Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Remote Engagement Program) Bill 2021. This bill will build on the Morrison government's commitment to reform employment services, and is a critical component of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. It is one of the many bills that the Morrison government is progressing during this sitting period to advance the causes of regional Australians, especially Indigenous Australians.

This is a bill that I am particularly glad and proud to stand up and speak on today because this is a reform I have been championing for over a decade, long before I came into this place nearly 2½ years ago. I commend the government for bringing on the introduction to this bill, and I am proud to be part of a government that puts in place such sensible reforms in this area. This bill enables remote communities to co-design their implementation of government services—a real voice to government, if you will. This bill will help reform remote employment services, and it will do it in a way that sees the ongoing rollout of these services adjusted by feedback from populations of remote communities. The reforms will also be piloted in partnership with remote communities, ensuring that support is available to aid in the rollout.

This bottom-up design and implementation is what communities have been asking for for a long time, and it is what we are delivering. Those opposite love to pay lip-service when it comes to the idea of a true Indigenous voice. When it disagrees with their blinkered world view—when communities cry out for things like the cashless debit card, for example—they run a mile and return to their top-down Canberra-based decision-making model. They are more concerned about appeasing latte lefties than actually listening to communities. I will have more to say about the cashless debit card in a moment. Labor's lies in that area really need to be called out.

I go back to the positive reform that is the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Remote Engagement Program) Bill 2021. This bill will provide the framework that allows new approaches to welfare and employment services provision to be piloted in remote communities ahead of wider implementation of the government's budget commitment to the Community Development Program, the CDP, which will be replaced in 2023. Lessons learnt from the pilot sites will inform the design of the new program to be rolled out in 2023. Initially we estimate around 200 eligible jobseekers across the pilot sites will volunteer for this payment.

The collaboration supported in this bill will allow communities to develop programs that are appropriately flexible, enabling the building of skills and capabilities of the people in remote communities. Importantly, this bill will not see a return to the old training for training's sake model that has really been a blight across much of these sorts of programs. In fact, it will move our service delivery in the opposite direction. I've seen the hopelessness that can be overcome when people get a job. I've seen the hopelessness of people undergoing training for training's sake and it not leading anywhere. We know that many people have dozens of qualifications yet no job prospects. Equally, I've seen the positive life transformations that can occur when someone gets a job.

Over the decades governments of different stripes have tried different approaches to employment services delivery in remote Australia. We're constantly learning what works and, importantly, what doesn't in urban, suburban, regional and remote environments. We know that one size does not fit all. Many of the more detailed aspects of this new approach will be set out in legislative instruments and policy guidance—for example, any additional qualification criteria for the supplement and the exact rate of payment—allowing this flexibility to adjust as lessons are learnt and as communities' ideas change over the course of the pilot. This is best practice. It's going to allow first-hand experience to guide the implementation of services.

Australians living in remote communities face complex environment challenges different from those experienced in the city and even regional areas. Remote areas cover 75 per cent of the Australian landmass; however, there are fewer jobs available in remote areas—we know that—with less than two per cent of actively trading businesses located in these regions.

The key reform this bill introduces is a new supplementary payment that will be made to eligible jobseekers in the Remote Engagement Program pilot communities so that they can engage in activities or placements like having a job. The placements will build participants' skills in roles that will deliver goods or services to benefit local communities and provide a pathway for jobseekers to find a job. This bill supports the government's commitment to work in genuine partnership, to co-design, with Indigenous Australians.

The new payment will be paid at a fortnightly rate of between $100 and $190. It will be additional to certain primary income support payments and other supplements for eligible jobseekers. The new payment will not be subject to the income test laid down in the Social Security Act. It can be paid for a maximum of two years, at which time the government will have finalised the replacement to the more wide-ranging CDP.

Why would anyone want to stand in the way of this? No-one would unless of course they were just politically motivated to do so. But we know that this is just how the Labor Party likes to operate. The reality is that communities want to be able to engage in the design of their own program. I listened carefully to Senator McAllister's speech earlier, where she talked about Labor's position. This is a program that allows an opportunity for communities to design the program themselves, for them to have input into it.

There was criticism that there's not enough detail in the bill, but it would be quite disingenuous of the government to put detail in before they've actually engaged in the co-design process. The whole idea of this bill is to enable that to start so that there can then be engagement with the community to design and then implement it, based on that feedback and the community's design. That's why there's provision within this bill to do it by instrument, to have provisions that will be dealt with at a later stage, once that design process has been worked out, so it then can be implemented.

