Ms GILLARD (11:23 AM) —Here we are again debating another Howard government welfare bill, the Social Security Amendment (2007 Measures No. 2) Bill 2007. This is the third welfare bill this year. In the public domain the Howard government claims it has reformed welfare in Australia, but the Hansard of this place, including today’s Hansard, will show that here we are with yet another bill and another piece of piecemeal reform. This is in a week when we have seen on the front page of a newspaper another cooked-up scheme being recommended by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Mr Joe Hockey. We expect that this thought bubble will have served its purpose—that is, to get a newspaper story. It will now be forgotten, as these things tend to be with Howard government ministers, who do not have a plan for Australia’s future and who are desperately scrabbling around to try to get their names in newspapers in the run-up to the election.

The simple fact is that, when it comes to social security policy, the Howard government has got it wrong. It has got it wrong for 11 long years and it still cannot figure out how to get it right. That is because, time after time, the Howard government goes for a short-term fix, rather than a long-term plan, for this nation’s future. As a result, we still have low participation rates, compared with our competitors. We still have two million Australians who are officially unemployed, working part time but wanting more work than they can get or wanting to work but not showing up in the monthly unemployment figures. It is a staggering statistic but one which many Australians would feel intuitively as they move around in their daily lives. Many Australians would certainly know people who are working part time and wanting more work than they currently have but have not been able to get it. People would be aware of Australians who do not show up in the monthly unemployment figures but who want to work, as well as those who are officially unemployed. Also, as a result of the Howard government’s failure to plan for Australia’s long-term future—

Mr Brough interjecting—

Mr Martin Ferguson interjecting—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. DJC Kerr)—Order! I do have five minutes left in the chair in this parliament to break my duck. Under the relevant standing order—

Mr Martin Ferguson interjecting—

Mr Brough —Mr Deputy Speaker—a union thug reflecting on the chair!

The DEPUTY SPEAKER —I ask both the minister and the shadow minister at the table to refrain from interjecting and permit the Deputy Leader of the Opposition to continue with her most remarkable address.

Ms GILLARD —Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, in your remaining few minutes in the chair and what I understand to be the last few minutes in this parliament. I am sure in those few minutes you will show great leadership and balance in the chair and, because you are a patient man, you will not worry about the interjections from the minister at the table or from his friend on the back bench. That is testament to your patience rather than their conduct.

As I was saying, as a result of the Howard government’s failure to plan for Australia’s long-term future, we have a skills crisis in Australia, and I think the minister at the table would find it hard to deny that. We see businesses desperate for skilled workers. That, of course, is a direct result of the Howard government’s failure to plan ahead and its failure to train the available jobless Australians for available jobs. Labor has a different approach. Labor believes that people who can work should work and that those who genuinely cannot work should be cared for. We believe that work is a foundation of social inclusion. Everyone benefits when more people can participate in the social and economic mainstream. Labor’s approach to workforce participation is to identify the reasons why some people are not participating as much as they could or would like to and to deliver practical solutions.

For instance, take the plan announced by Labor leader Kevin Rudd at the weekend to create Skills Australia. Skills Australia will play a central role to ensure that we lock in a full employment economy and that we develop a highly skilled and innovative workforce for the future—things which, presumably, the minister is opposed to. It will assess evidence from commissioned research and industry stakeholders to inform Australia’s workforce development needs. Skills Australia will provide government with recommendations about the future skills needs of the country. It will identify future skills shortages so that they can be addressed before they negatively impact on economic activity. It will identify persistent skills shortages so that current capacity blockages can be overcome. It will identify barriers that prevent skills formation in areas where persistent skills shortages exist and it will identify industries where retraining and upskilling of workers may be required to prevent unemployment, underemployment and skills obsolescence.

In making its recommendations to government, Skills Australia will have regard to the objective of achieving full employment, the international competitiveness of the Australian economy, the promotion of innovation through skills acquisition, the provision of a sufficient number of appropriately qualified workers for industries of critical national importance and the role of state and regional economies in contributing to the success of the broader Australian economy.

All of this work has been neglected by the Howard government and, as a result, a survey of more than 760 producers conducted by the Australian Industry Group, a survey reported under the title of Australia’s skills gap costly, wasteful and widespread, found that one in two businesses were experiencing difficulties in obtaining skilled labour. It is hardly a record for a government to be proud of after 11 years when Australian producers are saying to it that its lack of attention to Australia’s skills gap has left them with a problem which is costly, wasteful and widespread.

