalty. It is interesting. You have a situation where 4,342 job-search-related failures were applied, though none resulted in the application of a financial penalty.

Again I say: what is the message that we are sending to those job seekers who are simply refusing to take the basic steps to seek a job? What has unfortunately applied in many cases is that there are no real consequences for that. The government, which pays the bills and which hands out significant money in welfare, when people do not take seriously their mutual obligations, has in some cases no consequence for that. I again ask senators to apply the test to workers they know in their neighbourhoods and communities—people working hard, earning $30,000, $40,000 or $50,000 a year. How would they feel if you said to them: 'You're paying your taxes. There are some people who are refusing to meet basic requirements and there is no sanction for that.' I think we know what the answer to that would be.

I think we know that most Australians absolutely are generous and will be generous to people who need a helping hand but they have little tolerance for people who are quite capable and have every opportunity but are choosing not to take those opportunities or basic steps to look after themselves. Australian taxpayers deserve that. I think this bill is a part of the equation of having expectations, enforcing them and giving as many Australians the dignity of a job as is humanly possible.

7:08 pm

Photo of Sue LinesSue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I rise to put my comments on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Further Strengthening the Job Seeker Compliance Framework) Bill 2015. As we have heard from other senators this evening, Labor has put forward a number of amendments to this bill but certainly does not support the bill in its current form, because it is way too punitive.

It is fine for members of the Turnbull government to say these are simple measures and this is a simple matter. It is not. If it were a simple matter, we would not have such high youth unemployment and indeed we would not have increasing unemployment across the country. It is now getting to the point in Western Australia where unemployment is the highest it has been in a very long time. So this is not a simple issue. How people are dealt with in the system is also not a simple measure or a simple thing to do, because people are not all the same. They have different circumstances. They have different backgrounds. They have different needs. Whilst Labor is not opposed to mutual obligation—in fact the bill seeks to make harsher penalties on the sort of regime that Labor put in place, so we do believe in mutual obligation—we also have a real respect for job seekers and a real understanding that it is not a simple measure, that it is not going to work simply by taking this punitive approach to people being found employment.

We have seen right from day 1 with this government, no matter whether it was Mr Abbott or Mr Turnbull as the Prime Minister—and it was certainly confirmed today by Mr Brandis in question time—that the same policies are there. We have seen this punitive approach taken in a whole range of areas, not just in relation to job seekers. What is being proposed here tonight needs to be taken in the full context of what is on offer by the Turnbull government. We know that, in addition to this bill, they are talking about the introduction of a 15 per cent GST, which would certainly be something that job seekers would not be able to handle. We know that penalty rate are on the table. We have heard many senators in here—Senator Smith is a great advocate—

Photo of Dean SmithDean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Thank you.

Photo of Sue LinesSue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

for reducing penalty rates, which just makes life much harder for people. It shows again how out of touch this government is. You cannot take punitive action against job seekers, force them to take an job, reduce the penalties, impose a big, fat new tax through a GST and somehow at the end of that sing Kumbaya, haven't we done well. That is not realistic, and the sorts of measures being proposed by the Turnbull government demonstrate very clearly that it is a government without a plan. It does not have a comprehensive plan. It does not understand what it takes to get a job.

Of course we have not seen good job creation by the Turnbull government. The jobs that are being created are casual and part time. You never hear them say that.

Photo of Nigel ScullionNigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | | Hansard source

They're jobs.

Photo of Sue LinesSue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

It is not a job at any cost. If you are a young person or indeed an adult on a casual job, according to the Turnbull government, if a casual job is being offered 100 kilometres or even further from where you live, they expect you to uproot yourself and take that casual job. Study after study, report after report—

Senator Scullion interjecting

Look at them nodding. Yes, that is exactly what they expect: take up the casual job that might just last a couple of months. It's a job! Their mantra is a job at any cost—not a job that is going to create a good future for the person who takes it up but a casual job. So they uproot themselves at great cost. It costs hundreds of dollars to move even if you do it yourself. You still have to incur a cost. Then take up a casual job that is going to last a defined period, and then suddenly you find yourself unemployed. It will be a low-paid job—there are not too many casual jobs that pay really well—and, if they get their way, it will be a job without any penalty payments. That is the kind of picture that they paint.

