Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing and Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The objective of the Social Security Amendment (Flexible Participation Requirements for Principal Carers) Bill 2010 is to alter the provisions for granting exemptions to parents or principal carers who are asked to look for part-time work as part of their welfare requirements. This bill follows the Participation review taskforce report, published in August 2008, which outlines a series of participation requirement changes designed to increase flexibility. The report was subsequently actioned in the 2009-10 budget measure ‘More flexible participation requirements for parents’.

Essentially, the bill alters or creates exemptions available to principal carers on income support. The exemption for principal carers undertaking home schooling or distance education will be available until the youngest child leaves school up until the age of 19 years, which is up from the current 16 years. Secondly, the exemption for large families will be available where the family has four children of school age up to 19 years, again an increase from the current 16 years. Thirdly, the domestic violence exemption is currently only available where a party has left the violent relationship. The bill will see family breakdown no longer being a necessary precondition for receiving an exemption. A new exemption for kinship care is granted that allows for principal carers where there is a care plan prepared or accepted by a state or territory government. Job seekers who provide emergency or respite foster care will have an extended exemption to cater for the period of care and subsequent time to support their availability for future care. From 1 July 2010, a parent will be able to count their study, voluntary work or part-time work, or a combination of these, towards meeting part-time participation requirements.

Mutual obligations are of key importance in making welfare a disincentive for those seeking to avoid work and be supported by hardworking Australian taxpayers. Mutual obligations play an equally important role in breaking the cycle of idleness and habits of apathy. The obligations allow people to give back—in return for welfare assistance, they provide people with new experiences, including positive work experiences. Hardworking Australian taxpayers will be angered by the Rudd government’s watering down of mutual obligations. This is bad policy from a weak government. Under the previous coalition government those on income support not meeting participation requirements fell to below 10 per cent, according to industry participants. The coalition’s more rigorous and consistent approach to mutual obligation had a positive impact on returning the unemployed to the workforce.

According to DEEWR, in December 2003, 74 per cent of Newstart allowance recipients had an obligation to work. This has now dropped to some 58 per cent. In December 2003, 480,449 Newstart allowance recipients received a payment. In December 2009 the figure was 544,776. According to industry sources, the number of individuals on income support gaining exemptions from mutual obligation requirements has increased from a low of less than 10 per cent under the previous coalition government to in excess of 30 per cent in some areas. The total number of penalties imposed has fallen from 32,000 in 2007-08 to only 19,406 in 2008-09. Since July 2009 there have been only 12,283 penalties, and only 4,353 of them involved the most severe penalty of loss of benefit for eight weeks—‘three strikes and you are out’ is simply not being applied.

From 1 July some unemployed people will not even have to get out of bed to claim their welfare. The government’s approach means they will not have to hand in their forms in person at Centrelink offices. Instead, Newstart recipients will be able to report online or by telephone. Under the previous coalition government the ‘work for the dole’ time frame was six months of benefits. But now, under Labor, it has been extended from six months to 12 months. Indeed, the number of participants undertaking work for the dole has been cut in half by the Rudd government. As of 7 April there were 12,695 unemployed people in work for the dole schemes, down from 22,362 in April 2005.

Whilst the coalition does not oppose this bill, the government should do more to monitor and enforce participation requirements for those on income support. I foreshadow that the coalition may seek to introduce amendments to this bill in the Senate. The weakening of mutual obligation is bad policy from a weak government.

Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Social Security Amendment (Flexible Participation Requirements for Principal Carers) Bill 2010. I would like to start by saying that this bill, which amends the Social Security Act, will improve the participation arrangement for tens of thousands of families on income support—many of whom reside in the south-west of Sydney, my electorate included—with participation requirements that give them the opportunity to gain more skills and improve their work opportunities. I know that the previous speaker, the member for Menzies, just made a series of criticisms of this bill and said it watered down the former Howard government’s stand. Make no mistake: this bill still has at its core mutual obligations with respect to social security. Those are front and centre in this legislation. But we are making sure that those obligations are constructed in a framework of fairness.

As we go through this bill, I want to say that couching an argument based on how tough you can be on people who unfortunately have fallen through the cracks of life is not the way I think you would like to present yourself to an electorate. That particularly goes for an electorate of mine, which has a lot of people who unfortunately do need to be assisted from time to time. These are people we do want assistance to get back into a normal way of life and back into normal society. I get to see the success stories of what we achieve out in the south-west of Sydney as well. I know from speaking with many parents who are on income support that some of them find themselves having difficulty complying with the current job search requirements. They tell me often that the current job search requirements are too rigid, particularly when there are a number of children involved. We are trying to make sure, without removing mutual obligation, that these rules do not act as a block to these people gaining skills to enhance their ability to find work and participate through work in a normal life.

It is all very easy to come in here and trivialise the issue by saying, ‘Let’s ratchet it up and see how tough we can be.’ But the truth of the matter is that not everyone out there has been dealt the same hand in life. Sometimes it is necessary to show some compassion in how we go about helping these people back to where they can fully participate in society. As I said, I get to see the other end of it, where people do come back—having had that degree of assistance—and go on. People have with assistance attended the University of Western Sydney and gone on to be teachers. One young woman I had the opportunity to meet some years back—I actually met her at a homeless shelter—for a range of different reasons was homeless. She was estranged from her parents. With a group of people and with the assistance of the local Rotary club we supplied for her tutoring services. One thing she made very clear to me was this. She said, ‘I’ll bet you assisted your kids with their homework when they were young.’ I thought to myself and said, ‘Of course I did.’ She asked, ‘Who helps us?’

I spoke to the local Rotary at the time. Two people who were key in Ingleburn Rotary, Michael and Sandra Kidd, were both retired high school principals. They started turning up at this refuge and tutoring the kids. This young girl—and I will not name her—contacted me at the beginning of this year to say she had been accepted to do a bachelor of social work at the University of Western Sydney. To simply go out and show how tough on people we could be would decry the sort of success that we are achieving out there.

I understand that what is also in this bill generally reflects positively on the report prepared by the government’s Participation Review Taskforce. It is important to rehash that a little. My colleague Brendan O’Connor, as then Minister for Employment Participation, in May 2008 established the task force to examine how participation requirements for parents—particularly those who were mature age job seekers—receiving income support could be adjusted to better take into account their family and community responsibilities.

By way of background, what was delivered to the government in August 2008 contained some 20 recommendations, including one specifically in relation to mature age job seekers. Importantly, the government has responded to the recommendations made by the taskforce by changes within the bill to make income support more effective by helping parents balance parenting responsibilities with their participation requirements. We know that having a job is a key factor to inclusion. Whether it be socially or economically, it is key in terms of inclusion within our mainstream community. But given the skills and labour shortages we have experienced for a range of reasons, particularly over the term of the last government, which had a significant period of not investing in skills development, we need to assist job seekers, particularly those of mature age, to gain those further skills to re-engage with employment and do it in such a way that it is going to be meaningful.

To do this we will be investing $26.8 million over the next four years to improve the participation arrangements for parents and carers of children that will give them the opportunity to gain more skills and improve their opportunities in seeking employment. Under our initiatives parents will be assisted to better balance work and study and their family commitments. Contrary to what the opposition has been saying, indicated very ably before by the member for Menzies, it should be said that parents will continue to be required to meet their participation agreements in order to receive income support. That is not weakening it; that is actually adjusting it in such a way as to look at value-adding, if you like, our human resource, particularly upgrading skills and making their opportunities for work more realistic and more meaningful. The changes are not designed to make it harder, or for that matter easier, for people receiving income support. The aim is to make income support more effective by helping parents balance their parenting responsibilities with their participation requirements. Another key point I would like to make is that there will be no change in the amount of income support paid to parents as a result of these measures, so that is not a cost, as has been alluded to.

