HANSARD EXTRACT
| Employment and
Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Welfare to Work
and Other Measures) Bill 2006: Second Reading |
| 11 May 2006 |
Mr HAYES
(Werriwa)
(4.16
p.m.)—Once
again, we have the Welfare to Work initiatives that were introduced
by this government back before us with the
Employment and Workplace Relations Legislation
Amendment (Welfare to Work and Other Measures) (Consequential
Amendments) Bill 2006. They are not here to be improved
and certainly not because there is a flaw in the way that they were
announced in the budget that is therefore being addressed; they are
here simply because of the government’s rush to get the original
piece of legislation through, because of their shoddy draftsmanship
and because they are now seeking to correct those problems. That is
the basis of this bill before us today.
I have to make it clear from the outset that Labor will not be
opposing the measures contained in the bill, not because we support
the initiatives but because to oppose them would mean that those who
are affected by this bill would be further marginalised by the
government’s incompetence. Let me make it clear and take the
opportunity to state the position of this side of the House: Labor
believes that if people can work they should work. There is
absolutely no debate about that. However, unlike the government,
Labor also believes that reducing the support to people who are not
working will not equip them for a job. It is simply going to make
them poorer. That is what it is designed to do.
Changing the nature of the welfare payments so that some people
receive less will not address the issues at the heart of why these
people are not working in the first place. A lower payment does not
of itself improve the employment prospects of the unemployed—or the
disabled, for that matter. A lower payment does not equip people
with a range of skills, abilities and experiences that an employer
seeks when they are looking to put a person on in their particular
workplace. Placing people on a lower welfare payment, even in a time
of historical low unemployment, does not make them any more
employable. It does not give them any more opportunity to get a job.
As I said, it simply makes them poorer. To tackle unemployment, to
tackle issues of labour market disadvantage and to improve the
employment prospects of the unemployed you need to address issues at
the core of why people find it difficult to find employment.
Members opposite, as they have in the past, will obviously paint the
Labor Party as defending dole bludgers and defending welfare
recipients, and this is because the government’s Welfare to Work
measures simply do nothing. Our opposition is because they do
nothing to improve employment prospects of people who find
themselves unemployed and unable to find work. It is not a matter of
simply defending welfare recipients; it is a matter of supporting
them in their desire to find real and meaningful work.
Labor understands that, quite frankly, people do find it difficult
to find reasonable and gainful employment. I know that is true in my
own electorate of Werriwa. Unfortunately my electorate has a high
rate of youth unemployment. That does not mean we need to take a
stick to the kids who cannot find employment; it challenges us to
bring in policies to help equip those young people with the
necessary skills that are being sought by employers. That is what
real welfare to work reform should be about, and that would be the
preferred option. If we were serious about Welfare to Work, we would
certainly be designing legislation to assist, to support and to
encourage the acquisition of skills and to help people become more
competitive as they compete for places in the labour market.
Everybody benefits from being part of the economic mainstream, being
part of the labour force. It is certainly infinitely better for
someone to be gainfully employed, not simply because they are out of
the unemployment statistics and not simply because they are no
longer a burden to the welfare system. It is better for them for a
range of different reasons: they are personally more satisfied and
able to see that they can look after their own families, make a
contribution to the economy and also participate in the economic
mainstream activity that most of us tend to take for granted.
In my electorate thousands of people are dependent on the disability
support pension, Newstart allowance and parenting payment single. I
recognise the social importance of economic participation and I am a
keen supporter of improving their participation in the workforce.
But, as I said, it is not a matter of taking a stick to people; it
is a matter of applying the proper infrastructure to facilitate the
acquisition of skills that will allow people to either rejoin or, in
many instances, join the workforce.
However, the government’s Welfare to Work measures that are being
cleaned up by this bill will not necessarily lead to an increase in
mainstream economic participation. The government has previously
conceded that more than 200,000 people will be worse off financially
under the Welfare to Work changes. The government has also admitted
that it expects only 109,000 people to gain employment. Assuming
that those who secure employment receive wages above their level of
benefit, the net result will be that 91,000 people will be worse off
because of these changes.
This government, with some twisted version of logic, intends to make
almost 100,000 people worse off than they were before without
assisting them in any way. This has to be the most offensive thing
about these changes. While the amendments before us today are
welcome insofar as they clean up anomalies in the government’s
original, hastily drafted Welfare to Work legislation, it is
nevertheless a fact that around 100,000 people will be worse off due
to that legislation. They are going to be worse off financially and
worse off generally because they will not receive the support they
need to seek and secure employment. They will receive less money, no
training and no support services and yet they will be expected to
find work.
This government has, in effect, thrown these people on the economic
scrap heap to survive as best they can. That is not a real form of
motivation, particularly when it is often beyond the immediate
capacity of people in that situation to do anything to change their
position—particularly people on the disability support pension, and
let us not forget about those receiving parenting payments.
As I mentioned earlier, when it comes to moving people from welfare
to work, it is not about simply replacing their welfare payment with
a job, because it just does not happen as easily as that. This is a
difficult time for people; it is a time when people need to be
supported and encouraged into work where possible. These measures
should be about replacing a handout with a hand up, and that is
simply not occurring. There is no support whatsoever contained in
the government’s measures.
