Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Parramatta. She went to the detail of the Social Security Amendment (Parenting Payment Transitional Arrangement) Bill 2011 and described all aspects of it very succinctly. After listening to her contribution to the debate I feel it will be difficult for me to improve upon the information she has put before the parliament tonight.

The first thing I would like to say in speaking to this bill is that we are back here in this House fixing up a mistake made in 2006 by the Howard government. I do not know how many times I have spoken in this parliament revisiting legislation in which the opposition has made mistakes that have required immediate action for the problem to be rectified. This bill limits the application of the parenting payment transitional arrangements, or the grandfathering, so that only children who were born to or came into the principal care of their parents before 1 July 2011—this year—will count towards the grandfathered status of the parenting payment recipient. That shows just how poorly drafted the original legislation was. It shows the enormous number of problems that existed in the original legislation. The amendment in this bill is the first of a number of changes that will be made to the eligibility for a certain group of parenting payment recipients. This is part of the government's welfare to work reforms. Quite a tranche of legislation will pass through the parliament to give greater opportunities for people who are unemployed or are receiving a single parent payment to get the skills and support they need to re-enter the workforce. This is about creating opportunities for those people who would like to re-enter the workforce but are unable even to contemplate that because of the barriers that are preventing them.

Currently, parents who started claiming income support after 1 July 2006 are eligible for parenting payment until their youngest child turns eight years old, if the parent is single, or six years old, if the parent is partnered. However, those who were receiving parenting payment before 1 July 2006 are covered by the grandfathered component and are eligible to receive parenting payment until their youngest child turns 16. This bill limits the grandfathered transitional arrangements, so that only children who were born or came into principal care before 1 July 2011 count towards the grandfathered status of the parenting payment recipient. This change will gradually align the rules that apply to different recipients and ensure that, over time, the same rules will apply to all parenting payment recipients, regardless of when they first claimed the payment. That is very important. It is about ensuring that people are treated the same and creating equity in the system. Other changes to parenting payment eligibility will further limit the coverage of the grandfathered transitional arrangements to provide even more consistent eligibility rules from 1 January 2013. It is very important that this problem that was created by the Howard government is fixed.

We all know that the global financial crisis impacted enormously throughout the world. Australia performed just about the best of any country. We were able to keep unemployment at a very low level, but the situation now exists where we need to upskill our workforce so we can fill jobs in areas where there is a skills shortage. Joblessness among families is a significant social and economic problem in Australia. The government is determined to provide opportunities to those people who are long-term unemployed or who have been out of the workforce for a significant amount of time for a variety of reasons, whether it was for the purpose of child rearing or because they have unable to get a job because they do not have the skills. A key objective of the government is to create opportunity and to equip these jobless families with the skills to train and then re-enter the workforce.

Shortland electorate is in the southern part of the Hunter region, on the northern part of the Central Coast of New South Wales. It falls within the Wyong Shire Council local government area, which is one of 10 areas that have been identified to trial a program of local solutions. There are a lot of very disadvantaged job seekers in the northern part of the Central Coast—people find it difficult to access employment. A number of very good initiatives have taken place already. Trade training centres in high schools in the Shortland electorate have created new opportunities for students attending those centres. They are developing the skills they need to be able to access jobs, rather than become long-term unemployed. In addition to that, the Australian technical college that was languishing on a piece of paper has been devolved to those same schools and is now providing training opportunities for young people living in an area where there is a very high rate of youth unemployment.

This government is about creating opportunity, assisting people to move from welfare to work and ensuring that long-term jobless parents—people who have been unemployed and are on parental payments or relying on income support—have the opportunity to re-enter the workforce and to engage. By doing that, they ensure not only their own wellbeing, by getting so many life choices, but also the wellbeing of their children. It is all about creating opportunity. The legislation before us today goes towards creating equality between people who are receiving parenting payment and towards creating opportunity.

The grandfathering of the parenting payment created an inequity. We are fixing an enormous problem that was caused by the Howard government, which did not put its mind to detail and, as a result, created this problem. Along with the changes contained in this bill, the government will provide extra money for training, extra money for community support and extra money to help with career counselling, so that those people who are unemployed and have been on parental payment will be ready to re-enter the workforce. I commend this piece of legislation to the House and say to the opposition: we fix the problems that you create.

Debate interrupted.

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