I would like to make a few brief comments about some of the specific features of this bill. It will extend the existing 12-month automatic exemption for families with four or more children, or where there is home or distance education involved, to be eligible until the youngest child turns 19 and completes their secondary education. The government recognises that parents play an absolutely incredible role and an important role in caring for and supporting their kids through education. It is probably not fair to say just we in government recognise it; I think anyone who is a parent or, as in my case, a grandparent would attest to that. By extending the exemption to current large families and home schooling and distance education, that will clearly permit the concentration of that care and support while a child is completing education up to 19 years of age. The government recognises that responsibility that parents with large families do have and that it does not cease when they turn 16. I have got to say it does not cease either when they turn 31, but that is another story. The changes recognise the role that parents have in supporting their children during the final years of their secondary education and the need for parents to balance their parental responsibilities with their participation in the workforce.

The bill will also liberalise the eligibility of the 16-week domestic violence exemption to include parents who remain in a violent relationship, as well as those who have left such a relationship over the previous six months. This is an area which is near and dear to my heart. Through my involvement with the police locally, I get to see that all our crime statistics in the south-west of Sydney are being effectively managed, and we are very proud of that fact. Whether there have been armed robberies or break-ins, the clear-up rates have been very good. The only thing which is remaining stubborn in our crime statistics is the incidence of domestic violence. I mentioned that to a young woman I found in a homeless refuge who was a victim of domestic violence. Regrettably, of all the kids I get to see out there, at least 85 per cent of the young people who find themselves homeless are victims of domestic violence. It is a scourge on modern society. I know that the debate on this bill is not the place to talk about domestic violence but I feel very passionately that we who are in positions of leadership in our community must, at every opportunity, speak up about domestic violence against women and children. It is incomprehensible in modern society that the incidence of domestic violence is at present levels.

The liberalisation of the existing 16-week exemption will provide better assistance for parents, regardless of whether they are in or have left a violent relationship. It acknowledges that parents are unlikely to participate effectively in paid work in such circumstances, while still caring and playing a parental role. That is probably a very hard ask. But there is a requirement that the length of the exemption will ensure that parents who experience domestic violence or family violence will have regular contact with Centrelink social workers and will be provided opportunities for referral to other support services. It is important to note that, should the initial 16 weeks not be a sufficient period, the exemption can be extended at the discretion of the Centrelink social worker. That is something I applaud, particularly in the south-west of Sydney—and I have no reason to look closely at any other electorate. If every member were prepared to scratch the surface in their own electorate, they would probably see that benefit applying similarly to a lot of people, and deservedly so.

The government also recognises an important role played in our society by foster carers, including those who do not have their own dependent children. This bill will introduce a new exemption which will remain in place for the period a child is in a person’s care in a fostering relationship. It also extends, importantly, to up to 12 weeks between foster care placements and, in doing so, it acknowledges that many emergency and respite foster parents find it difficult to participate in the workforce while caring for children, particularly those experiencing difficulties and disadvantage. These changes mean that they will be able to focus on their important role in our society—that is, providing primary care through a foster-caring arrangement. It also means that they will be available to provide emergency respite care after a child has left their care but before that child has been reassigned on a long-term basis. Additionally—and I get to see a fair bit of this in my electorate—the bill will recognise the role of kinship carers through a new exemption for those who care for a child under state and territory case plans.

One of the things that, regrettably, I get to see a heck of a lot of is children being put in the care of their grandparents. It is something that is occurring with great frequency. It is a testament to the love and commitment of their grandparents but, in the majority of cases I get to see, particularly through agencies such as Odyssey House and others, it generally involves drugs or other forms of addictive substances as to why a child cannot remain with the original parent. The support base, particularly offered by grandparents, often comes into the equation. Many of those instances are dealt with formally and that is done on the basis of kindred care arrangements.

Through the introduction of this new exemption, the government acknowledges the high needs of children in kinship care and the difficulties that these carers often face in balancing their participation in work and caring responsibilities and also maintaining overall connection with the family and family stability itself. These changes recognise that kinship care is commonly an alternative placement of children other than into a child protection system and the importance of this form of arrangement is very much in the child’s interest and in the family’s interest. This bill will at least recognise the responsibility of those principal carers under that arrangement.

The second component of the bill will also increase the flexibility for principal carer parents to undertake activities to satisfy part-time participation requirements. These components of the measure will be implemented through the legislative instrument and amendments to the guide to social security law. Some of the notable changes include changes to the rule of voluntary work and the introduction of more flexible arrangements over long school holidays allowing parents to meet their requirements through part-time study of at least 15 hours per week of contract or non-contract hours. It allows combinations of approved activities, part-time work, part-time study et cetera as long as the parent is undertaking 15 hours per week of activity and enables the principal carer parents the participation requirements to participate in the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme on a part-time basis.

Finally, the third component of the bill will provide more flexible methods for parents to report their earnings and participation efforts to Centrelink through expanded access to the existing facilities such as telephone based integrated voice recognition and web based channels. This will reduce the need for people to physically visit a Centrelink office for face-to-face reporting. This is a measure which I know that many busy parents will find very, very attractive. It will allow them to continue with their studies. It will allow them to continue with their efforts in terms of securing employment as well as what they need to do to commit to their caring of their family members. I think it is a very significant addition.

I am very pleased that the issue has been raised by parents in relation to the participation requirements and I acknowledge that, in the participation taskforce report and subsequently in the measures of this bill, it will go a long way to addressing those concerns—certainly the concerns that have been raised with me as the member for Werriwa but I am sure they have been raised with other members of this place—and making sure that people understand their mutual obligations but by doing so from a position of fairness and one which encourages the development of their skills to assist them to develop a more competitive position in terms of employment by giving them better opportunities. This is something which I think will go a long way towards satisfying those concerns which have existed for some time and have been a considerable frustration for people not being able to participate fully in our economic way of life.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education and Childcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Social Security Amendment (Flexible Participation Requirements for Principal Carers) Bill 2010. This bill aims to extend exemptions to parents who are asked to look for part-time work as part of their welfare requirements. The parents in particular would be in receipt of, for example, Newstart allowance, parenting payment, youth allowance or special benefit and they would have school-age children. At the moment they must report at least 15 hours a week of activities to Centrelink, and this new bill that is now before us aims to commence after this financial year.

There is no doubt that this bill is well intentioned in giving additional exemptions to parents who are asked to look for work and to work part time as part of them receiving welfare. It is no doubt well intentioned. The problem is that there is not always a direct relationship between parents being exempted from looking for work or finding work and the very best outcomes for their families. In too many families and in too many households children are raised without any employment at all, whether from one or both of their parents. They have no role models. They have no experience—sometimes for generations—of the whole business of someone having an engagement with the workplace. They have no understanding of what it means to take on an apprenticeship or training and move into a workplace, to be financially independent. They do not have the sorts of choices that all of us in this room take for granted.

We know as a fact that in households where there is welfare dependence for very long periods of time and where it is very unlikely that the children have ever observed a role model in work, those children are more likely to be unemployed themselves. They are more likely to be teenage parents. They are more to have mental health issues and they are much more likely to experience poverty in their own lives. They are more likely to be exploited by the unscrupulous elements in our communities. So it is not always generous or a great idea to simply say, ‘If you’re a parent, we don’t really think you have to try very hard to find part-time work.’

