Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on a subject that has been dear to my heart. The changes outlined in the Social Security Amendment (Flexible Participation Requirements for Principal Carers) Bill 2010 follow from the August 2008 Participation Review Taskforce report on the operation of the Welfare to Work reforms introduced to this parliament by the former coalition government in 2006, which sought to move people from pensions to Newstart allowance. Much of that legislation I supported, in particular the commitment of the former government to assist welfare recipients to move from a reliance on social welfare to gaining employment. There are some good reasons for that.

An article in the Australian titled ‘Reforms that work’, on Friday, 16 October last year, said:

Centre for Independent Studies research has found the number of families dependent on “parenting payments” has fallen by 120,000, or 20 per cent, since job-search requirements were imposed in 2006.

All of us in this place, for a lot of reasons, want to do all we can to reduce intergenerational welfare dependency. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 5 May this year, written by Adele Horin, said:

THOUSANDS of sole parents are worse off under rules that changed their child support entitlements and forced them to get a job or go on the dole, new research reveals.

A typical sole parent with one child aged between six and 12 could be as much as $6700 a year worse off as a result of reforms initiated by the Howard government and introduced from 2006 to 2008.

The study, by academics at Murdoch University in Perth, shows only when typical sole parents get a full-time job paying at least $45,000 can they be better off with the new arrangements. But this is unlikely for most as their youngest child is only seven or eight when they have to move off the Parenting Payment and into the workforce.

“It’s much more likely these women and children will experience poverty as a result of these changes,” Lisa Young, associate professor in law at Murdoch University and a co-author of the study, said.

So there are mixed blessings with this reform. As I said, most of us want to see the end of intergenerational dependency on welfare. There is no doubt that access to the paid workforce provides an independent income stream, greater social inclusion and a sense of self-reliance. The intention is noble in essence. However, entrenched barriers to the workforce remain for many. At the time of introducing the original bill, little was done to remove these barriers. Still, little has been done. Instead, there is a continued demonising of people reliant on social security payments—to attain some perceived political advantage, and now as a justification to balance the budget.

Any assistance to help individuals gain a place in the paid workforce is without question supportable. But if we truly want to see more people employed we must recognise the realities faced by those attempting to break the cycle of welfare dependency and exclusion. In my speech to the House during the introduction of the Welfare to Work bill in 2006, I was particularly concerned about sole parents and people with mental and physical disabilities. Given that single parent families continue to increase and that 87 per cent of sole parent families are headed by women, I continue to be concerned about the disproportionate impact such measures have on women in our communities.

As an example—one I made members acutely aware of during the drafting of the previous legislation—I drew attention to the negative impact of limiting the time allowed for a person on welfare to retrain or re-educate themselves. I brought into this house a woman who might have suffered the negative impact of these measures. This woman came to speak to members in this place. She had several children. Her husband had left her soon after the birth of her last child. If my memory serves me correctly, her last child was about five weeks old.

Her dramatic change in circumstances first forced her onto welfare but she did not want to burden the public purse for long, so she enrolled in university to get a degree in education. She wanted to become a teacher so that she would have more flexible working hours and be able to work to better suit her parenting responsibilities. Of course, she wanted to give her children opportunities as they grew up and to be able to adequately support them financially through that period. In addition to that, she wanted security in retirement. She wanted to be able to contribute to superannuation. Her commitment should be congratulated and supported. But under this legislation—and it has not changed, despite this review—she could only continue to receive welfare if she dropped out of university. I think there were some changes made that allowed people already in the system to continue, but if you were coming in new you were only allowed to take up retraining or education for 12 months; otherwise, you would lose your entitlement to income support.

I find this completely unacceptable. I see my good colleague the member for Shortland nodding her head. I think all the women in this place would find that unacceptable. So a person could not complete a degree in higher education. Giving people such a short time to undertake training and education before requiring them to move off welfare continues to consign those on welfare—women in particular—to the lowest paid jobs in our community and it entrenches poverty in old age. That is my deep concern about this. Let us genuinely help people move off welfare, but let us not restrict them from taking up jobs and opportunities that truly reflect their capacity. It is important for the development of this country that we allow all people to develop to the best of their ability. Putting these restrictions on people in the welfare system does not achieve that at all.