We know how they feel about young people in particular. There were those outrageous comments made in the other place labelling young people as lazy and wanting to just lie on the lounge and play their games—though actually you have to sit on the lounge. I'm not sure I've seen too many people lying on the lounge; you have to sit up and do it! But that is the kind of label they applied: young people are all bad and should be forced to take up any job. If and when they do not, there will be these punitive measures put in place.

Of course I think there are good part-time jobs out there, but generally speaking they are not jobs people stay in for their lives. You only have to look at the cleaners here in Parliament House, who are living on poverty wages. That is the sort of job the Turnbull government seems to think young job seekers should be forced to take up.

We have not seen the government do anything at all to put a better focus on jobs and job training. They certainly cannot stand up and point to any schemes that they have put in place that are about job creation or that focus on jobs. They believe in a trickle-down economy, and we know that that is a failed strategy. We know—through their inability and their unwillingness to go after multi tax avoiders, their unwillingness to really put pressure on those that are currently abusing the system, their big mates at the big end of town—that they are not serious about job creation. But Labor knows that jobs, particularly for young people, in many parts of the country are just not there. They do not exist, particularly in my state of Western Australia. There are pockets right across the country now where youth unemployment, particularly, is at alarming levels. And what have the government got? Work for the Dole. That is really the only thing on offer.

I just want to go through some of the programs that Labor had in place particularly targeted at young people which were slashed and burnt and cut to ribbons by the Turnbull government—and they should be ashamed of themselves. It is completely unacceptable. I will say that I think everyone in this place is on the same page about getting people into work. We recognise the value of work, that it brings dignity and respect and so on. I do not think we disagree on that. However, where we really disagree, in quite divergent ways, is about how you get young people into jobs. There is no acknowledgement from the Turnbull government that actually jobs are pretty tight at the moment. It is unacceptable to have high youth unemployment levels and the only plan on the table from the Turnbull government being one to blame young people and punish them for not being able to get a job, even though, for many, no jobs exist.

Quite frankly, the government's efforts in getting young people into work have been lame—no thought-out policies. Early in the term of the government, with very little warning, the government abolished Youth Connections, an amazingly successful program and a cheap program—much, much cheaper than Work for the Dole. The program was inexpensive to run and had very high success rates right across the country. You could point to a Youth Connections in any state or territory and you would see the success rate of that program. That program worked at an intensive level, because it accepted that getting people into work was not just a simple equation of: 'There's a job; you have to take it or we'll punish you.' It recognised that it was much more complex than that, that often people come from disadvantaged backgrounds or have had a bad start or have been sacked from work a few times and that they might need their confidence levels increased or indeed they might need to go back to study to increase their skills. The sorts of proposals on the table from the Turnbull government do not recognise any of that.

That program re-engaged those young people. You never hear that word, 're-engage', from those over there. It is all about punitive actions. That program re-engaged young people with work, study or school, and they were successful. That was a very successful program. Like many Labor senators, I really believed, as we got closer and closer to the end of that program, that somehow the Turnbull government would see the folly, the bad move, of defunding that program and would see the effects that that would have. But, no, they did not. They just cut it without any warning. There was no evaluation—but of course we know, through everything they do, that they never bother about the facts and figures. They never bother about that. It is just a flick of the pen and, 'Let's get rid of it.' So that funding disappeared. Why would any government that is really serious about engaging young people in work or study ditch a program with a very high success rate? That just does not make any sense, but again it is pretty hard to work out anything the Turnbull government does that make sense.

Early in its term, the Turnbull government—it was the Abbott government then—made life harder for apprentices. Apprenticeships are on the decline in this country, so you would think we would be doing whatever we could to lift that great opportunity for young people to skill them up for their future.

Debate interrupted.