Sometimes, indeed, we have a situation, in the case of an exemption referred to here for those experiencing domestic violence, where the very issue locking those women into the domestic violence situation and the abuse of their children is the fact that they have no economic or financial independence. They have no idea how they will live apart from the relationship which is causing them abuse and harming their children. The best way to help a woman out of an exploitative, abusive relationship is to help her become financially independent, help her to rebuild her self-esteem and help her to re-establish her skills or teach her skills in the very first instance so she can stand alone in the workplace and support her children.

So I do not think it is a great shift forward to extend or create a new exemption in this bill to provide that parents who have experienced domestic violence will be given a different sort of treatment when it comes to expecting them to look for work and move back into the workforce. Of course, right now there are exemptions for women who are experiencing domestic violence. Self-evidently, some women are so crippled and abused by that violence they cannot look for work, but I think it is important that the situation is very carefully supported and monitored by a social worker, by an appropriate person who is skilled and professional, and that the woman in that relationship, the relationship she needs to leave, is helped to move out and to join in with a place of work in Australia.

I am very concerned that this particular set of exemptions talks about the parent not having to look for work up until their children turn 19. That is a very, very long time for a parent to be out of the workforce—from when their children are born until the age of 19. When I was Minister for Workforce Participation in the former government, we introduced the new legislation that enabled single parents to remain on parenting benefits until their children reached ‘school age’ rather than 16. At that time, single parents were given an enormous amount of support to re-skill, to be taught literacy or numeracy or to have their qualifications upgraded so that they could rejoin the workforce when their children reached school age. I cannot tell you how many single parents—both men and women, but mostly women—were grateful for the opportunity and the increased resources we put into supporting them to get back into the workforce. When you have been out of the workforce for 19 years, there are very few employers who look upon you with much enthusiasm, particularly if you are a middle-aged woman whose skills are downgraded to just ‘housework’ or ‘being a mother’. So I do not think it is a kindness to say that you cannot do up to 15 hours of part-time work a week until your children are up to 19 years of age. It is too long. I certainly think 16 years of age is more than appropriate, and that is what the current requirements are. Certainly a 19-year-old teenager should not need the 100 per cent attention of a parent at that stage in their life.

I am also very concerned about the new exemption to be introduced to support parents providing kinship care for a child who is a relative through a care plan prepared or accepted by a state or territory government. We already have exemptions under the legislation for people who have care of a relative and that care has been recognised through a court order. This is relevant for Indigenous women, particularly grandmothers, in the Australian community, who are increasingly responsible for raising their grandchildren. We already have quite solid and strong exemptions in the system. I am concerned that the Rudd government thinks that by tweaking this legislation they can then walk away from this issue. The issue is significant and serious, and simply naming this group in this piece of legislation does nothing to actually address the problem. The problem for Indigenous grandmothers in particular is that if they have their full care of their grandchildren recognised by Centrelink their daughters will lose their parenting payments. Daughters often threaten to take the children back into what is perhaps an abusive relationship or a dysfunctional situation. It might be a relationship with a new de facto partner where the grandmother is concerned for the safety of her granddaughters.

If we do not deal with the issue of giving the grandmother some financial support for caring for those children which does not require the voluntary stepping forward of the daughter to register the realities of that caring arrangement then we are going to continue to see the grandmothers leaving their paid employment and struggling in poverty to raise their grandchildren. They do not receive a cent in Centrelink parenting payments while their daughter, or sometimes their son, receives that benefit, which is often spent on sustaining a drug or alcohol habit or on other behaviours which in no way help to support the children. This is a very serious issue in our community and I am very concerned that the government thinks that by taking a swipe at this problem with this piece of legislation the job is done. No, it does not address the problem at all.

Let me now move on to foster carers. I am very concerned that we could still be imagining that further exemptions should be extended to foster carers to receive, for example, Newstart allowance while they provide emergency or respite foster care for children. As far as I am concerned, foster carers are the unsung heroes of all of our states and territories where we have so many at-risk children who cannot remain with their own families and need foster care. But when the authorities in those different states look for foster carers they find they are a rapidly diminishing number of individuals. In the state of Victoria, for example, the foster carer numbers have collapsed by over 50 per cent. Why are those foster carer numbers collapsing? It is because foster carers are not being adequately remunerated. The legislation related to foster caring is not adequate. When foster carers ask, for example, to remain as carers for a child for much longer than just a few weeks, knowing the interests of the child in their care are best served by a longer placement, they are not listened to. So foster carers see children churn through their care, knowing they will therefore suffer serious emotional disadvantage and distress and perhaps will be permanently affected by the failure of our system to give them long-term, permanent care and love.

This bill refers to extending exemptions for carers while they are providing care and for a period of time afterwards to support their availability for subsequent placement of children in their care. I am saying that this is not the way to handle the crisis in foster care in our country right now. Foster carers need a whole new set of understandings and changed regulations state by state. In fact, I would very strongly urge that we have a national response to the needs of significantly at-risk children and the care options for them. It concerns me that in this bill we simply have an extension of the system and the hope that the problem will perhaps then go away.

We are also told that ‘parents will be able to count their study, voluntary work, part-time work—or a combination of these activities—towards meeting their part-time participation requirements’ in order to continue to receive the various welfare payments. When I was the minister under the Howard government, we looked at voluntary work being allowed for the purpose this describes. We found that too often, if a mother, for example, said, ‘I have been working at the tuck shop,’ or ‘I’ve been helping out at the op shop,’ there was a real reluctance on the part of the not-for-profit organisation to monitor that volunteer’s time of volunteer work or level of commitment to that volunteering work.

I suggest to this government that they really do need to look closely at volunteer work in particular as a substitute for paid work or education or training, because it might sound like a kindness to an individual but it may mean that that individual really does miss out on the chance to rejoin the paid workforce or to be trained so that they can have a much better chance of getting a job in the future. Voluntary work is wonderful. All praise to the volunteers that keep small communities, in particular, in Australia going. But I think there are real dangers in having unsupervised voluntary work regarded as a substitute for part-time paid work or education or training.

I also have to say something in relation to those who are doing home schooling or distance education receiving an exemption from job seeking. Certainly it is difficult, for example, for women living in very remote parts of Australia who are distance educating their children to look for work. But I know for a fact that a very significant number of those individuals actually do work in helping to run properties—some of them very large properties. So I would not automatically suggest that because you are distance educating your children you should have an exemption from participation requirements until your youngest child turns 16. I think we should look at that more on a case-by-case basis. It should not be automatic, particularly when there are others employed in the home as tutors for those children or to undertake other housekeeping and parenting roles.

18:19:58

More and more parents are seeking to homeschool, particularly those who are of a particular faith and who do not want their children to be exposed to the educational philosophies found in our state education systems or in independent schools. I think it is important deal with this case by case. It is not a significant number of parents who offer home schooling but I do not think it should be simply be a blanket case that if you put your hand up and say, ‘I am going to homeschool my children, in the secondary years in particular, so please will you now pay me Newstart allowance or some other special benefit because I choose to homeschool my children for two, three or four hours a day.’ I think it should be a case-by-case matter and we should not lose control of the situation because it is not a kindness to families to have welfare dependency continue and become intergenerational, as is too often the case. If you have four or more children you currently, of course, have a large-family exemption as long as the four children are aged under 16. I think that aged under 16 is a more than appropriate age to cut off the special exemption. Extending that exemption till children are 19 is actually quite ridiculous.

