Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

While I say it is a great pleasure for me to speak on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Employment Services Reform) Bill 2008, I feel great sympathy for the member for Corangamite for the condition of his voice. This is a great piece of legislation. It is something that everybody in the community should be really proud of. I believe it is a great piece of legislation because it really restores some balance in the employment participation area. If there is one thing that Labor can be truly proud of with this it is that we want to strike the right balance between fair and decent participation for job seekers, the unemployed, so that they have access to the right job network type of system to make sure they have the tools at their disposal not only to look for work but to gain work and that those who do not participate or meet their obligations to the community are penalised in a proper and fair manner. I think that is a reasonable position to take. It is a reasonable position to strike a balance between encouragement and incentive, and penalty and punishment. I have to say that it is quite sad that, for the past decade or more, that just has not been the case. I say that is sad because I think it has actually provided a great disservice to fair dinkum job seekers who are trying to do the right thing. The majority of Australians understand quite clearly that if you are out of work you should genuinely look for work and find a job because it is always better to be in a job than to be unemployed.

On our side of politics, from Labor’s point of view, we believe very strongly that people who can work should work, and they should always be actively out there contributing to society—contributing to the community, contributing to the tax system and playing their part—and that for those who do not, who would deliberately shirk their responsibilities, who for one reason or another do not meet their obligations, there ought to be some sort of penalty. We do not walk away from that. We do not walk away from the fact that those who deliberately abuse the system should be penalised in some way, punished in some way, because they are dependent on the goodwill of the taxpayer and taxpayer dollars. We do not make any bones about the issue of dealing with people who deliberately and repeatedly shirk their responsibilities, who do not meet their part of mutual obligation. They have an obligation to society to be out there and, if they cannot find work, to at least genuinely be looking for work or enter into training programs—to participate in the system. I think that is the bare minimum, the minimum requirement: that they actively seek employment or actively participate in training and actively engage with the requirements that they need to meet as put by their case manager or someone else.

So let us be clear at the outset of the debate that this bill is not about somehow weakening or growing soft or taking just a lighter view. This bill is actually about fairness, about restoring balance, about doing the right thing. It is about doing the right thing for job seekers and it is about doing the right thing in terms of the taxpayer and the taxpayer dollars. But what is wrong and what is sad is when you have a government, the former Howard government, enter into arrangements where job seekers were either harshly penalised or otherwise harshly dealt with in a manner which did not encourage them to participate. You had a contrary, contradictory system, which implied that it was trying to get greater participation from job seekers yet instilled and compounded a penalty system which actually discouraged people from participation; it actually removed them from the system.

So we had a situation where the former Howard government gave the impression to the community that it was out there doing its bit, that it was being tough on job seekers, those who are unemployed, but their policy and their punishment regime really did not encourage job seekers or in any way give people an incentive to participate. When, for whatever reason, people were breached, they fell through the system and their entitlements were removed for a period of eight weeks—nonpayment for eight weeks. What did it actually mean? It meant the government washed their hands of that person, completely washed their hands of them, and walked away from them. No longer was that person required to participate, no longer was that person required to connect, no longer was that person required to engage. It was merely a punishment system: ‘We will punish you by taking away from you any source of income that you have without consideration of its impact.’ But at the same time, which I think made it much worse, there was no compulsion from the government to require that person to do anything during that eight-week period.

Where is the sense in that? If you are going to punish someone, fine; do that. Breach them, take away their payment, but do it in a fair manner and then require them to make amends, to rectify that position. Look at why they are in that position; what should they now be doing? You cannot just wash your hands of them and say, ‘Right, for eight weeks we’re not paying you; we don’t want to see you, we don’t want to know you; go and sit on your hands idly and do nothing.’ That was all that was required. That was all that the previous system contained.

We on this side of the House have a different view, and we have maintained that view: people should participate. There should be incentives in place to make them participate and there should also be penalties in place for people who do not want to participate. I fear that, while that is common sense and that would make sense to people listening, it is not just about punishing someone; it is also about trying to address their behaviour. Perhaps there is a particular issue for them. But if they just do not want to work they deserve to be punished by having their payments removed for a period of time. During that time, people should be retrained or required to participate, not just disappear for a period of eight weeks.