The Monash University-ACER Centre for the Economics of Education and Training has estimated that more than four million additional people will need to acquire qualifications from 2006 to 2016. This includes more than two million new entrants and 1.78 million existing workers. Of these, 61.4 per cent will need a vocational education and training qualification and 38.6 per cent a higher education qualification. The simple reality is that businesses are desperate for skilled staff and people only get a job if they have the skills an employer needs and wants.

Yet again, with this bill another opportunity passes to help jobless Australians gain skills, and beyond this bill the Howard government has no plan to match current and future needs for skilled workers with people who could be working. All of a sudden, remarkably, we are supposed to believe that after 11 years the Howard government, including the Treasurer, have a vision for engaging in our community those who are not active participants in the labour market or our community. It is quite remarkable that after 11 years as Treasurer the Treasurer is now inviting us to believe that he has a vision for this country. If the man had a vision for this country then surely that would have showed at the commencement of his period as Treasurer and he would have been pursuing that vision. Instead, we see the Treasurer desperately scrabbling around trying to look like he has got half an idea about something, just as we saw yesterday the government’s backbenchers, in their party room meeting, desperately scrabbling around trying to look like the government had half an idea about something. It is not clear whether they found any of those answers but they spent more than two hours looking for half an idea and not one idea has yet emerged about the future from the Howard government.

Mr Brough —Have another committee, Julia. That’s something you are good at. Have a review.

Ms GILLARD —The minister at the table, who obviously does not have any ideas about the future, is consequently just carping and is just as negative as the Howard government has become. It has no ideas about the future—

Mr Brough —It’s hard to take you seriously!

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. AM Somlyay)—Order! The minister will cease interjecting.

Ms GILLARD —just as this minister has no idea about the future. The Treasurer has no idea about the future and he is pretending that he has just discovered social inclusion. He is obviously looking for something to pad out newspaper interviews but he has no idea about what the content of a social inclusion policy might look like. This is Howard government members in the run-up to the election: always desperate to get their names in the newspaper, they just forget the content. After 11 years the Treasurer now says that he wants to ensure that Australia’s prosperity is shared in ways that re-engage those who are at risk of exclusion or already excluded from our society and our economy.

Clearly the minister at the table does not understand what social inclusion is. But in not understanding what social inclusion is, he might want to explain why his colleague the Treasurer now uses these words about social inclusion when they ring hollow from a man who has presided over a prosperous economy for more than a decade yet has still allowed disadvantage to become more entrenched and more complex. Given that the minister is in a joking mood, he might want to joke about these statistics. The Brotherhood of St Laurence, for instance, has identified 21 federal electorates with a simultaneous high incidence of single-parent families, low family incomes and high unemployment rates, and it has found that these are the electorates with higher birth rates.

Mr Brough interjecting—

Ms GILLARD —The minister of course is calling out about these statistics. They are not my statistics; they are the statistics of the Brotherhood of St Laurence and I think that they say something meaningful to us and to this country about pockets of entrenched disadvantage. Because these communities have the highest birth rates, more than 37,000 babies at risk of serious disadvantage were born into just those 21 electorates last year alone. This is something that requires a response. It means that much of the next generation is being born into communities least able to help them escape a life of disadvantage.

Catholic Social Services has found in its most recent report on the distribution of disadvantage in Australia that just 1.7 per cent of postcodes and communities across the country account for more than seven times their share of the major factors that cause intergenerational poverty including: low income, limited computer and internet access, early school leaving, physical and mental disabilities, long-term unemployment, prison admissions and confirmed child maltreatment. The same report estimated that one-third of all communities in my home state of Victoria suffer from low social cohesion. Once again, these are not my conclusions but the conclusions of Catholic Social Services. They describe such communities as ones where there are inadequate levels of community trust and resources, and that lack of trust and resources make it more difficult for individuals and families to overcome the individual and family problems that lead to poverty.

A report released by ACOSS in recent weeks reminds us that we have a sizeable proportion of our community living in poverty. Using the OECD poverty line standard of 50 per cent of median income, the 2004 data tells us that 9.9 per cent of Australians are below the poverty line. If the European Union standard of 60 per cent of median income is used, then that figure doubles to 19.8 per cent of our community.