This is a well-meaning set of extensions of exemptions but there are dangers among all of the best-made intentions. In Australian we have too much welfare dependency, which affects the lives not just of this generation but of children and grandchildren. Welfare dependency is not a good place to be if you are talking about your financial independence, your choices in life and your ability to maximise the opportunities that Australia presents. I am particularly concerned for families of non-English-speaking background who are perhaps newly arrived in Australia. Those families should not be assisted with further exemptions from requirements to look for part-time work but, rather, should be given special training and job-seeking support and should be given greater experience of Australian workplace culture, rather than simply being ticked off and allowed to stay away from Centrelink. The other day I was told a very serious statistic that 30 per cent of Newstart allowance recipients are now exempted from reporting to Centrelink with diaries or other evidence of their job seeking—30 per cent! I think that is an extraordinary indictment of the laziness of this government if that 30 per cent is the case. Those 30 per cent need help to find work, there is no doubt about that. Very often that assistance is quite complex and it takes a long time, but no individual should be allowed simply to abandon the business of looking for work because it is convenient to Centrelink staff, because that person is perhaps a difficult person to communicate with or manage. That 30 per cent being allowed to not participate in looking for work, education or training will become the parents of the next generation of welfare dependent, disadvantaged Australians. I do not think that is fair or right, so I cannot support all the principles in this bill. I understand that it was probably from the best of intentions but, unfortunately, from a government that is naive and not experienced in the realities of the working world.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Social Security Amendment (Flexible Participation Requirements for Principal Carers) Bill 2010. I listened carefully to the member for Murray’s speech and I was not quite sure if she was going to vote in favour of this piece of legislation or against it. I understand she has some reservations, but I do not know if she is Arthur or Martha on this bill. It is all right to have reservations, but you have to make clear in your speech which side of the fence you are on. I am strongly in favour of this legislation.

I grew up in a working-class family in Ipswich. My dad was a cleaner at a meatworks and my mum was a shop assistant and there were significant periods of unemployment in my family’s life. I went to the Ipswich East State School for seven years and I saw in my local community, which was a really working-class community, real welfare dependency and intergenerational welfare dependency. I was the first person in my family to go to high school, let alone university, so I know the value of hard work and how important employment is. When my father was employed, we had food on the table and we could keep a roof over our heads. These things were personal issues for me, and they are personal issues for many Australians. This is not some sort of intellectual dissertation I am making; this is a speech about what I experienced in my personal life, and I would say there are many people on both sides of the chamber here who experienced similar periods of material deprivation in their lives. What we are doing here is going to make it easier for Australian families to be socially included and also to get back into the workforce. In this legislation there is a bit of compassion, humanity and flexibility, which are needed, and I commend it.

In my community, there is social disadvantage. The Ipswich community together with Logan have been designated as areas where the government is appointing or has appointed local employment coordinators. Samantha Wilson has done a terrific job in that regard. We have significant funding under the Jobs Fund for Worklinks, for new services in the Lockyer Valley. There are now Worklinks cafes in Ipswich, at Raceview and Brassall; and a cafe run by Busy Beat, which is a Gold Coast based jobs training organisation, is now located in Ipswich. There is an enormous amount of job training going on.

In my community, there is very high unemployment among young people. Traditionally, the Ipswich community has suffered tremendously as industries have declined. It has suffered from the decline of agriculture, which was so important and still makes up 11 per cent of the economy of Ipswich, and the decline of manufacturing, with the closure of the woollen mills and coalmines which used to employ thousands of workers, and the railway workshop which, in its heyday, employed about 3,000 workers. When these industries went, my local community suffered. So legislation like this is not some academic exercise; it really makes a difference to the lives of people in areas like Ipswich, West Moreton and the Lockyer Valley as well as in the Somerset region.

Giving a person a job is a way to redistribute wealth. I am not on some sort of ideological white horse that says that we have to socialise all industries. I believe in the market economy and I believe that giving someone a job creates wealth. I believe it creates stronger families and I believe it enhances family values. Family values are not the province of the political Left or the Right in this country; they are for all of us. Reducing welfare dependency improves the self-esteem of not only parents but also children. It gives children the chance and the opportunity to see that they can advance in their lives—materially, emotionally, psychologically and psychiatrically. Showing them that they can increase their earning capacity is very important. They can see the role model of their parents and then say, ‘I can live like that too.’ You too can become a physiotherapist, an engineer, a doctor or a lawyer. That is what this legislation is all about.

I also know from my experience as a family lawyer that many parents, women in particular, who have gone through situations of domestic violence and tremendous suffering at the hands of iniquitous partners—particularly male partners, the fathers of their children and step-parents—often end up with low earning capacities. They are in relationships where they are the victims of harassment and intimidation. This legislation shows them more flexibility and compassion as well.

18:29:47

I commend the member for Werriwa for his speech in which he outlined in detail important changes in this legislation. I will not go through the changes in detail as he did. The participation arrangements and requirements for about 17,000 families on income support will change. It is estimated that this will improve their capacity to skill and improve their job opportunities. It is estimated that about 100 additional parents will become eligible for extended home schooling, and there will be distance education participation exemptions for many who live in rural and regional areas.

I am a strong believer that parents have the right to choose where their children should be educated. We have some wonderful private schools in my electorate. St Edmund’s boys college in Ipswich is a fantastic school. WestMAC over there at Karrabin is a fantastic school. There are two grammar schools—Ipswich Grammar School and Ipswich Girls Grammar School. I personally have sent my children to Raesbury State Primary School and Bremer State High School because I am a product of that state school system and my wife is as well. Parents have a right to choose. But some parents, for religious or other reasons, choose to home school. As someone who is a Christian, I have no problems with that choice. I do have some concerns about some of the curriculum we see in that regard and some of the more fundamentalist approaches in that curriculum. But we live in a democracy and parents have that right to choose. We are making it easier for parents who choose to home school with the more flexible arrangements in this legislation. I think that is the right thing.

As of December 2009 there were approximately 506,000 principal carers on parenting payment, Newstart allowance and youth allowance. There were 182,272 parents with participation requirements. So this is not some small piece of legislation that will affect a few hundred Australians. This is important legislation which will impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians and indeed their children. I strongly support the idea of mutual obligation. I think it is right that we require people to look at employment, to seek to participate, because what happens with a person without a job is that they suffer in terms of not just welfare dependency but also social isolation and often ostracism. What is the first question you ask a person? What do they do for a living. And what do they answer? ‘I am just a housewife; I am just looking after my kids.’ That is just wrong. It is just wrong but that is what happens to Australians. If they come from Victoria you might ask which AFL team they support, or which rugby league team they support if they are from Queensland. But this is a serious matter for people. It is a serious matter of self-esteem.

I am pleased that we are going to invest nearly $27 million over four years to improve participation arrangements for parents and carers. I am very pleased that we have kept the income arrangements and income payments at the same level. I am pleased that we have parents on income support whose youngest child has reached school age, six or over, but they are still required to undertake 30 hours of suitable activity. I think that is right. I think the Australian public expects that to happen. At times it is a gentle nudge, sometimes a bit of a push and sometimes a bit of a drag into the workforce because there are some people who sadly would like to sit back and not participate in our society.

Greater participation in the economy means greater participation in society. People who have jobs tend to get involved in P&Cs, sporting clubs, church organisations, social clubs. They tend to participate in community and that is what is important in terms of social inclusion. There is a flow-on effect. It is not just good for the economy, for economic development and productivity; it is also good for society because it builds community. I think that is really important. In my area we have some great people who are involved in this and we are dealing here with more flexible arrangements for women particularly who are tragically the main recipients of domestic violence. While I am here I want to commend the Ipswich Women’s Centre against Domestic Violence and Gabrielle Borggaard, who is the director there, for the wonderful work they do with the women of Ipswich and not just Ipswich but the rural areas outside—the Lockyer Valley and the Scenic Rim and Somerset regions, because they reach out to those areas.

