Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak in support of the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Employment Services Reform) Bill 2008. The Rudd government made a commitment to a fairer, more compassionate Australia, and since November last year we have been reshaping society on a number of fronts. I think it was the Hon. Paul Keating, the former Prime Minister, who said that when you change the government you change the country. We have certainly seen that in Australia and more recently, in the last couple of weeks, in the United States. It is amazing to look at what has happened in the United States.

Today I will refer to a little bit of literature to illustrate how much things have changed in the United States. One of my favourite books is The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass. If you look at when that book was written and then move through to one of my top five books, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, or Samuel Langhorne Clemens, you see in that narrative the way that Huck treats the slave Jim and how controversial that book was. It is obviously a great work of literature, but at the time, in the late 1860s and 1870s, it was quite controversial. I did my honours thesis on The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Alex Haley. It is strange that you could have an autobiography written by someone else, but in the story presented by Malcolm X, or Malcolm Little as he was originally known, you see how the United States has changed its relationship with what they call the original sin—that is, slavery. The United States was based on slavery, despite the fine words in its constitution and in the Declaration of Independence. When we look at 2008 with Barack Obama being elected President of the United States, we see how much that story has changed. Surely that election in 2008 represents, more than any other, how when you change a government you change a country. Thankfully, that is what happened in Australia in November last year—we changed the direction of the country.

I will now take us back to Australia in 2008 and the Rudd government. We are creating a new industrial relations system—a much fairer industrial relations system that is bringing fairness back to Australian workplaces. We are delivering a better, fairer deal for pensioners and carers, we are stepping up to our obligations to boost international aid and, through the bill that is before the House, we are putting an end to the harsh and unfair compliance system put in place by the Howard government for people receiving social security payments such as Newstart Allowance, Youth Allowance, the parenting payment or special benefit. The previous government’s welfare reforms were more about penalising non-compliance than encouraging compliance. Unfortunately, it seems to be true to form for the Liberals to be all stick and no carrot. They have no faith in an Australian’s capacity to hear their better angels. They are more interested in penalising people rather than appealing to their better nature.

Unfortunately, the Howard-Costello government blindly pursued these reforms despite the warnings of numerous welfare agencies. The National Association of Community Legal Centres described the Howard system this way:

… at the core of the regime is an illogical and counterproductive eight week no payment penalty. It will be applied not only when a person commits a third offence (such as failing to attend an interview or a training course), but also as an immediate cut in payments for a “more serious offence”, including:

• refusing an offer of a suitable job (without a reasonable excuse);
• resigning without a good reason;
• failing to participate in full-time “Work for the Dole”, and
• being dismissed from employment due to misconduct.

For the first time this harsh no payment regime will apply to parents with children and people with disabilities.

Back in June 2006, the National Association of Community Legal Centres also warned the coalition government that they would see a surge in no-payment penalties. Once again the coalition ignored the NACLC’s advice. I refer to an article on the ABC News website by Simon Lauder on Wednesday 19 December 2007, with the heading ‘No sound legal basis for Centrelink penalties: Ombudsman.’ The article says:

The Commonwealth Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan—

very well trusted and respected—

says, people were effectively forced to breach their obligations because they could not lodge their regular paperwork while they were being investigated.

“Once a participation failure was under investigation, in some of the complaints to my office Centrelink officers had refused to accept the continuation form, which meant that the person would certainly be in breach and unable to demonstrate their continued eligibility for payment,” he said.

…            …            …

“But it certainly put the person in a real quandary about how they could reconnect and get the payment and what the future held for them.”

“These were people now not receiving any payment and clearly, in some instances, in quite distressing circumstances.”

Unfortunately that meant that we had a tenfold increase in the last three years. In 2004-05, there were only 3,800 non-payment penalties. However, last year there were more than 30,000 non-payment penalties, double that of the previous year.

These are not just figures and statistics; they are actually real, living, breathing people like you and like me, and as a result of these penalties many of them have suffered terribly. Homelessness Australia estimates that at least 30 per cent of people who had an eight-week non-payment penalty imposed lost their accommodation. In other words, last year more than 3,000 people would have ended up living on the street as a result of these penalties, and as anybody who has ever worked in or visited a homeless shelter knows this can begin a spiral that takes somebody’s life out of control and into a world where nobody ever wants to know them, a life where stench and the loss of dignity are commonplace.

