Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017. As outlined by previous members, but especially the member for Jagajaga, the shadow minister for families and social services, Labor supports some of the measures in the bill but, if it stays in the current form, we will move to protect those in the community who need a helping hand to get back on their feet—the most vulnerable in our community.

I'm extremely concerned about some of the changes that are outlined in this bill, and one of the first things I want to draw your attention, and the attention of other members in this House, to is the bereavement allowance amendments that are in this bill. The proposed changes in the bereavement allowance will impact people who have just lost a loved one—a spouse, a husband, their life-long partner, their wife. We know the traumatic experience that they go through; yet we see changes that are proposed by this government that will make people $1,300 worse off after the loss of a partner. For a lot of people $1,300 is a lot of money—it certainly is for some of the constituents I see in my electorate. How does someone even come up with such a cruel budget saving measure like this? We saw lots of cruel budget measures in 2014, 2015 and 2016, but this is one that is very cruel because it affects people at their lowest point, when they're absolutely mourning the loss of a family member.

Unfortunately, as I said, time and time again, we see this form. The government are absolutely ideologically obsessed. This bill is about obsession with ideology: 'Let's have a go at the unemployed. Let's have a go at dole bludgers. Let's have a go at the most vulnerable people.' The government are not doing their job. What is their job? Their job is to create employment, but that is not what they are not doing. This is another diversion tactic we see constantly with the government. It diverts away from the real issue—the issue that should be absolutely No. 1 on their list—which is to create jobs. When you create jobs, you get people into work. When you look at the number of unemployed in our country and the number of job advertisements out there at the moment, it doesn't fit. You can't put a triangle into a square and you can't put a circle into a triangle; it just does not fit. You have to create jobs to get people off the unemployment line. Currently, the government, through their ideological obsession, are diverting away from those issues of how to create jobs, how to get people into work and how to get them off welfare benefits—issues they are absolutely not dealing with.

As already outlined by many of my colleagues in this place, we get to the point of the drug testing for jobseekers, which is in schedule 12, and the compliance changes in this bill that relate to drug and alcohol dependence. Again we see the government, ideologically, continuing to push for this despite warnings from experts. We heard the warnings earlier from the member for Bruce, who spoke about a range of experts that have condemned this move. We hear warnings that this change will not help people overcome their substance abuse or addiction. Someone that is addicted to a particular substance needs medical help and medical attention, not punishment. We need to give these people the opportunity to go to a rehab centre, to see a doctor, to do all that they can through the medical science that exists to get them off that addiction. I haven't seen any proposal in this bill or in the last budget of extra money to assist people who require the medical attention that is required to get them off the addiction to a particular substance.

The experts tell us that this will push people into poverty and into crime. If you are addicted to heroin, for example, the addiction is very, very harsh. Those that have any understanding of it will know that it is one of the hardest additions to break. Someone with a heroin addiction will do anything possible to get their next dose and their next hit. It is an illness that exists within that person. What we should be doing is helping those people through assisting them with rehab centres, et cetera, not punishing them and then putting them into a position where perhaps they have to commit a crime to get their next hit. This is what this bill will do. That is what the experts are saying as well. They are warning that these changes will not help one person overcome addiction. The experts tell us this.

What does the government really want here? What is it asking for? Look at other countries around the world that have implemented such programs and then just chucked them out because they haven't been working. What is the government really doing? Again, it's playing up to the tabloid front page dole-bludger stories that we see regularly and those stories that appear on the 6.30 programs after the news. What this government really wants to do here is divert away from the real issues of health, education and, really importantly, creating jobs so that we can put people into dignified paid work. The government doesn't want to help these jobseekers; it wants to scare people away from asking for help finding a job.

Where will these people go? The government will turn away people trying to escape a judgemental 'big brother' testing service. And who's going to conduct these testing services? We haven't seen the details. Will people turn up with a little cup every time they go to Centrelink? Will they sit there and have their blood taken? How will this be conducted, and who will conduct it, more importantly?

As if this isn't bad enough, the government can't tell us what it will cost. What are the costs for this? What are the cost-saving measures? Will there be cost-saving measures? I doubt very much that there will be any. New Zealand, just next door to us, spent millions of dollars, and, out of 8,000-odd people who were tested over that period, fewer than 25 people were found to have any drugs in their system—a minute number. And the costs were extraordinarily high, so there was no cost-savings measure in it.

We hear that the government wants to outsource the drug-testing to a private provider, and we have absolutely no detail of how that private provider will operate, who they are or what they're doing. It's just a thought bubble—that it's going out to a private provider. We've heard the argument from the government: 'Just let us trial this service. Let's see how it goes.' Well, it's been trialled, as I said, just across the ditch in New Zealand. The New Zealand government tried a similar plan back in 2013. In 2015 only 22 of the 8,001 participants returned a positive result—a minute number, a rate much lower than for the general population in New Zealand. There were similar results in the US when they tried it. So why is the government doing this? It is copying an experiment that failed in New Zealand and in the US. It is intrusive and unfairly targeted. It is an unfairly targeted experiment, with the Australian taxpayers picking up the bill and welfare recipients as the guinea pigs.

