Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I doubly thank you for the indulgence of sitting in the chair a bit longer so I can get my speech in before I relieve you in the chair. I really appreciate it very much.

I want to speak to the Social Security Amendment (Flexible Participation Requirements for Principal Carers) Bill 2010 in particular because as a former teacher I am very, very passionate about the fact that one of the most important things that we can do for people in our community, and indeed expect of people in our community, is to engage in the opportunities for work and education. I do not exempt principal carers from that. I have met too many women in my years teaching in TAFE who have spent years and years out of the workforce, raising a family and doing a very productive activity in our community, but who then through particular circumstances—most often a marriage break-up—find themselves in a situation where they have got to provide leadership to their children in the family and provide income support, and they suddenly realise how isolated they have become from the workforce and, indeed, from the community. There were some good programs that ran at TAFE concerned with getting those women in particular back into skills and training and back into the workforce. So I am a great supporter of the concept of mutual responsibility through these particular income support payments both for the principal carers and for the children for whom they are a role model.

The important part of that principle and that commitment to seeing that people actually engage with education and training and work is for us to do it in a way that does not have, if you like, the counteracting impact to our intention. If our intention in these sorts of bills and in that mutual responsibility is to support and encourage parents to engage and participate in the workforce, whether through training initially or a job, short term or long term, then we should do that in a way that actually enables them to participate given their individual circumstances. Sometimes it is very important, I think, when we put this sort of principle in place through legislation—as has happened across both governments now and it is a principle that has been fairly accepted across the political spectrum—that we also have the capacity to look at the outcomes and ask whether they are achieving the intention. I think that, by and large, those requirements are achieving those intentions and I have worked long enough in the TAFE sector to have seen really good initiatives that enabled principal carers—dads and mums, but mainly mums—to take those opportunities.

However, we did see the previous minister, who had the original carriage of this bill, set up a task force to do exactly that—to review how the participation requirement was operating. That task force produced a report. It was under the chairmanship of Ms Patricia Faulkner AO from KPMG. It was provided to the government in August 2008 and became the basis for the recommendations that the minister took into the previous budget—and it is interesting that we are discussing it in this budget week. Those recommendations are now enacted in this bill to take effect from 1 July this year. They are sensible changes to the requirements so that people can undertake what we expect of them without being put in a situation where in fact they are worse off, rather than better off, which is our intention.

It creates four major changes, and I think it is important to acknowledge those. The first is that the current exemption will extend the existing 12-month automatic exemption to principal carers with existing large families. I think the task force got quite a bit of evidence about this, and many of us can well appreciate that, if you have four or more children, even when the youngest one goes to school the impacts and requirements of the caring role are far beyond a carer’s capacity to carry out those participation requirements in the same way as someone who may have one or two younger children. So there is an acknowledgement that people with four or more children have specific circumstances. There is also acknowledgement that if parents have their children undertaking home schooling or distance education they undertake a part of an educative role as well and so we need to take their situation into consideration.

Also, importantly, the bill addresses the issues raised by the task force around the domestic violence exemption. As it existed, it did not apply to people who had stayed in their current situation. While one may well at heart understand how that was created in the first place, the reality is that, through the various ways in which domestic violence is managed and women and men are supported if they are experiencing domestic violence, to not allow them the exemption for 16 weeks in the participation rule because they had not as yet removed themselves from that family home is often counterproductive to what you are trying to achieve. To me, that is a sensible change.

There is also a new exemption created for respite and emergency foster carers. People could well understand why that would be in there. That exemption applies for the period of time in which they have a child in their care and up to 12 weeks between placements, enabling them to continue to do that very important work in our communities.

Finally, there is also a recognition of kinship carers where they are under the authority of the state or territory case plan. They are sensible amendments to me that indicate that, whilst these principal carers are still required to undertake participation, they will be able to do it in more flexible ways. The exemption will be able to be applied in situations where we would logically think they should be applied but where the hands of departmental officials had been tied under the legislation as it existed.

There are important changes also being made through a legislative instrument and amendments to the guide to social security law. They are also about creating more flexibility within that participation. While people are still required to do the 15 hours participation, there are some important changes there to allow part-time study, for example, to be included, including contact and non-contact hours. As a former TAFE teacher, I know that if you are trying to give someone the skills to re-engage in the workforce you may get them into a course that is eight to 10 hours because you want to give them four to five hours of individual support. That might be literacy support; it might be tutorial support. There are a range of vocational subjects that you provide that are not part of formal study that are important to enable them to undertake study. If they are not there then you are setting them up to fail in their studies. So it is important to have that in there, as well as the ability to combine activities. They could be doing a bit of part-time study and a bit of part-time work. There is the ability for volunteer work, so long as you can identify that it has vocational aspects, to be included.

Then there is participation in NEIS—the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme. Lots of women who re-enter the workforce these days do so through home based businesses. I know a lady in my own area with a card-making business who is doing a roaring trade now. She is doing wedding invitations, 21st cards and stationery. She set her business up through participation in NEIS. She has children at school and is a single mum and she is doing tremendously well. In fact, she was nominated for an award at the Illawarra business awards the year before last. I think that is a good initiative and a good avenue for some of those primary carers looking to re-enter the workforce.

In summary, I think it is important to acknowledge that the intention of this bill is to say, ‘We think participation and engagement are important. We don’t want to see people make the mistake of staying outside the system for long periods of time and becoming disengaged and permanently locked out of the workforce. We want to make sure that we are achieving that intention by being flexible and sensible about the way in which these requirements are applied so that we encourage and support people and not actually discourage them and give them bad experiences and have them decide that the whole thing is just a punishment rather than an opportunity.’ I commend the bill to the House.

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