Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Recently the township of Mildura, which is the biggest town in the electorate of Mallee, was in the media—for all the wrong reasons—for having a high level of people who are avoiding their obligations when it comes to unemployment benefits. What I want to say is that it was only 300 people out of 55,000. That means there are a lot of Australians in my patch who have got up and gone to work and are contributing to Australia.

But it is not unreasonable, I must say, that we work with people who are avoiding the system. Frankly, those 300 people—we give them one opportunity, a second opportunity, a third opportunity and then a fourth opportunity. If at that point they still have not fulfilled their obligations, we will sit down with them. If they are victims of family violence, or if there is a reason, we will try and give them some assistance. But if they are just avoiding going to work to fulfil their mutual obligations for getting unemployment benefits then the payment should be cut off. I think that is fair and reasonable.

Our patch is a patch we can be proud of. We should be in the paper for all the right reasons, not for the wrong reasons. My people are very, very proud of the community that exists there. We contribute $5.3 billion to the Australian economy. We have a community that we are really proud of. One of our councillors is in the gallery here today. I just want to say that our town, our community, is a town you want to live in; it is a town you want to visit. It is not a town full of bludgers; it is town full of very hard workers.