I was pleased last week to be there and to light a candle when we recognised the women who have been the victims of domestic violence in our communities. Tragically, a number of women have been killed by their partners in the last year. I will not name the women here in parliament; it is not the right thing to do. This is horrible and when I was in private practice I saw it. I dealt with thousands of domestic violence cases through prosecuting and defending in the courts in Queensland—the Family Court, the Federal Magistrates Court and the state Magistrates Court. I saw it on numerous occasions and I lived it for decade after decade in my professional life. The work that Gabrielle Borggaard and others do is to be commended and lauded. I am pleased to be a White Ribbon ambassador. I think it is the right thing and that more men should stand up. I was pleased to be at D’Arcy Doyle Place in Ipswich where we lit candles. I was very happy to see the Mayoress, Janet Pisasale, as well as Rachel Nolan, the state member for Ipswich and the Minister for Transport.

While we are talking about this issue I also want to commend, because it is in the area of domestic violence, the former director of the Ipswich Women’s Centre Against Domestic Violence, Amy Stockwell. A number of years ago Amy took up the position as the person coordinating community development in the Somerset Regional Council. I have been pleased to meet with Amy and a number of those providers, like Lifeline, Austcare and other organisations, who are doing wonderful work with people. The work that these people do is not just about caring for people with mental health issues or people who are victims of domestic violence. They provide encouragement to bring people back into the workforce.

The legislation we have here modifies participation exemptions to make them more responsive to a family’s individual circumstances. I think that is a sensible way to go. The provisions in relation to foster care are really important. Foster carers are our unsung heroes and they simply need to have flexible arrangements. Many times children are put into foster care and grandparents, cousins, uncles or aunties who have a kinship role take on the responsibility for children who are the subject of domestic violence orders and who are mentioned on those orders. The children are also what we used to call many years ago ‘wards of the state’. They are subject to case plans or orders made in relation to their care and protection or their care and control. Caring for our kinship carers through this legislation by providing more flexibility is simply the just, humane and decent thing to do.

The third component, as the member for Werriwa mentioned, improves the circumstances for families. It means the cost in time and money of travelling, often from rural and regional areas, into a Centrelink office will be gone, because many people can be linked by web based channels and other sorts of facilities. That will improve the lives of people in regional and rural communities in townships scattered all around South-East Queensland and west of Brisbane, which I have the honour to represent.

This legislation is about compassion, flexibility and humanity. I have to say that not always did the coalition show that when they were in power. Many times they made changes with the best of intentions, but they did not always show the degree of compassion that they needed to. Certainly accepting the recommendations of the task force chaired by Patricia Faulkner was the right thing to do. I am pleased that the government has listened. Not always do governments of either persuasion listen to the experts and listen to recommendations. We have taken those recommendations on board, adapted the legislation on individual family circumstances and modified the existing participation exemptions to be responsive to those circumstances. Mr Deputy Speaker, this is important legislation that will affect people in South-East Queensland in your seat and mine and I commend the legislation to the House.

Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on a subject that has been dear to my heart. The changes outlined in the Social Security Amendment (Flexible Participation Requirements for Principal Carers) Bill 2010 follow from the August 2008 Participation Review Taskforce report on the operation of the Welfare to Work reforms introduced to this parliament by the former coalition government in 2006, which sought to move people from pensions to Newstart allowance. Much of that legislation I supported, in particular the commitment of the former government to assist welfare recipients to move from a reliance on social welfare to gaining employment. There are some good reasons for that.

An article in the Australian titled ‘Reforms that work’, on Friday, 16 October last year, said:

Centre for Independent Studies research has found the number of families dependent on “parenting payments” has fallen by 120,000, or 20 per cent, since job-search requirements were imposed in 2006.

All of us in this place, for a lot of reasons, want to do all we can to reduce intergenerational welfare dependency. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 5 May this year, written by Adele Horin, said:

THOUSANDS of sole parents are worse off under rules that changed their child support entitlements and forced them to get a job or go on the dole, new research reveals.

A typical sole parent with one child aged between six and 12 could be as much as $6700 a year worse off as a result of reforms initiated by the Howard government and introduced from 2006 to 2008.

The study, by academics at Murdoch University in Perth, shows only when typical sole parents get a full-time job paying at least $45,000 can they be better off with the new arrangements. But this is unlikely for most as their youngest child is only seven or eight when they have to move off the Parenting Payment and into the workforce.

“It’s much more likely these women and children will experience poverty as a result of these changes,” Lisa Young, associate professor in law at Murdoch University and a co-author of the study, said.

So there are mixed blessings with this reform. As I said, most of us want to see the end of intergenerational dependency on welfare. There is no doubt that access to the paid workforce provides an independent income stream, greater social inclusion and a sense of self-reliance. The intention is noble in essence. However, entrenched barriers to the workforce remain for many. At the time of introducing the original bill, little was done to remove these barriers. Still, little has been done. Instead, there is a continued demonising of people reliant on social security payments—to attain some perceived political advantage, and now as a justification to balance the budget.

Any assistance to help individuals gain a place in the paid workforce is without question supportable. But if we truly want to see more people employed we must recognise the realities faced by those attempting to break the cycle of welfare dependency and exclusion. In my speech to the House during the introduction of the Welfare to Work bill in 2006, I was particularly concerned about sole parents and people with mental and physical disabilities. Given that single parent families continue to increase and that 87 per cent of sole parent families are headed by women, I continue to be concerned about the disproportionate impact such measures have on women in our communities.

As an example—one I made members acutely aware of during the drafting of the previous legislation—I drew attention to the negative impact of limiting the time allowed for a person on welfare to retrain or re-educate themselves. I brought into this house a woman who might have suffered the negative impact of these measures. This woman came to speak to members in this place. She had several children. Her husband had left her soon after the birth of her last child. If my memory serves me correctly, her last child was about five weeks old.

Her dramatic change in circumstances first forced her onto welfare but she did not want to burden the public purse for long, so she enrolled in university to get a degree in education. She wanted to become a teacher so that she would have more flexible working hours and be able to work to better suit her parenting responsibilities. Of course, she wanted to give her children opportunities as they grew up and to be able to adequately support them financially through that period. In addition to that, she wanted security in retirement. She wanted to be able to contribute to superannuation. Her commitment should be congratulated and supported. But under this legislation—and it has not changed, despite this review—she could only continue to receive welfare if she dropped out of university. I think there were some changes made that allowed people already in the system to continue, but if you were coming in new you were only allowed to take up retraining or education for 12 months; otherwise, you would lose your entitlement to income support.

I find this completely unacceptable. I see my good colleague the member for Shortland nodding her head. I think all the women in this place would find that unacceptable. So a person could not complete a degree in higher education. Giving people such a short time to undertake training and education before requiring them to move off welfare continues to consign those on welfare—women in particular—to the lowest paid jobs in our community and it entrenches poverty in old age. That is my deep concern about this. Let us genuinely help people move off welfare, but let us not restrict them from taking up jobs and opportunities that truly reflect their capacity. It is important for the development of this country that we allow all people to develop to the best of their ability. Putting these restrictions on people in the welfare system does not achieve that at all.

