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Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Page: 3648

Mr BANDT (Melbourne) (18:14): These amendments are supported for the reasons that have been outlined by the minister. Mr Deputy Speaker, with your and the House's indulgence, I seek to make a few general comments about the remaining provisions of the bill. I ought to have made them earlier but, perhaps somewhat ironically, I was late and I hope that I will not be punished on this occasion for missing that appointment.

If there was ever any proof needed that evidence based policy will give way to perceived political imperative every time it is the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2011 and the committee inquiry process that led to it, which I participated in. The aim of this bill, as has been set out by the minister, is to impose financial sanctions on people who miss appointments. One might expect, then, that there would be a significant amount of data or research done by either the government, the department or independent experts about why it is that people miss appointments. What we found, though, during the committee inquiry process is that although we knew that 20 per cent of people who miss appointments are Indigenous Australians, and although 47 per cent of them are young, we do not know why it is that they are missing appointments—no-one could tell us. Witness after witness agreed with the proposition that it would be sensible to find out why it is that people are missing appointments and then to put in place the appropriate processes to ensure that they attended those appointments.

Also, almost everyone who was involved in the provision of job services appeared before the inquiry—with some exceptions—to say that this would destroy the relationship of trust that job service providers had with people who were seeking employment and would make them less likely to engage, and that it might lead to instances where people decide that the whole thing is too hard and they do not want to participate in the system at all.

The government based much of its justification for this bill on the independent review into the bill that it commissioned last year, which was chaired by Professor Julian Disney. Professor Disney appeared before the committee inquiry into this bill to say that he did not support it, that it was premature, that it was not consistent with the report and that the only reason he even mentioned it in his original report was that it came up in the context of an election campaign. He, along with many others, agreed that there is an implicit assumption in this bill that people simply do not want to comply with the system and therefore do not turn up. But others before the committee made the very simple point that the people who want to rort the system are the ones who are going to turn up to every appointment because they will want to make sure that under no circumstances will they be kicked off. We know from the statistics that the ones who are most likely to suffer as a result of this bill are Indigenous Australians and young people, and according to the evidence presented to the committee inquiry they are more than likely to be those suffering from some kind of mental illness, those who find the whole system confusing, and those who are most at the fringes of society and most at risk of exclusion.

I do support the amendment that has been proposed because it will go some way in reducing some of the confusion in the bill, but I will not be supporting the bill.

Question agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.