I will get into the detail of some of the impact of that policy of the previous Howard government, not only on the job seeker but also on the community, on the Job Network agencies and on the charitable organisations that look after people who cannot look after themselves or who find themselves in desperate circumstances. I think the great tragedy of the Howard government’s ideology on this was that it was just about punishment. It was about removing somebody’s income for a period of time. There was nothing else in the former government’s policy that encouraged people to do anything, bar sitting on their hands. The former government’s policy was: ‘We’ll take the money off you. Now go away; we don’t want to see you.’ That was the clear message and the clear policy.

What we are doing today through this bill is finally restoring some balance between participation and penalty. We believe that both should occur and both should occur in a balanced manner. The Social Security Legislation Amendment (Employment Services Reform) Bill before us today is a positive step for welfare compliance. It is in stark contrast to what we saw from the now opposition for more than a decade. What the Rudd government has done is to introduce legislation that will give effect to measures that were announced in the budget, and they are designed to introduce a new job seeker compliance system. The changes are part of a broader scheme—New Employment Services, a new scheme that will begin on 1 July 2009.

The reality is that the welfare penalty system, the punishment system, just did not work. It did not encourage anybody to seek work—in fact, it was a disincentive. If you think about it in practical terms as to what it would mean for those who may be doing the wrong thing—and there is always a bludger here or there, and they should be punished; we are not disagreeing with that—not everyone should be thrown into the one basket. If you are going to punish someone, do it with measure and do it with some recourse in mind—some sort of rehabilitation, some sort of avenue to say, ‘We’re going to do something extra. We don’t want to just continually punish a person over and over; we want to get them into a job. We want to get them to participate. We want to get them to contribute to the tax system.’ Shouldn’t that be the goal? Or was it the goal of the previous government, the Howard government, to simply punish people? ‘Blind punishment—outcome irrelevant.’ It is just about withdrawing their payment for a period of eight weeks.

I am sure that some people who received a number of breaches and had their payments removed for eight weeks said, ‘I’m not happy. Whether I was in the right or in the wrong, my payment has been removed for eight weeks and I now don’t have to do anything. I can just sit at home.’ Maybe, out of spite, some of them did do that. ‘Stuff them all,’ might have been the view of some people, ‘If no-one’s going to require me to do anything during that period, I’m not going to.’ It is the wrong message. It did not carry with it any incentive and it was bad government policy, bad public policy, bad welfare policy. It was bad work participation policy, and the evidence of that is all around us. It is all around us in the simple statistics that come out of the Job Network and out of Centrelink. During the period of change when the Howard government introduced this penalty system, this punishment system, there was a doubling of the amount of non-payment periods from previous years. It seems that at the same time the punishment came in there was this zeal from the then government to enforce it even harder. The old system was a populist policy of ‘three strikes and you’re out’. That always sounds good. You can always carry on and hype it up. The old ‘three strikes and you’re out’ always sounds good, but what does it achieve? What does it do? What is the outcome? What is the intended public policy outcome from the government?

I think I have some idea. Firstly, it was just about the politicking, because ‘three strikes and you’re out’ just sounded good. Who cares about the job seeker? Who cares about work participation? Did it achieve a goal; did it actually achieve an outcome? In public policy and in government, you should at least have some goals and outcomes to say, ‘We’re trying to achieve this end, we’re going to do it through this public policy and we’re going to penalise people along the way and reward people along the way.’ What was the intended outcome? One would have to assume that the intended outcome of a penalty system for job seekers not participating would be to encourage them to further participate, to actually go and get a job, and, if they cannot get a job, to attend training, to further attend courses or to at least participate, turn up to interviews and do all of that.

Was that the outcome of their penalty system? No. In fact, there was no change; none at all. Participation rates did not go up, turn-up rates did not go up and the number of people actually finding more jobs did not go up as a result of this policy. So I think it is clear to anyone who understood it or who perhaps was impacted by it that in the end the government were not interested in actually getting people into jobs. They were just interested in penalising them because it looked good—‘three strikes and you’re out’, that sort of image. There are always a few who think you have just got to keep punishing people without a view to actually reforming some of their behaviour or actually getting them into a job in the first place, which might actually help.

The previous government, the Howard government, also did very little to actually look at the specifics of the problems that people might have had, why they could not comply or did not comply. For a whole range of people there were some very serious issues. We know as a matter of fact, from a number of agencies, that around 15 per cent of those people who received an eight-week non-payment period and lost their income for eight weeks actually had a mental illness and really struggled. They really struggled with daily life and, for their troubles, the already complicated life and struggles they had were further complicated by having eight weeks—two whole months—of any income removed from them. No consideration was given to their plight.