But we know that Labor are often politically motivated—and it's shameless—as with the cashless debit card. I want to call out the Labor Party for their shameless and baseless scare campaign. You would all be aware of it—the lie that the government is somehow going to force pensioners onto the cashless debit card. This scare campaign is ironic, because the government proposed an amendment to ensure that pensioners would stay off the cashless debit card, and Labor voted against that motion. That's the record in this place. Why did Labor do that? Were they afraid that their scare campaign wouldn't work if they voted to prevent pensioners from going onto the cashless debit card?

This deserves to be called out. Yet, on the other hand, Labor have committed to scrapping the card. I've worked for over 10 years dealing with this, in close consultation with communities and community organisations, to see this card implemented. This card has seen a reduction in crime, a reduction in domestic violence and a reduction in ambulance call-outs. It is a card that takes cash out of the hands of drug dealers. And Labor wants to scrap this card. They cite rights, as if government welfare in cash form is some form of right. We, on this side of the House, care more about the rights of children to be fed and of women to be safe from domestic violence. Labor's capitulation to the left-wing base on this issue is shameful. It will see outcomes worsen in our regions, undoing years of good work. Shame on them!

In summing up, I return to what this bill is about. It enables remote communities to co-design the implementation of government services—a real voice to government, if you will. As I said, I listened carefully to Senator McAllister. I'm not going to stand here and say that the CDP program is perfect or that it's a flawless program. In fact, in my first speech in this Senate I spoke about the fact that there need to be significant reforms across the whole employment services area. And I've committed myself, while I am in this place, to be part of the discussion, part of the design and part of the movement to see the changes that are required. But we don't get this from the Labor Party. I sat through the inquiry—and Senator Chandler is here as well; she's the chair of the Finance and Public Administration Committee, which had a good look at this program—and we heard from communities on the ground and from individuals who will be dealing with this program. There's quite some enthusiasm about the opportunity to be part of the design of this program. Yet Labor just takes the political point score, rather than actually dealing with the opportunities that are here. Now, I welcome support for this bill, but, in doing so, they just want to make a cheap shot.

This bill will help reform remote employment services. This is a good thing. It needs to happen. There does need to be reform, and the government's committed to that. But you've got to be able to design it and prove it up first, before you really move forward. This bill enables us to do that. It enables us to put in place, in consultation and co-design with the community, the things that they recognise would work for them. We know that when you run a program from a Canberra-driven, top-down model you end up running a program to the community, and that never works. You've got to run the program with the community.

An honourable senator interjecting—

I take the interjections—this provides the opportunity for the community to be part of the design for a program that works for them. It is the height of paternalism to suggest, by way of this sort of disruption, that communities won't know what's good for them. They're part of the design of this program, and that's a good thing because it's going to get us better results. We've got to see better results in these communities. The reforms will be piloted in partnership with remote communities, ensuring that support is available to aid in the rollout.

This bottom-up design and implementation is what communities have been asking for for a long time. I've spent a lot of time in communities. This year has been a little disrupted—every time I go home after coming over here I have to go into quarantine, and that has limited the amount of time I get to go around the communities. But, just before the last sitting, I had a couple of days where I got out into Leonora and Laverton. I engaged with the service providers out there and engaged with the community. I literally sat on the red dirt out there with a bunch of young fellows that were engaging with an employment program. There is a real desire to see reform in this space. The reform that is enabled through this bill is welcomed by the communities because it's going to make a real difference. This bottom-up design and implementation is what communities have been asking for for a long time. This is enabling us to do four or five pilot sites, and that's a good thing. I'm looking forward to the day when we can roll it out to even more communities. That's going to be even better. But you've got to get it right.

The opportunity that this pilot provides is to trial different things and get feedback; it's a chance to, at times, make a mistake but then learn from it and work out how we can improve the design. Then we can take it out to the entire country to deal with the 50-plus CDP regions across the country and ensure that there is a program that actually meets the needs of the communities and, importantly, gets people off welfare and into a job. Anyone that says to you that there are not the economies in these locations is actually misleading, or they're misunderstanding the opportunity that exists. Where there is population, where there is a community, where there are people, there is an economy and there is an opportunity. We've got to stop this business of having lowered expectations for these communities. It's the racism of lowered expectations which is going to hold back this nation, particularly these communities. We've got to expect, like they do, that things can be better and that, when they're in the driving seat, they can make the difference.