Many Labor MPs, as you know, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, went to visit homelessness shelters between the election and the commencement of parliament. It certainly was quite an experience for me to return to a place that I used to take school kids to to help in the soup kitchen and to see, 10 years on, some of the same people and certainly hear some of the same stories and understand how horrible a life it is when suddenly you do not have a roof over your head. Those 3,000 stories, which I have merely touched on, must be quite horrific.

This bill before the House introduces a fairer compliance regime. It amends the Social Security Act 1991 and the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 to introduce a new compliance framework for around 620,000 people. The coalition system was more about penalty and less about support. However, the approach contained in this Rudd government bill is much more carrot and much less stick.

Firstly, the legislation introduces new no-show, no-pay failures. If a job seeker fails to attend a required activity such as Work for the Dole training or to seriously complete a job interview, they will lose one-tenth of their fortnightly payment for each subsequent day that they do not attend. This does not affect payments such as rent assistance or pharmaceutical allowance but will apply to Work for the Dole supplements. Next, this bill retains connection and reconnection failures. This will apply when a job seeker, without reasonable excuse, fails to attend an appointment with an employment service provider or does not meet their Jobsearch requirements. There is no financial penalty. However, the job seeker must attend a reconnection requirement. If they fail to do so, they will incur a one-fourteenth reduction in fortnightly payment for each day that they fail to so comply.

Further, eight-week non-payment penalties will be imposed for persistent and wilful noncompliance. This will only be as a last resort and accompanies a new, comprehensive compliance assessment. For example, if a job seeker refuses an offer of suitable employment, Centrelink will impose a serious failure. Also, if a job seeker misses three appointments or six days of activities such as Work for the Dole, Centrelink will consider whether their participation requirements are suitable, whether they should be referred for a job capacity assessment or whether a serious failure should be imposed. That is, we will look at the individual characteristics of the person in front of us. Obviously, with this personal touch comes dignity and the person is much more likely not to get into that spiral that I talked about of becoming just another homeless person. Nevertheless, a serious failure will result in an eight-week non-payment penalty. As I said, we have mainly focused on the carrot but there is still a stick to be used if necessary.

The big difference between the new system and the harsh Howard-Costello regime is that a non-payment period is reversible, depending on the circumstances. Under the current system, once a job seeker receives an eight-week penalty, they are not required to have any contact with Centrelink for that period and there is nothing they can do but ride out the eight-week non-payment period. That is often a very traumatic time, when they must turn to charities for support—or, even worse, to loan sharks and the like to get them through, where they pay exorbitant interest rates.

The government believe that job seekers receiving taxpayer funded income support should work hard to find work and that job seekers who refuse to do so should be penalised. But we also believe they should be given the chance to explain themselves and to redeem themselves. This is the fundamental difference between the Labor Party’s approach to humanity and the Liberal and National parties’ approach to humanity. I know this from having spent a lot of time working for one of the community organisations in my electorate, the Kyabra Community Association, which deals with people in housing stress or people who, just because of their refrigerator breaking down, can end up living in their car. Circumstances have got to that point. A simple little payment like that can trigger someone being in rental arrears. Once they are in rental arrears they are on the black mark list for tenancy and they cannot get a house. They end up couch-surfing or, if they have kids, living in their car. My electorate is a reasonably well-off electorate, but people still turn up at the Kyabra Community Association needing money for petrol so that they can drive on to another park. It is incredible.

Every morning when I go for a walk around my suburbs, I see a homeless guy who sleeps in the street in front of the shopping centre in Moorooka. It is incredible to hear his story. He is still able to receive payments; he is definitely not starving or anything like that. He chooses to live in the outer suburbs rather than in the city, where it is a lot tougher on the streets and people get rolled a lot more. He is able to stay in the outer suburbs. That is why it is so important that the government get these policies right. The cruel policies that were put in place by John Howard and Peter Costello were not appropriate. They looked good for that little bit of public posturing that John Howard like to put out there to show how tough we were on ‘dole bludgers’. But, unfortunately, they had horrific consequences and destroyed people’s lives. The Rudd government’s approach is much fairer.

