Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise this afternoon to speak on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Further Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2015. I would like to say right from the outset that I am very proud to be part of the Australian government. I am very proud to be a citizen of Australia. I believe that, as well as anywhere in the world, we care for people who find themselves in difficulties and need assistance from others. At no time would I ever support a scheme where I felt that people who had fallen on hard times were going to be victimised or treated poorly. This legislation further enhances the ability for people to get out of the situation of being unemployed and into work. I believe that this bill offers opportunity rather than punishment.

As someone who represents an electorate that has a large number of people who rely on benefits from the government and has high levels of unemployment in some towns, I believe that these changes are necessary for several reasons. The first is that, in families with intergenerational unemployment and disconnect from the workforce, children do not understand where money comes from. They do not tie the fact that their parents and grandparents go to a job every day with having the resources to live their lives. One of the elders in Moree said to me that she believes many of the children do not understand that money does not just come out of an ATM. They do not know why the money is in the ATM; that is just where the family's money comes from. There is no concept as to how the money gets there.

This is part of a raft of things that we have done since we came to government to get people out of the rut of unemployment—with Work for the Dole and other programs, and the Green Army to a certain degree—and to encourage people to take the first step. More often than not, once that first step is made and people get back into the rhythm and system of having a reason to go to work and they experience the satisfaction that comes from a hard day's work, things progress.

In 2005, I was a mayor in a local government area in northern New South Wales. The Howard government at the time introduced Work for the Dole. They drove around our shire and arrived in a bus that had 'Work for the Dole' in big letters on the side. I feel a bit uncomfortable about that. That seems to be discriminatory. After they employed people for several weeks around our local community, doing work on community infrastructure—painting the CWA hall and the like—as a council we put on a lunch, a barbecue. At the barbecue I was chatting to these people who were part of Work for the Dole. I found something entirely opposite to what I expected. Rather than resentment of the fact that they were in a program called Work for the Dole, they were very pleased for the opportunity. They were saying to me, 'You have no idea what it is like—how demoralising it is—to wake up in the morning and not have a reason to leave the house.' The supervisor of this team told me that the original squad he started with did not look like the one he finished with, because as people became involved in these programs pretty soon local employers—retailers, farmers and others—would enquire as to who might be available for more permanent work. That is what we are talking about: getting these people an opportunity to go to work.

One of the things that really sticks in my neck is the idea that there are some jobs that are beneath a person's dignity. There is no work that is beneath anyone's dignity. Before I came here I spent most of my life undertaking manual labour in various forms. I understand that there is not a lot of dignity in crutching sheep or in digging post holes with a crowbar and shovel. But there is a tremendous amount of satisfaction at the end of the day in having achieved something like that.

Let me give you an example. Going back to Gwydir Shire, over a period of time about 10 years ago we started to see an increase in tourists coming to our town—people who were staying in our town and who were seeking out our caravan park. It was not because the tourist officer had gone to a conference, and it was not because of things the major had done. It was because the lady—I will call her Bev—who was in charge of the public facilities in the town took great pride in the work she did. The washrooms, the bathrooms and the caravan park were the cleanest anywhere in New South Wales. That led to an increase in visits to the town. She took great pride in the fact that she was doing this for her local community. I used to tell this story to year 10 students who were going out for work experience. Don't think the job of cleaning the public toilets in town is beneath your dignity, because there can be great rewards in doing that work and in helping others.

In the Parkes electorate we have an interesting situation at the moment. We have just started the grain harvest, and in some places it is a very promising one. At the moment there are young people from all over the world in my electorate driving harvesters, headers, chaser bins and working in the fields bringing in the crops. There are young people from Ireland, Germany, England and the United States all over. At the same time in the country towns around these paddocks we have young, able-bodied people sitting at home, disengaged and not working. If I do one thing in my time as a member of this place, it will be to change that situation. Those people who are disconnected from the workforce are perfectly capable and, given the right opportunities, the right encouragement and the right training I believe they can progress onwards and take up those roles that rightly should be theirs. I put out the challenge to employers in my electorate that if they want to have a functional, progressive and safe community they should make that extra effort and employ local people and encourage them into the workforce.

But the first step in this, sometimes, is actually breaking that cycle. Sometimes you have to be a hard, mean sort of person to achieve this. I do not step away from this legislation at all. If you are able-bodied and you can contribute, I do not believe that staying at home and not doing something to support your community and you country is acceptable. We see that these stronger measures will take away that opportunity. This is coupled with other things we as a government are doing to support young people. I am a great believer that we should be starting to encourage people to think about work, to prepare them with resumes, to help them with birth certificates, drivers licences, or whatever, at as young an age as possible.

One of the things I am immensely proud to be part of—and I think this parliament should also be proud of—is the part played by the Clontarf Foundation. Right across Australia we now have Clontarf Academies collocated in local schools. I will give you the example of the Clontarf Academy at Coonamble, in western New South Wales, where last year three of the young men from there obtained traineeships with a large road construction company in Sydney. Because of the mentoring and the assistance that was given through the people of Clontarf, these young people had the confidence to step up and take on these roles. After a period of training they are now permanent employees, earning very good money. Their families are very proud of them, as they should be.

I believe the federal government has a responsibility to make sure that we can get people engaged so they become valued members of the community. Some people naturally find themselves in periods of disadvantage, through no fault of their own. I still believe that as a country we need to care for those people. I have some advice for some of the bureaucracy and the network that deal with people who are making the step to come into the workforce after being disengaged. It is not easy and there should be compassion, understanding and some flexibility within the guidelines to acknowledge that work on a regular basis is indeed a foreign concept, as sad as it may seem, for some families. We need a carrot-and-stick approach, if you like—a combination of both—but able-bodied people not engaging in meaningful work should not be an option, and this legislation will help with that.

I support this legislation. I am very hopeful and, indeed, I am starting to see a real change in the communities in my electorate, particularly with the younger people as they seek to be engaged. Young lads from Moree high school are doing traineeships with GrainCorp, working through the wheat harvest, one day a week instead of school and over the weekends and holidays, with a real future in front of them. We are seeing that right around western New South Wales. I support this bill and I hope these strengthening measures will have the desired result to get people back up and working.

See this speech in context