Let me outline some more of the barriers that still have not been dismantled. The electorate I represent encompasses outer suburbs, regional areas and rural communities. Across that spectrum I am acutely aware of the ramifications arising for low-income families and individuals from the triple whammy of the housing shortage, the high cost of rent in inner city areas and an impossible waiting list for public housing assistance—which can be over a decade. As a result, single parent families along with other welfare recipients are driven to outlying areas, which lack transport, childcare services and in some cases job opportunities.

But the barriers to becoming employed do not end there. There are those who have mental illness, who face all of these difficulties and, on top of those, poor mental health services. They are almost non-existent in some places. I refer to services that would diagnose and adequately treat mental illness. As well, they have to face the prejudice of employers. In my speech back in 2006, I raised this because there was a study conducted by Professor Vaughan Carr into mental illness and employment. He surveyed businesses and found that about 77 per cent of employers were reluctant to employ people with a mental disorder. We are also informed of similar disadvantages experienced by people who have epileptic seizures. The take-up rate of assistance to people with a disability by business has been extremely disappointing, and this is despite generous government funding and incentives in the past.

To add insult to injury, the Public Service figures for employing people with a disability are going seriously south. So government cannot even set an example to the rest of the business community that employing people with a disability—particularly mental illness—may actually provide some advantages in the workplace and certainly would go a long way to helping some of these people to get off welfare. I think it is a disgrace that when Public Service rates are so low we go out there and call on industry and business—private enterprise—to support people with a disability and to support people with mental illness. We even give awards and prizes in the Great Hall in this place. What hypocrisy. Governments are not doing their bit to set the example. We should be the ones setting the pace and setting the example for private enterprise to follow, and we do not do it.

Episodic mental illness presents particular challenges, as it may involve periods of inability to work, leading to a lack of continuity in the workforce. The additional cost of medication and treatment, if it can be sourced when needed, and the threat of the loss of a healthcare card—even when a person with a disability takes on a small amount of work and makes a small amount of money—makes this a particularly difficult hurdle to full-time or even part-time employment for those on welfare. All these things contribute to entrenching people in the welfare system. They do not help to remove those barriers.

The most disadvantaged in society, the disabled and single mothers in particular, continue to face those same disadvantages. How can people with a mental illness even hope for independence in the paid workforce when support is almost non-existent? How can a mother work when she cannot get access to child care? How can she develop her skills when she gets little financial support to do so? How can she get to work when the escalating cost of housing has driven her to the outskirts of town, and how can she pay her ever rising household bills and buy a car to get to work?

The facts are that while we speak to this bill providing some exemptions for people for whom work in the paid workforce would not be an option, we are witnessing a government budget which further entrenches hardship for the most disadvantaged. I can understand why the non-government organisations that service this community are so disappointed. Fresh from abandoning its policy to build 260 child-care centres, the government will cut child-care payments for out-of-pocket expenses by $278 a year. The annual child-care rebate will be capped at $7,500, a reduction on the annual cap of $7,778 a child. Families stand to lose $926 a child by the fourth year of this measure. The government has overlooked those factors preventing women from rejoining the workforce.

For those with mental illness, the government has removed social workers’ and occupational therapists’ ability to offer mental health services under Medicare. This is apart from the fact that if you need a psychiatrist just speak to any community service organisations that are dealing with homeless people or others with mental disability and it is almost impossible outside of hours to get attention for people having psychotic episodes. So now not only do we deny people; there is no money in this budget for mental health measures. Not only do we deny people mental health services through psychiatrists and through the hospitals but we have now knocked off the Medicare rebate. From July, Australians with mental illness who access these services will no longer be able to claim back the Medicare rebate currently available, which will frequently mean they are unable to afford the service. Some 1,500 doors to early intervention mental health services will be closed at the end of June this year for vulnerable Australians with mental health issues. Along with the already stretched psychiatric services, this is a particular blow to people suffering mental health conditions.

The government has removed social workers’ and occupational therapists’ ability to offer mental health services under Medicare, and this move will hurt thousands of Australians and further entrench the welfare cycle of poverty for those people who suffer mental illness. It is a tragedy; it truly is a tragedy. We see many thousands of people—I think somebody quoted 100,000 people—on the streets in this country at night. Some of those people are on welfare. Most of them are on the streets because they have got undiagnosed, untreated mental illnesses. Again, just speak to anyone working in the sector, working out on the streets at night, providing shelter, providing services to this demographic. We are not becoming a very inclusive country; we are becoming a country excluding a large section of our community.

It is very unfortunate that the bill before us does not do more to assist people in these categories. There are of course circumstances that would prevent parents of young children moving from social welfare payments to the paid workforce. I am pleased to see that some of the recommendations of the taskforce have acknowledged these special circumstances and that many have been adopted in this bill. I pay tribute to the work of the Participation Review Taskforce, chaired by Patricia Faulkner AO. It is a very good report within the scope of what they were asked to do, but it does not go to the heart of many of the barriers that stop people with a disability, single parents and others from actually getting off that welfare cycle and getting into the paid workforce. Some of the recommendations that have been picked up in the bill that we speak to today that I completely support are those under the terms of reference entitled ‘the flexibility of participation requirements’.

I had at least one person who was caught in this come to me. If a sole parent—in this case it was a woman—takes up work with a school, for example, in the tuckshop or as a cleaner, he or she then has to go back and meet their work participation test with the department to continue to be eligible for income support. I am pleased to see that one of the recommendations being picked up is:

The Taskforce recommends that parents should not be required to meet their part-time participation requirements during the fortnight that includes the Christmas and New Year public holidays.

The Taskforce recommends that parents with regular paid work during school-term time should not need to meet part-time participation requirements over the long school holidays if they reasonably expect to resume their usual hours of work at the beginning of the next school year.

This particular change is a victory for common sense, and I know that it will be welcomed by families in the electorate of Pearce who are affected by this.

Other measures in this bill include consideration for large families—that is, an exemption extended to people with large families to care for—those who are engaged in distance education or home schooling of their children and those involved in foster care and kinship care. As we heard the member for Blair say earlier, those who are subjected to domestic violence—which continues to be a deeply entrenched problem with Australian communities—will now get, instead of a 16-week case-by-case exemption, an automatic 12-month exemption from the work participation requirements. The tests have also been eased for those caring for a child with a disability or a medical condition. There are a number of measures which I do not have time to pursue in total. These are common-sense changes that have been made and they are very welcome.

This bill is a sensible furthering of the exemptions first set out under the Welfare to Work provisions of 2006—but, of course, we are still waiting, as I said, to see the true tackling of the issues. It is undeniable that the best way out of the welfare trap is indeed to access a job in the paid workforce. Not earning a wage can have a profound consequence that reaches across society. The 2008 OECD report Growing unequal? Income distribution and poverty in OECD countries commented:

Most of the relative poverty in Australia occurs in jobless households where no one is working; in fact, Australia has the lowest rate of ‘in-work’ relative poverty among families in the OECD.

That trend has remained quite constant in Australia. In 2001, the Smith Family’s report by Ann Harding of the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling found that only three per cent of households with a wage earner were in poverty, compared to 31 per cent of those relying on welfare.

Employment and lack of employment have a direct bearing on the material wellbeing of individuals and their families. In 2005, speaking on the Welfare to Work reforms, I quoted the figure showing 700,000 children growing up in households with no job. Two-thirds of those households were headed up by single parents. Professor Stanley outlined some of the problems of that in her book Children of the lucky country?

In conclusion, breaking the unemployment and poverty cycle is not just about reducing welfare payments to balance the national accounts; it is about removing the considerable barriers that welfare recipients encounter in trying to find jobs in the paid workforce. We could do and should do much more to support those on social welfare payments to help them break the cycle of poverty. (Time expired)

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I doubly thank you for the indulgence of sitting in the chair a bit longer so I can get my speech in before I relieve you in the chair. I really appreciate it very much.