What we need to remember is that the overwhelming majority of job seekers do the right thing. There are a few who deliberately rort the system, and they should be penalised, but it should not be presented as if all of the people seeking work are an evil underclass. This is especially the case with the tighter economic times in front of us, when we will be looking to blame someone. Certainly, members of my family have been unemployed. I have even been to a CES on occasion—not for very long. That was the good thing about being a teacher and a lawyer: there was always plenty of work around. However, the new system before us provides a safety net for vulnerable job seekers to ensure that if they do the right thing and meet their Job Search requirements their payments will be reinstated and they can stay on their feet.

In line with this government’s priorities, this bill also contains particular measures to improve the compliance regime in the bush. As someone who comes from the country, I am particularly interested in how this applies. The previous government, the coalition, failed to stand up for their electors in rural and regional areas. That is why we saw so many Labor people whose electorates touch on the bush being swept into power in November last year—because the National Party had betrayed the bush. I remember the National Party when I grew up; they stood up for the bush. Now they are too closely aligned with the Liberal Party. In fact, in Queensland we do not even have a National Party anymore. We have the Liberal National Party, or LNP. In inner city Brisbane, in my electorate, I go to functions and there is a Liberal National Party councillor attending with me. It is quite strange. It is like being back in St George, really.

The new system in front of us will ensure that Centrelink considers a job seeker’s individual circumstances. So we are going from having a sausage machine to treating people with dignity and as human beings. For example, if we are looking at a job seeker in the bush, we look at the availability of transport, which may impact on a job seeker’s ability to attend meetings and meet their participation requirements. It is one thing to say in the middle of Brisbane that you can catch the train or, in Melbourne, that you can catch a tram. For places like St George or Cunnamulla the nearest town is 300 kilometres away, so petrol—or even getting a car—is a significant consideration. That is why we have a much fairer approach to the specific job-seeking circumstances of people in the country.

As we all know—or certainly everyone on this side of the chamber knows—the world has changed significantly, economically, over the last few weeks. The global financial crisis has meant that the floor has shifted for so many people and so many businesses. So many decisions that were made by people with the hope and optimism of the beginning of the year have changed significantly. So as we face these uncertain times as a nation, when growth is forecast to slow and unfortunately we might see a rise in unemployment, we need to make sure that, with the few levers the government has, we get the mechanism just right. Now, more than ever, we need to see a fair employment service that focuses on our most disadvantaged job seekers.

I return to what I talked about at the start: how when you change a government you change the direction of the nation. I said that about the Rudd government. I also said that about the government of Barack Obama, who will be inaugurated as President on 20 January 2009. That will be 200 years after Abraham Lincoln was born, and I think that is the theme the new regime will be going for on that day. It is amazing how much things have changed since Abraham Lincoln made the Gettysburg Address, probably one of the most famous political speeches ever. It was a two-minute speech that followed a two-hour oration from someone no-one remembers. Some other politician had gone on for two hours, probably trying to filibuster or expand to fill the day—you know how politicians are asked to do that on occasion!—so everyone was dozing off. Then Lincoln got up and made that brilliant, incisive speech that defined what America was about. Now here we are, 200 years after Abraham Lincoln was born, with a black American President, Barack Obama, being sworn in on 20 January. I hope to be able to watch that on TV, although I think I might have a new child by then, so that might keep me busy—but maybe, hopefully, it will give me time to watch the TV.

These are incredible times. As I said, it is amazing to see how times have changed, from the story of the life of Frederick Douglass, a slave who became one of the great African-American activists, through to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finnwritten by a white person, but one of the most confronting books about slavery and probably up there with Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which I also think is a great work of literature though not of the quality of Huckleberry Finnthrough to The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Incidentally, that is one of Barack Obama’s favourite books. It is not on many of the lists, where he goes through more mainstream literature, but he has said elsewhere that it is one of his favourite books. I am impressed by that. It is certainly a book that moved a lot of people, and the Spike Lee film is true to the book.

To return to the legislation before the House, the change of government has changed the direction of policy and we can see that we have a much fairer employment service that focuses on our most disadvantaged job seekers. I commend the bill to the House.

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