Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Social Security Amendment (Parenting Payment Transitional Arrangement) Bill 2011. This is a good piece of legislation because it is about making sure that people have the benefit of equity and equality with respect to their arrangements. It is part of our broader framework in terms of learning or earning and getting people off welfare into work. It is about making sure that we give people an incentive to do so. We are unapologetic about the fact that there is a carrot and stick approach as well in what we are doing in social security. This bill will amend the Social Security Act 1991 so that only those children who are born to or come into the principal care of their parent before 1 July 2011 will count towards the grandfathered status of the parenting payment recipient.

Under the Welfare to Work reforms, the eligibility for parenting payment was changed so that recipients who claimed the payment from 1 July 2006 ceased to be eligible once the recipient's youngest child turned 16 if the recipient was partnered, or eight years of age if the recipient was single. Prior to these changes, the eligibility of parenting payment ceased when the child turned 16 years of age. Existing parenting payment recipients on 1 July 2006 are covered by the transitional grandfathering arrangement, whereby they continue to be assessed under the previous rules and if their circumstances change may remain eligible for the payment until the youngest child turns 16 years of age. So it is about making sure that people are treated similarly. The amendment in this bill will limit the grandfathering transitional arrangement so that only children who are born to or come into the principal care of the parent before 1 July 2011 will count towards the grandfathered status of the parenting payment recipient. This is a matter of equity. It is also a matter of encouragement. It is a matter of a stick in many ways as well.

I cannot let the previous speaker get away with saying some of the things he did. He talked about ducking the hard yards. This government did not duck the hard yards. We were faced with the global financial crisis, with what the Treasury said would be 200,000 jobs lost. There are 1.5 million Australians working in the retail sector and 250,000 Australians working in the construction sector. What did we do? We made sure that those jobs were secure. We took a temporary, targeted and timely approach, going into deficit but making sure that by way of our Keynesian response we kept people in employment. I cannot count the number of times that people told me they had jobs as a result of the BER projects, the infrastructure projects. We saw many people get a start, getting off welfare and into work—young people, apprentices, people who had opportunity, people who had in part been recipients of parenting payment and other social security payments who actually got jobs as a result of what we were doing. I visited Bremer TAFE at Bundamba in my electorate, which received $2 million under our payments—opposed, of course, by those opposite—to improve the campus to make sure that single mothers, young people and older people could take the opportunities in their lives to get off welfare. Many people there were single mothers. There was a childcare facility there where they learned responsibilities and parenting skills. They were given opportunities. There were also arrangements where people could learn skills, trades, English and computer skills. We put the money into Bremer TAFE, opposed by those opposite. That is our idea of getting people off welfare into work. We have given a record amount of money for higher education.

We heard people opposite talk about the fact that they were the great reformers on social security. The member for Menzies was talking about that. But I will tell you something. Their idea of social security reform not just in the family life of people but in the working life of people was to impose Work Choices on the higher education sector, whether it was Bremer TAFE or the University of Queensland at St Lucia or Ipswich. That was their idea. They feign concern. They say that they are for reform with respect to social security and family payments. They say that they are in favour of helping those in need. Yet their action within government was to oppose real reform, and their own reform was more a matter of punishing those who were poor, weak, oppressed or disadvantaged, such as migrants.

We see it every day not just by their actions but by their language. We see it in question time. There is a harshness, brutality, meanness and dispiriting anger that those opposite keep showing towards those on welfare, those who are poor and those who are suffering. There is a real born-to-rule mentality and it comes through from the member for Menzies and all those opposite in the way they go on in this place. Even the Nats do it.

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