What are the welfare experts in the community saying—the people who are in the know, the people who deal with these welfare recipients regularly, the people who have done the research, the people who have evidence in front of them? St Vincent's Health, the Australasian College of Physicians, ACOSS and UnitingCare have all raised concerns, on top of the community-wide opposition. I've been inundated with emails, phone calls and letters to my office from people opposed to this. We've seen the failed experience from overseas, but we haven't explored the financial cost. According to the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the gold-standard urine test costs between $550 and $950 to administer. That's per test—per person, in other words. Actually there could be multiple tests for one person—it might not be just that one test—so it could cost close to $2,000 per person, not to mention issues around false positives and additional conflicts between Centrelink staff and clients, putting public servants, security officers and social workers at great risk of interruption to their work, violence and a whole range of other things.

Why are we talking about this issue in this place when there are so many other things that we should be doing? We should be looking at bettering employment opportunities; looking at the employment agencies, how they operate and how they provide people with work; and looking at giving people the opportunity to get more education in order to get work. These are the things we should be debating in this place, not looking at the most vulnerable people in our electorates, in the country, and giving them a kick up the backside. This is wrong. It is not right. These are vulnerable people. They are people who, for whatever reason, are not working. The majority of people I meet who are unemployed want a job. There is no doubt. I have mums and dads come to my office regularly with their 17-, 18-, 19- and 20-year-old sons and daughters, and I can see when I talk to these kids that they want to work. There are very few people who think: 'This is great; I'm on the dole, and this is the life for me.' When you can't afford to pay your rent, pay your electricity bills or put petrol in your car, why would anyone want to be on the dole? We're dealing with the most vulnerable people, who have ended up where they are because of their circumstances. We should be assisting them, not making their lives harder and treating them like lepers.

Again, I'll make this point, and I make it regularly in this place: when a government has nothing to offer, they offer distractions through policies like this. Whether it be on refugees, the unemployed or the 'big, bad unions', this is another distraction by the government because they're not offering the Australian people anything at this point. The government want the focus off them and onto these people, and off their current problems in the hope that perhaps their current problems will disappear. Just think about this for one minute: the government have made a calculated decision to attack some of the most vulnerable people in the community. They've actually made a calculated decision: 'Let's attack the unemployed.' Give us a break! I warn the government: you're not fooling anyone on this particular point.

I've got a couple of emails that were sent to me by constituents from the seat of Hindmarsh. Mal at Semaphore Park wrote:

I believe this process is a pathetic strategy to blame unemployed people generally for being unemployed and as people unworthy of help and inclusion into our society. Any reforms affecting addicts should be research based and proven. These people deserve help and compassion, not poverty and desperation.

Joan from Novar Gardens wrote:

Scientific evidence and clinical experience shows that people suffering from severe alcohol and drug problems cannot be punished into recovery. One can't keep tipping people over the edge into poverty. They need every support mechanism from professionals and the community to recover.

Paul from Torrensville, in my electorate, said:

I urge you and colleagues to oppose the Turnbull government's plan to strip income support from those with addictions using mandatory drug testing. This proposal lacks evidence and is characterised (once again) by a failure to consult with professionals with experience and expertise in this area.

Finally, surely, we have understood by now that the difficult issue of addictions requires evidence-based strategies driven by compassion—

something that's lacking in this government—

and creative thinking. Please think carefully about this proposal from the government and strive to remove it from our country's thinking and behaviour.

I stand with those constituents. All of us on this side stand with those constituents. Let's be clear on this issue: with drug addiction, including prescription opiate abuse becoming a real issue here in this country at the moment, we need to take this seriously. But the blatant attacks on the most vulnerable in our community with no basis in evidence and an apparent open chequebook for drug tests show that this government has lost its way yet again. This is a government that is out of ideas, out of imagination and out of touch. Soon, if they keep attacking the most vulnerable in our communities, it will be out of office.

What we need to be doing is looking at ways to ensure that we create jobs. Have a look at the number of unemployed in this country and then go to the statistics that show how many job advertisements there are, whether they be on SEEK.com or in the local papers. It does not fit. The equation doesn't equal—you just can't get a solution out of it. If you want to really combat this area, if you really want to do something about unemployment, instead of attacking those most vulnerable people who have ended up on the dole queue, why don't you look at doing something decent? Create jobs, ensure that our education system is up to scratch so people can get the education that's required to get jobs and bring those numbers down. That's the way to do it. That's the way a true government would do it.

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