I want to speak to the Social Security Amendment (Flexible Participation Requirements for Principal Carers) Bill 2010 in particular because as a former teacher I am very, very passionate about the fact that one of the most important things that we can do for people in our community, and indeed expect of people in our community, is to engage in the opportunities for work and education. I do not exempt principal carers from that. I have met too many women in my years teaching in TAFE who have spent years and years out of the workforce, raising a family and doing a very productive activity in our community, but who then through particular circumstances—most often a marriage break-up—find themselves in a situation where they have got to provide leadership to their children in the family and provide income support, and they suddenly realise how isolated they have become from the workforce and, indeed, from the community. There were some good programs that ran at TAFE concerned with getting those women in particular back into skills and training and back into the workforce. So I am a great supporter of the concept of mutual responsibility through these particular income support payments both for the principal carers and for the children for whom they are a role model.

The important part of that principle and that commitment to seeing that people actually engage with education and training and work is for us to do it in a way that does not have, if you like, the counteracting impact to our intention. If our intention in these sorts of bills and in that mutual responsibility is to support and encourage parents to engage and participate in the workforce, whether through training initially or a job, short term or long term, then we should do that in a way that actually enables them to participate given their individual circumstances. Sometimes it is very important, I think, when we put this sort of principle in place through legislation—as has happened across both governments now and it is a principle that has been fairly accepted across the political spectrum—that we also have the capacity to look at the outcomes and ask whether they are achieving the intention. I think that, by and large, those requirements are achieving those intentions and I have worked long enough in the TAFE sector to have seen really good initiatives that enabled principal carers—dads and mums, but mainly mums—to take those opportunities.

However, we did see the previous minister, who had the original carriage of this bill, set up a task force to do exactly that—to review how the participation requirement was operating. That task force produced a report. It was under the chairmanship of Ms Patricia Faulkner AO from KPMG. It was provided to the government in August 2008 and became the basis for the recommendations that the minister took into the previous budget—and it is interesting that we are discussing it in this budget week. Those recommendations are now enacted in this bill to take effect from 1 July this year. They are sensible changes to the requirements so that people can undertake what we expect of them without being put in a situation where in fact they are worse off, rather than better off, which is our intention.

It creates four major changes, and I think it is important to acknowledge those. The first is that the current exemption will extend the existing 12-month automatic exemption to principal carers with existing large families. I think the task force got quite a bit of evidence about this, and many of us can well appreciate that, if you have four or more children, even when the youngest one goes to school the impacts and requirements of the caring role are far beyond a carer’s capacity to carry out those participation requirements in the same way as someone who may have one or two younger children. So there is an acknowledgement that people with four or more children have specific circumstances. There is also acknowledgement that if parents have their children undertaking home schooling or distance education they undertake a part of an educative role as well and so we need to take their situation into consideration.

Also, importantly, the bill addresses the issues raised by the task force around the domestic violence exemption. As it existed, it did not apply to people who had stayed in their current situation. While one may well at heart understand how that was created in the first place, the reality is that, through the various ways in which domestic violence is managed and women and men are supported if they are experiencing domestic violence, to not allow them the exemption for 16 weeks in the participation rule because they had not as yet removed themselves from that family home is often counterproductive to what you are trying to achieve. To me, that is a sensible change.

There is also a new exemption created for respite and emergency foster carers. People could well understand why that would be in there. That exemption applies for the period of time in which they have a child in their care and up to 12 weeks between placements, enabling them to continue to do that very important work in our communities.

Finally, there is also a recognition of kinship carers where they are under the authority of the state or territory case plan. They are sensible amendments to me that indicate that, whilst these principal carers are still required to undertake participation, they will be able to do it in more flexible ways. The exemption will be able to be applied in situations where we would logically think they should be applied but where the hands of departmental officials had been tied under the legislation as it existed.

There are important changes also being made through a legislative instrument and amendments to the guide to social security law. They are also about creating more flexibility within that participation. While people are still required to do the 15 hours participation, there are some important changes there to allow part-time study, for example, to be included, including contact and non-contact hours. As a former TAFE teacher, I know that if you are trying to give someone the skills to re-engage in the workforce you may get them into a course that is eight to 10 hours because you want to give them four to five hours of individual support. That might be literacy support; it might be tutorial support. There are a range of vocational subjects that you provide that are not part of formal study that are important to enable them to undertake study. If they are not there then you are setting them up to fail in their studies. So it is important to have that in there, as well as the ability to combine activities. They could be doing a bit of part-time study and a bit of part-time work. There is the ability for volunteer work, so long as you can identify that it has vocational aspects, to be included.

Then there is participation in NEIS—the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme. Lots of women who re-enter the workforce these days do so through home based businesses. I know a lady in my own area with a card-making business who is doing a roaring trade now. She is doing wedding invitations, 21st cards and stationery. She set her business up through participation in NEIS. She has children at school and is a single mum and she is doing tremendously well. In fact, she was nominated for an award at the Illawarra business awards the year before last. I think that is a good initiative and a good avenue for some of those primary carers looking to re-enter the workforce.

In summary, I think it is important to acknowledge that the intention of this bill is to say, ‘We think participation and engagement are important. We don’t want to see people make the mistake of staying outside the system for long periods of time and becoming disengaged and permanently locked out of the workforce. We want to make sure that we are achieving that intention by being flexible and sensible about the way in which these requirements are applied so that we encourage and support people and not actually discourage them and give them bad experiences and have them decide that the whole thing is just a punishment rather than an opportunity.’ I commend the bill to the House.

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

I concur wholeheartedly with the comments made by the previous speaker, now in the chair. I think that she really highlighted the issue very effectively. The issue in the Social Security Amendment (Flexible Participation Requirements for Principal Carers) Bill 2010 before us is about modifying the existing participation exemptions and recognising that there are certain circumstances where people need to have exemptions and where the government needs to be more flexible in the way it implements the mutual obligation test that is applied to people who are working. Under the previous government, this test was very harshly implemented and many people were disadvantaged. They were disadvantaged to the extent that the test worked in the opposite way to its intent—discouraging people rather than encouraging them to participate in the workforce. That is what this government is about: creating opportunities for all workers to participate and trying to establish an environment in which that is most likely to happen.

This legislation does recognise that there are certain people who need to be looked at in a different light. That includes large families, as has previously been mentioned. Home schooling and distance education are, I think, two very important areas where this exemption needs to be extended—those people need to be exempt from having to seek work or undertake training. The liberalisation of the eligibility for the existing domestic violence exemptions to include parents who remain in a relationship is another area, showing an understanding that special circumstances exist for those people.

Also important is the recognition, through a new exemption, of the role of kinship carers who provide care through a care plan. That was an issue that I wanted to touch on and one that I feel very passionate about because, in these times, there are more and more grandparents, aunts and uncles who have the responsibility of caring for their children’s children or their nieces and nephews and who are having to put their life on hold. This legislation includes a 12-month exemption for those people and I think that is a very important aspect of the legislation, because the children they are caring for are often children who have very special needs and children who have been through quite a deal of trauma. This bill shows the type of flexibility that you would expect in the legislation.