It is absolutely correct to target welfare dependency and to seek
ways to move people off welfare and into work. Labor has advocated,
and will continue to advocate, for real welfare reform that achieves
that objective. Labor will continue to argue that policies that seek
to facilitate the transfer from welfare payments to wages can be
achieved only through real welfare reform and should be pursued only
if the reforms tackle the reasons why people cannot find work and
deliver practical solutions to accommodate this transition. But this
is not what the government is about. This government is not about
these practical solutions, and that was my objection to the original
legislation. The government is about handouts, but not,
unfortunately, to those who need them the most.
On budget night we saw just how addicted this tax-and-spend
government is to delivering handouts as it goes on its big spend. It
spent up big on tax cuts, it spent up big on superannuation and it
claimed to be making changes to child care. One thing that was
conspicuous by its absence was spending on education. The Treasurer
did not even mention a word about that in his budget speech. In
fact, Tuesday night’s budget actually reduced the overall percentage
of federal funds spent on vocational education and training.
The people who will be impacted most by the measures contained in
the bill before us are those who need education and training
opportunities the most.
Australia is experiencing a skills crisis—there is no doubt. In
fact, the government is so sure of this that it has increased
skilled migration intake and has come up with the new training visa
for those coming from overseas to work in Australia. So, on the one
hand, the government has acknowledged that there is a skills crisis
where businesses are screaming out for skilled employees while, on
the other hand, it is doing nothing to increase the pool of those
skilled employees available to businesses throughout this country.
The government is looking around and saying that there are some
people out there on welfare who should probably be in the workforce,
but it does not act to support them or to help them acquire the
skills that employers are presently looking for.
Real welfare reform needs to give people a chance to get the skills
that an employer is looking for. Despite this reasonably logical
view as to how best to assist people’s transition from welfare to
work, the government seems to be obsessed with the view that people
on welfare should be punished because they are not working. For some
reason the government has decided that a much better approach to get
people to seek employment is to reduce their payments and at the
same time reduce their bargaining power through the government’s
extreme industrial relations laws. The people we are talking about
who are subject to this legislation are the most vulnerable in our
society. There is no question that these people do not have a
bargaining position, yet we are using a threat to reduce their
welfare payment as their motivation for finding employment. And, as
they go to find employment, under the new Work Choices law they
really find out the level of their bargaining position.
I take a small liberty in connecting the industrial relations laws
with the Welfare to Work provisions, but I would contend that these
laws must be looked at simultaneously to see how they impact on
people on welfare. They need to be considered together because we
are going to see in the not-too-distant future people who have been
shifted from one welfare payment to a lower one out there looking
for a job—desperate to find work because they are struggling on a
lower welfare payment. At the same time an employer out there knows
that they are desperate for a job. An employer out there knows that
they have no bargaining position. An employer out there knows that
these are the ultimate pricetakers in our society. So, from the very
start, you have an even greater imbalance in the bargaining power of
the parties. The employer by far and away has the great advantage,
when we look at people at this end of the scale—particularly a
person who has a disability, a single mother trying to re-enter the
workforce or a person on Newstart.
Added to the fact that a number of people seeking employment are
likely to be, as I said, disabled or lacking skills and experience,
you will find that the government has created a situation where a
whole group of people with a limited range of employment options
find themselves having to negotiate employment agreements with an
employer who is in a massively superior bargaining position. That is
not reform. That is certainly not what you would expect in a
prosperous country such as
Australia. Creating an environment in which employers know that the
prospective employee in front of them is faced with the situation of
accepting the job, no matter what the terms and conditions are, or
losing their benefits hardly creates a reasonable environment to
encourage participation. Everyone would know that it is preposterous
to seriously believe that this will result in improvements for
existing welfare recipients moving to work. Breaking down barriers
to participation should be about addressing the starting point to
welfare reform.
Earlier today I heard the Treasurer in an interview mention the
importance of investment in the promotion of productivity growth
and, as a consequence, economic growth. Although that was said in
the context of investment in capital, the investment in the skills
and education of those in the labour market is also important in the
promotion of productivity growth and economic growth. That is why it
is a little disappointing that, to encourage people to move from
welfare to work, the government has passed up the opportunity to use
a carrot and stick approach and has decided to just use the stick.
Most reasonable people would consider that it is appropriate for the
unemployed to be assisted with training to improve their skills and
employment prospects. Most people would also consider it appropriate
to address the root causes of long-term unemployment as a
sustainable way of facilitating a transition from welfare into work
and increasing participation levels in work. Sadly, it seems that
the government is not filled with such an ambition. The impacts of
short-sighted and hastily introduced Welfare to Work provisions that
have resulted in this bill before us today are not confined to the
domain of the disabled and the low skilled. The provisions also
impact on single parents—and in the main, as you would appreciate,
Mr Deputy Speaker, that really refers to single mothers.
Contrast with the position of this government, which, under family
tax benefit B, goes out of its way to encourage mothers to stay at
home, the situation in the bill before us which seeks to encourage
people off welfare. Mothers returning to work do need to have
special support. Great fanfare greeted the child-care measures the
government announced in the budget. Those measures may actually
assist single mothers re-entering the workforce if more child-care
places were created. (Time expired)
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