Let me outline some more of the barriers that still have not been dismantled. The electorate I represent encompasses outer suburbs, regional areas and rural communities. Across that spectrum I am acutely aware of the ramifications arising for low-income families and individuals from the triple whammy of the housing shortage, the high cost of rent in inner city areas and an impossible waiting list for public housing assistance—which can be over a decade. As a result, single parent families along with other welfare recipients are driven to outlying areas, which lack transport, childcare services and in some cases job opportunities.

But the barriers to becoming employed do not end there. There are those who have mental illness, who face all of these difficulties and, on top of those, poor mental health services. They are almost non-existent in some places. I refer to services that would diagnose and adequately treat mental illness. As well, they have to face the prejudice of employers. In my speech back in 2006, I raised this because there was a study conducted by Professor Vaughan Carr into mental illness and employment. He surveyed businesses and found that about 77 per cent of employers were reluctant to employ people with a mental disorder. We are also informed of similar disadvantages experienced by people who have epileptic seizures. The take-up rate of assistance to people with a disability by business has been extremely disappointing, and this is despite generous government funding and incentives in the past.

To add insult to injury, the Public Service figures for employing people with a disability are going seriously south. So government cannot even set an example to the rest of the business community that employing people with a disability—particularly mental illness—may actually provide some advantages in the workplace and certainly would go a long way to helping some of these people to get off welfare. I think it is a disgrace that when Public Service rates are so low we go out there and call on industry and business—private enterprise—to support people with a disability and to support people with mental illness. We even give awards and prizes in the Great Hall in this place. What hypocrisy. Governments are not doing their bit to set the example. We should be the ones setting the pace and setting the example for private enterprise to follow, and we do not do it.

Episodic mental illness presents particular challenges, as it may involve periods of inability to work, leading to a lack of continuity in the workforce. The additional cost of medication and treatment, if it can be sourced when needed, and the threat of the loss of a healthcare card—even when a person with a disability takes on a small amount of work and makes a small amount of money—makes this a particularly difficult hurdle to full-time or even part-time employment for those on welfare. All these things contribute to entrenching people in the welfare system. They do not help to remove those barriers.

The most disadvantaged in society, the disabled and single mothers in particular, continue to face those same disadvantages. How can people with a mental illness even hope for independence in the paid workforce when support is almost non-existent? How can a mother work when she cannot get access to child care? How can she develop her skills when she gets little financial support to do so? How can she get to work when the escalating cost of housing has driven her to the outskirts of town, and how can she pay her ever rising household bills and buy a car to get to work?

The facts are that while we speak to this bill providing some exemptions for people for whom work in the paid workforce would not be an option, we are witnessing a government budget which further entrenches hardship for the most disadvantaged. I can understand why the non-government organisations that service this community are so disappointed. Fresh from abandoning its policy to build 260 child-care centres, the government will cut child-care payments for out-of-pocket expenses by $278 a year. The annual child-care rebate will be capped at $7,500, a reduction on the annual cap of $7,778 a child. Families stand to lose $926 a child by the fourth year of this measure. The government has overlooked those factors preventing women from rejoining the workforce.

For those with mental illness, the government has removed social workers’ and occupational therapists’ ability to offer mental health services under Medicare. This is apart from the fact that if you need a psychiatrist just speak to any community service organisations that are dealing with homeless people or others with mental disability and it is almost impossible outside of hours to get attention for people having psychotic episodes. So now not only do we deny people; there is no money in this budget for mental health measures. Not only do we deny people mental health services through psychiatrists and through the hospitals but we have now knocked off the Medicare rebate. From July, Australians with mental illness who access these services will no longer be able to claim back the Medicare rebate currently available, which will frequently mean they are unable to afford the service. Some 1,500 doors to early intervention mental health services will be closed at the end of June this year for vulnerable Australians with mental health issues. Along with the already stretched psychiatric services, this is a particular blow to people suffering mental health conditions.