There were a further five per cent who were already in very unstable housing arrangements, which complicated their ability to turn up to a job interview or to participate in some way. And I have got to say this, even though it is pretty hard: the government did not care; they were not interested. It was never about trying to improve the lot of these people; it was just about punishing them and having this populist image out there of being tough—‘We’ll just keep punishing people’—but never really taking into consideration just what impact their policies were having on ordinary people. In the end, punishment for punishment’s sake is always bad public policy. Punishment should be about sending clear messages that people need to change their behaviour. If you can do that punishment in a measured way and escalate it up rather than have an all-in, all-out type method, then you have got some hope.

The previous government’s policy was ‘three strikes and you’re out for eight weeks’, a non-reversible decision which left people in a position where they could not really alter what had taken place—whether they were right or wrong, and there would have been both. There would have been some times when they were in the wrong and deserved it and other times when they had some really genuine extenuating circumstances, but you could not do anything about it. Under our policy, it is an escalation process. We will actually work with that person. We will breach them and we will give them a penalty and we will punish them, but we will escalate it up. We will say, ‘Here’s your first punishment and it will be commensurate with what you have done. If you do not turn up for one day, you will lose one day’s pay.’

I think that is a fair thing. That is what we all expect in our working lives. I think that is what a fair Australian would expect: if you do not turn up for a day, you will lose a day’s pay unless you have got a very good reason—unless you are sick or there is some really good reason why you could not be there. And there are good reasons. Sometimes people cannot get there because their public transport fails them or their car fails them. We are not talking about wealthy people. We are talking about people who might be really struggling, and there are these circumstances.

By escalating it up, you give people an opportunity. You say to them, ‘We’re going to punish you today because you have done the wrong thing, but we’re going to give you an opportunity to redress that. You have an opportunity to grow and learn, to participate and do the right thing by the community and the taxpayer by further participating.’ This legislation does that. It is measured, it is structured and it is about delivering an outcome that it is in the best interests of the two most important people in this debate—one, the job seeker, who needs to actually find a job; and, two, the taxpayer. They are the two most important people in this debate.

It is not about populist policy. It is not about looking good or looking bad or ‘three strikes and you are out’ and other catchphrases. It is about actually delivering an outcome and making sure that those people who can work do find work and that, for the people who struggle to find work, we find the cause of that struggle. An effective use of taxpayer dollars means that, when we spend money on people looking for a job, we get an outcome. It is not just about penalties; it is not just about punishment. Punishment with no goal in sight is useless. We have the data and statistics on this: it did not actually effect any change. If the goal was to punish people to get them to change their behaviour, it did not work. It is as simple as that. Find anywhere where it worked. What we actually saw was a doubling, on average, if not more—and in my electorate of Oxley it went up to 109 per cent—of the breaching and penalty regime. It actually doubled. Was there a better outcome? No.

That is unfortunate. I have to say that that is unfortunate because at least if the policy had worked you might be able to stand up and say, ‘I did not like the policy because I thought it wasn’t measured and scaled and a whole range of things. I thought it was punitive. But at least it did have an impact. At least there was a 50 per cent reduction and there was incentive for people and they were encouraged to go out there and find work.’ But the outcome was the opposite. It was a disincentive. Instead of re-engaging the job seeker, it turned the job seeker against the agency. It made it even harder for them to go out and find work. For eight weeks that person understood that they would not get one cent and it was irreversible. So what did they do? They went off and sulked and did nothing. They were required to do nothing. If the government had been serious, they would have breached them for eight weeks, taken their payment away from them for eight weeks and then said, ‘Now you will attend this or there will be further breaches. You now will participate and you will understand that you need to meet your obligations.’ But the government did not do that. Their policy was just about the punishment; it was not about participation, reconnecting or doing something for the taxpayer. As a taxpayer, I think there is an expectation that my tax dollars will be spent in a way that means they are not continually respent on the same problem because you cannot fix it. Fix the problem. Deal with the core issue.

We are not defending anyone who is a shirker. If you are a shirker and you are not meeting your obligations, you will be penalised. Under our policy and legislation the penalties still exist, but they escalate through. We are going to give people opportunities. We are going to make sure that we work with them. We are going to make sure that, in the end, the goal is good public policy. It is about saving taxpayer dollars. It is about getting people into the workforce and making sure that they contribute to the tax regime in this country and to the community. (Time expired)

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