Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As I was saying yesterday, these allowances include access to the pensioner concession card, the pharmaceutical allowance and the telephone allowance. In the last budget, the taper rate for Newstart was amended to allow single parents to earn $62 a week before they lose a reduced taper of 40c in the dollar from their allowance. Additionally to the removal of the grandfathering clause for parents, this bill raises the limits for permissible liquid assets from $2,500 to a maximum of $5,000 for singles, and from $5,000 to $10,000 for people with dependants. Effectively, this translates to potentially a shorter waiting time before Newstart payments commence.

The Social Security Legislation Amendment (Fair Incentives to Work) Bill 2012 also seeks to define which payments should be categorised as 'termination payments' with a view to ensuring consistency across the board when considering an income maintenance period, therefore bringing the definition of 'termination payments' in line with the policy intent of the Guide to social security law. Nonetheless, whilst the Welfare to Work reforms penned by the coalition were aimed at assisting Australians off welfare and into the workplace, the main aim of this bill is to grasp much-needed savings for the government. The expected savings to be derived from this bill are in the order of $691.9 million over four years.

My beliefs are pretty simple in that it is a hand up, not a handout, and I am sure that this view is shared by many Australians. From my perspective, it is the core responsibility of government to have mechanisms which extend the hand of assistance to members of our society when they are down, not to carry them. As a working parent, I understand the difficulties associated with raising children and maintaining a career, particularly in that both of my sisters have at some stage in their lives been single mothers.

I note with disappointment that the government has failed to address the effects of this bill in terms of incentives or initiatives to get those people affected back in to the workforce. Based on figures from 2011, within the Northern Territory there are around 2,800 partnered parenting payment recipients, along with nearly 4,000 single parenting payment recipients. Combined, that is almost 7,000 people, out of a population of around 230,000, receiving these payments. That equates to roughly three per cent of Territorians. Echoing the words of my colleagues, I reinforce the adage: the age of entitlement is at an end. It is not feasible and it is not fair on hardworking Australians. This bill, derived from a government bleeding in debt, comes at a time when belt-tightening is a must. It is a sad irony that the government will cut money here but will be squandering and splashing cash payments around at the same time.

Promoting a strong workforce of parents is not a new concept; it follows on from the Howard government's Welfare to Work agenda and is an issue many previous governments have progressed. In the case of the Howard government, $3.6 billion was invested to support and assist people to transition from welfare to work. In brief review, the reforms included that, post 1 July 2006, all new unpartnered applicants were no longer eligible for parenting payment single when their youngest child turned eight. Generally this meant transferring to the Newstart allowance. However, existing recipients of a parenting payment could be grandfathered on this payment until their youngest child turned 16. At the time, the Howard government's Welfare to Work reforms introduced a range of complementary services to assist parents in their transition into employment once their youngest child had reached school age. A new employment participation service was offered to parents with school-age children, designed to ensure they had the skills they needed to gain a job. The coalition's policy also included flexibility and provisions whereby parents could refuse a job if they were not more than $50 a fortnight better off once the costs of, for example, child care were factored in, or if they had to travel for more than 60 minutes each way to work. Research undertaken by DEEWR derived from the Welfare to Work reforms demonstrate that there was a 23 per cent increase in the number of single principal carer parents leaving income support after six months, in comparison to the previous three years, with 38 per cent moving off payments during the 2006-07 financial year. The report also showed that over 70 per cent of principal carer parents left income support for employment. The situation was similar for partnered principal carer parents on Newstart allowance, where 45 per cent were no longer in receipt of income support payments after six months, compared to 32 per cent in the 2005-06 financial year.

Whilst I will not oppose this bill, there are some concerns that I wish to voice to the House. Unlike the coalition's Welfare to Work agenda introduced in 2006, within the bill currently under debate there is no additional funding to support parents into work. If this government were truly committed to assisting parents back to work, it would provide the additional assistance necessary to drive this initiative. The Gillard Labor government has slashed $162.2 million in assistance for job seekers from Job Services Australia. Additionally, it has cut a further $44.3 million from outcome payments for Job Services Australia providers. Parents who are working or seeking work could be worse off financially due to work participation requirements, which may force them into accepting a job where they are worse off financially.

Conversely, the Howard government reforms promised parents that they could refuse a suitable job offer if they were not better off by $25 a week. Welfare to Work for job seekers was introduced by the coalition government at a time of strong surpluses and low unemployment, unlike the environment which the Gillard Labor government has created. We now experience massive debt and deficit, rising unemployment and a business sector reluctant to hire. This will make the unsupported transition from welfare to work that much harder for the parents captured by this legislation. This government should be ashamed of itself.

To add to these concerns, the Gillard Labor government espouses all kinds of hypocrisy surrounding the issue. Labor voted against the Welfare to Work reforms of the Howard government in 2005. Additionally, recently Labor moved to decrease the parenting payment cut-off age of the youngest child from 16 to 12. This further decrease now demonstrates that this bill is more about achieving a budgetary saving than about policy that is genuinely committed to assisting people from welfare to work, particularly given the tough economic times now facing Australian families.

In April 2005, the member for Sydney attacked the then Howard government for allocating additional childcare places in support of mothers with school aged children returning to work by accusing the coalition of introducing the change as a means to ensure single parents had no excuse not to work. She is recorded as saying on ABC radio at the time:

It is part of the government's plan to punish people who are out of the workforce to take away any excuse for them not working.

Shame! Senator Evans, in comments he made on 11 May 2005 when discussing the Welfare to Work agenda in general, claimed:

You're going to have people with severe mental health issues now forced to comply with one of the harshest regimes seen in the Western world and I think it's a recipe for disaster.

To add one further example of hypocrisy from Labor:

This package—

Welfare to Work—

has nothing to do with moving people from welfare to work and everything to do with extreme cuts to the household budgets of Australian families who can least afford it.

This was stated by Senator Wong in September 2005 when talking about a policy similar to that which the Labor party is now trying to introduce. Despite Labor's hypocrisy, this bill reflects beliefs of 'a hand up not a handout', even though it lacks a clear plan for specific initiatives to help the people this will affect.

As I have said, the Northern Territory has a reasonably high number of recipients of these payments. Initiatives which encourage people to work and get people back to work go a long way to repairing and rebuilding the underpinning foundations necessary in society and our local communities. I wish that this government would do more to get help people get back into the workplace, ensuring that the right measures are in place to support these people, particularly since on Sunday the carbon tax will be introduced, which is going to put more pressure on all Australian families.

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