Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to report on the job seeker relocation trial, the pilot scheme designed to help unemployed Australians receiving welfare relocate to take up meaningful work. I have been working on this project, in relation to development, with the Minister for Workforce Participation, the Hon. Sharman Stone, in conjunction with colleagues Joanna Gash, the member for Gilmore, and Luke Hartsuyker, the member for Cowper.

It is illogical, of course, that in the year 2004-05 the Australian taxpayer paid more than $5 billion in unemployment benefits. The knowledge that in my own electorate of Kalgoorlie there are employment rates below four per cent by comparison with the perhaps 11 per cent unemployment in the electorate of Gilmore is totally illogical and incomprehensible. The design of the job seeker relocation trial is to encourage the unemployed in areas of high unemployment to move to and to take up employment and be productive in areas of low unemployment.

Right across the Kalgoorlie electorate, employers are screaming out for labour—not skilled labour particularly but just labour. This is intended to be a voluntary project. There will be assistance provided to those who are unemployed at this stage. Incentives will be available to help them with the cost of relocation, travel, set-up costs, and training and equipment to make them ready and able to take up work. I know that the costs of accommodation, for instance, for new arrivals in the Pilbara can be absolutely horrendous. We have three-bedroom, one-bathroom homes going for $1,000 a week in Port Hedland right now. It is an absolutely untenable situation, contributed to by the high cost of land and the trickle-down effect onto the market of the Western Australian LandCorp.

However, we need to overcome the fact that people are aware that things are difficult in the west. We need to assist where we can. To that end, the government’s new scheme will provide that assistance. I acknowledge and congratulate the many thousands of Australians who have come across to Western Australia to take up a position and to start a new life for themselves, in many situations. Those people in the past have done it voluntarily. These days we are getting down to generally low unemployment and lack of availability of labour across Australia. I am pleased to say that this project will assist those who have not found the personal motivation to shift in the first instance. It will get them motivated, we trust, and get them involved in real and meaningful employment. This government is making it more and more difficult to remain unemployed today. (Time expired)