The Howard government likes to spruik its record, but it needs to take ownership of these statistics as well because they tell us something about those people in contemporary Australia who are doing it tough, who have not been touched by the years of economic prosperity—and we are into our 16th year of economic growth—and for whom more has to be done. It takes more than patting yourself on the back about your record to deliver a vision to address entrenched disadvantage in our communities. Sadly, the contents of the bill before the House today demonstrate that the actual record of the Howard government in dealing with the challenges of inclusion and engagement is not one to be proud of, so it is not surprising that this bill includes the usual random assortment of measures.

I should emphasise that there is one measure here that we strongly support: exempting relatives from participation requirements if they are the primary caregivers of children. On the basis of this measure, we will be supporting the bill. We consider this exemption is long overdue. The child must be directed to live with the person under a parenting order made under the Family Law Act 1975, a state child order or an overseas child order that has been registered under the Family Law Act and the person must be complying with that order. When those relatives are single principal carers, the bill also ensures that access to the highest available rate of payment, the parenting payment single, is available. Relatives who have taken responsibility for the care of children are obviously providing invaluable support to their family and their community and, in turn, we as a nation must support them.

It is worth noting, however, that some community advocates have argued that eligibility for these exemptions should be extended further to include other circumstances where a relative of a child may become a principal carer without court orders being made. Indeed, the approach in this bill contradicts the government’s move towards parenting plans and family relationship centres as alternatives to family courts. It would be worth hearing from the minister how she justifies the narrowness of this exemption and its apparent clash with other aspects of government policy. Nevertheless, this step is quite unlike most of the Howard government’s so-called Welfare to Work agenda, which actually makes it harder for Australians who are struggling to achieve financial independence. Unfortunately, other aspects of the bill continue in that vein.

The Howard government seems intent on making life harder for people with a disability. One measure removes medical officers from the assessment of a person’s capacity to work. This dramatic change was one of the reasons Labor initiated a Senate inquiry into this bill. The Mental Health Council of Australia submitted to the inquiry that taking medical officers out of the assessment ‘could have damaging unintended consequences for the person with mental illness’. The Australian Federation of Disability Organisations was similarly concerned with the implications of this bill, saying that even under existing arrangements:

Given this current predicament, disability advocates are concerned about the impact of removing the limited remaining role of medical officers from this process. This change—obviously advocated by the Howard government because it is in this bill—seems an inexplicable one.

Labor believes there is a role for medical opinion in the job capacity assessment process. Consequently, when we reach the consideration in detail stage we will move substantive amendments to delete the items from the bill which remove medical officers from the assessment of impairment. When we get to that stage, I think it will be important for government members to understand that, if they vote against those amendments, they will be voting to remove these medical officers from the assessment of capacity to work. What could justify doing that?

The bill also reinforces the role of the job capacity assessment in another way. It replaces the guidelines for making these work capacity assessments, those made by the secretary, with guidelines set out in a legislative instrument by the minister. The secretary will be required to comply with these guidelines, as will the Social Security Appeals Tribunal and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

While Labor acknowledge and understand the concern that some in the disability community have about what the guidelines will prescribe, we do support the increased ability of parliament to scrutinise the guidelines as a legislative instrument. However, these guidelines have not been released and Labor will watch very closely to ensure that they do not make life harder for people with a disability. Consequently, at the end of my contribution I will be moving a second reading amendment to that effect.

This bill, like all the Welfare to Work bills put forward by this government, does not address this nation’s participation challenges. Clearly, the Howard government do not actually understand the scale of the participation challenge; they simply hope the mining boom will continue forever. Of course, we know that at some time in the future—and may it be a long time away—there will be a time beyond the resources boom for which we should be planning and investing now. Australia needs a long-term approach to workforce participation and welfare reform that tackles the reasons why some people are not working and delivers practical solutions.

As I have indicated, Labor will support this bill, principally because Labor does support exemptions from participation requirements for relatives who care for children, but Labor will move an in-detail amendment dealing with the medical officers issue to which I have referred. Labor will also seek, through the second reading amendment I will now move, for the government to tell the Australian people in a clear way how it is going to deal with the new guidelines of which this bill is the threshold part. With those words, I move:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. AM Somlyay)—Is the amendment seconded?

Mr Martin Ferguson —I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.