The government has removed social workers’ and occupational therapists’ ability to offer mental health services under Medicare, and this move will hurt thousands of Australians and further entrench the welfare cycle of poverty for those people who suffer mental illness. It is a tragedy; it truly is a tragedy. We see many thousands of people—I think somebody quoted 100,000 people—on the streets in this country at night. Some of those people are on welfare. Most of them are on the streets because they have got undiagnosed, untreated mental illnesses. Again, just speak to anyone working in the sector, working out on the streets at night, providing shelter, providing services to this demographic. We are not becoming a very inclusive country; we are becoming a country excluding a large section of our community.

It is very unfortunate that the bill before us does not do more to assist people in these categories. There are of course circumstances that would prevent parents of young children moving from social welfare payments to the paid workforce. I am pleased to see that some of the recommendations of the taskforce have acknowledged these special circumstances and that many have been adopted in this bill. I pay tribute to the work of the Participation Review Taskforce, chaired by Patricia Faulkner AO. It is a very good report within the scope of what they were asked to do, but it does not go to the heart of many of the barriers that stop people with a disability, single parents and others from actually getting off that welfare cycle and getting into the paid workforce. Some of the recommendations that have been picked up in the bill that we speak to today that I completely support are those under the terms of reference entitled ‘the flexibility of participation requirements’.

I had at least one person who was caught in this come to me. If a sole parent—in this case it was a woman—takes up work with a school, for example, in the tuckshop or as a cleaner, he or she then has to go back and meet their work participation test with the department to continue to be eligible for income support. I am pleased to see that one of the recommendations being picked up is:

The Taskforce recommends that parents should not be required to meet their part-time participation requirements during the fortnight that includes the Christmas and New Year public holidays.

The Taskforce recommends that parents with regular paid work during school-term time should not need to meet part-time participation requirements over the long school holidays if they reasonably expect to resume their usual hours of work at the beginning of the next school year.

This particular change is a victory for common sense, and I know that it will be welcomed by families in the electorate of Pearce who are affected by this.

Other measures in this bill include consideration for large families—that is, an exemption extended to people with large families to care for—those who are engaged in distance education or home schooling of their children and those involved in foster care and kinship care. As we heard the member for Blair say earlier, those who are subjected to domestic violence—which continues to be a deeply entrenched problem with Australian communities—will now get, instead of a 16-week case-by-case exemption, an automatic 12-month exemption from the work participation requirements. The tests have also been eased for those caring for a child with a disability or a medical condition. There are a number of measures which I do not have time to pursue in total. These are common-sense changes that have been made and they are very welcome.

This bill is a sensible furthering of the exemptions first set out under the Welfare to Work provisions of 2006—but, of course, we are still waiting, as I said, to see the true tackling of the issues. It is undeniable that the best way out of the welfare trap is indeed to access a job in the paid workforce. Not earning a wage can have a profound consequence that reaches across society. The 2008 OECD report Growing unequal? Income distribution and poverty in OECD countries commented:

Most of the relative poverty in Australia occurs in jobless households where no one is working; in fact, Australia has the lowest rate of ‘in-work’ relative poverty among families in the OECD.

That trend has remained quite constant in Australia. In 2001, the Smith Family’s report by Ann Harding of the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling found that only three per cent of households with a wage earner were in poverty, compared to 31 per cent of those relying on welfare.

Employment and lack of employment have a direct bearing on the material wellbeing of individuals and their families. In 2005, speaking on the Welfare to Work reforms, I quoted the figure showing 700,000 children growing up in households with no job. Two-thirds of those households were headed up by single parents. Professor Stanley outlined some of the problems of that in her book Children of the lucky country?

In conclusion, breaking the unemployment and poverty cycle is not just about reducing welfare payments to balance the national accounts; it is about removing the considerable barriers that welfare recipients encounter in trying to find jobs in the paid workforce. We could do and should do much more to support those on social welfare payments to help them break the cycle of poverty. (Time expired)

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