Within my electorate, there is a kinship carer support network. It is run through the Samaritans and I strongly endorse the work that is done through that network. I have visited and met with the carers and they have told me their stories and about the way their lives have been impacted by having to care for their children’s children. It has meant them leaving work and it has meant them changing their whole lifestyle. I met with Karen at the kinship support service that operates at Charlestown. It provides service support for grandparents and extended family between the upper Hunter and the Central Coast. It looks to ensure that those grandparents and other relatives who are caring for children actually have the support, knowledge, information, understanding and backup they need. So I have been able to see firsthand just how important this exemption will be for that particular group of people.

The other cohort of people that I particularly want to mention are those people providing emergency foster and respite care. Under the previous government’s mutual obligation regime, those people were punished. I had foster parents that provide ongoing care for young children, older children, children who have suffered the worst traumas, have disabilities or have enormous problems. Those carers were forced to continue to look for work when the work that they were doing was providing so much benefit to our society. I think they are very important exemptions that are outlined in this bill. They are exemptions to put a little bit of humanity back into the legislation whilst, at the same time, recognising that participation is important, that training is important and that for parents and carers to actually obtain the skills and the knowledge that they need to enter the workforce is of great importance.

As the member for Pearce was saying, it is only through education and training that people get the skills and knowledge that they need to be able to obtain the higher paid jobs in the community and develop a good standard of living. I know the member for Pearce herself was a single parent who worked very hard to establish herself and she understands the issues that confront carers. It is through education, it is through training and it is through actually participating in getting back into the workforce that you will find that people can get their life back on track. It is very important.

I commend the government for undertaking the Participation Taskforce Review. There were a number of outstanding contributions that were made to the task force. The recommendations that were made by the task force have largely been implemented in this legislation. It is important to note that this legislation is about fairness, it is about humanity and it is about providing exemptions for those people that need exemptions and for those people that are most vulnerable. It is about recognising that where you have any participation requirement or mutual obligation requirement you also have to have the other side, the compassion. You need to be able to understand that this legislation is designed around people. This legislation is designed to increase participation in the workforce and it can only do it if it is fair, humane legislation. I commend the legislation to the House.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to support the Social Security Amendment (Flexible Participation Requirements for Principal Carers) Bill 2010. This bill is a very important bill and it comes off the back of a Participation Taskforce Review that was commissioned by the previous Minister for Employment Participation and taken up by the now Minister for Employment Participation for the actual changes to legislation. What these changes really do, while recognising that there is an imperative for principal carers of young children to be able to maintain continuity in the workforce, is actually ask, are we doing this in the best way possible? Are we actually making sure that our principal carers are involved in work and are a part of work?

Really, I think that we can do better. Workforce participation rates were published in the Participation Taskforce Review and it found the participation rates for mothers of school-age children lower compared with other OECD countries. Australian labour force participant rates particularly for single mothers as well as those in the 55-64 year-old group are actually lower than other OECD countries.

That shows that there are things that can be done to help, encourage and improve involvement in this area. Part of what we are looking at in this bill is ways to increase flexibility and ensure that parents can transition to work on different paths. The flexibility to allow parents to transition by improving their skills and upskilling is really important, and I will talk about that little bit more. We have heard a lot about increasing the flexibility for sole parents to meet their participation requirements, but we cannot forget that this is about whole families. In fact, what is at the heart of the exemptions and other parts of the participation requirements is ensuring that parents can give the best possible care to their children, especially in situations where children need some specific care.

Looking at specific exemptions, we will extend the existing 12-month automatic exemption for families with four or more children or families that are providing distance education for children from 16 up to 19 years if they are currently completing secondary school. This recognises that parents do have a responsibility and are involved in helping children, especially in large families, to get through those schooling years. We have said many times in this place and I have certainly said that finishing a year 12 education is a passport for children for the rest of their lives. So I see this exemption as one where we are really focusing on parents with large families getting an exemption so that they can make sure their children get the best pathway for the future.

In addition we are recognising the difficult role of respite and emergency foster carers through a new exemption that remains in place for the period of time the child is in that person’s care. Again this recognises that these children need more assistance and that having a carer who is absent is perhaps not in the best interests of a child who has been through often traumatic and difficult circumstances. As the previous speaker said, the role of kinship carers is recognised through a new exemption for those who have the care of a child in a state or territory case plan. I know this will be particularly welcomed by the grandparents I have spoken to who often take on the role of caring for their grandchildren, although they do not take on a full formal foster care role. Certainly a lot of people would argue that if a grandparent is able to take on that role that is in the best interests of the child, but there are a lot of complex issues that come with that. Providing that exemption is really important for these families to get back on their feet. But we should not get completely focused on exemptions. While exemption is for the parent, this is indeed also in the best interests of children—and that is really important.

A second area of recommendation by the Participation Review Taskforce which is a component of these changes is allowing more flexibility to help people upskill. The government wants to ensure that people get the best opportunity for and the best access to training. As part of our education revolution we want people to upskill, and I will give an example from my own electorate. By way of background, the bill will allow carers to satisfy their requirements for 15 hours participation, both contact or non-contact hours, in combination with paid work. I want to let people know what this meant for someone in my electorate.

Catherine Jordan of Morphett Vale, a single mother of one, said to me that she was studying aged care at TAFE and working casually. She wanted to work in the aged sector for which she had a real passion—an area where we really need qualified people. Like many Australians, she wanted to improve her skill set and eventually return to full-time work. As part of the previous requirements for participation she had to quit this study and focus on getting casual work. In the end, it defeated the purpose of skilling up someone who wanted to contribute to this very important area—especially as we have an ageing population. The changes in this bill will mean that Catherine can return to study, knowing that between casual study and her work she will fulfil her participation requirements. This is really important.

As previous speakers have mentioned, primary carers should be encouraged to pursue the development of their own private businesses if they so desire. I hear many stories of mothers and fathers, single parents, coming up with some very inventive and exciting businesses which they start at home. Under the changes in this bill, carers will be afforded the same opportunity and support as the rest of the population, allowing them to enter into the scheme on a part-time basis, giving carers the skills to go into business for themselves. This is really important.

I want to touch on one other very sensible change, which has certainly affected a lot of people in my electorate, which ensures that carers have more flexibility over the Christmas and New Year holidays—a very stressful time for families. It should be a time of joy but it is a time when non-government organisations, church organisations and charity organisations find the demand on their services really goes up. So having more flexible guidelines over Christmas and New Year holidays is really important.

Another important change is the flexible provisions for employees who temporarily do not work over school holiday periods—people who work in an administrative role or maybe as a classroom support officer. They may have a very good arrangement with the school where they work during term time, with guaranteed ongoing hours, but they are not needed in school holidays, although they do not necessarily want to work then because they want to spend time with their children. They do not want to leave their children at home alone because they have to go out to work. When talking about school holidays for two weeks, it seems nonsensical to many of the people in my electorate to have to fulfil participation requirements knowing that in two weeks they will be back at their job, yet they have to go through the process which, in fairness, does not improve their long-term sustainable role in the workforce. This is a very important and sensible change which makes sure that people who have good arrangements with their employer and ongoing meaningful employment can continue, rather than chopping and changing jobs just because they go on school holidays. Obviously we have specified that the carer must have the expectation of ongoing employment, but for people assisting in schools it is evident that having a break for two weeks is just about schools closing for school holidays.

In conclusion, these are important, sensible changes. They do not detract from the fact that we still want to encourage people into the workforce. We want to ensure, if they are receiving welfare money from Centrelink, that there is an obligation, but do it in a way that keeps in mind the children they are looking after and some sensible arrangements so as to ensure that by upskilling and educating themselves they can go even further and have a long-term, meaningful connection to the workforce. I commend the bill to the House.

Debate (on motion by Ms Hall) adjourned.