Mathers Mojo: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mathers Mojo: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8910. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MOJO MATHERS (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party opposes this bill the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. We have many concerns with the whole fundamental approach and we are particularly concerned about the impact that it may have on disabled people. I am constantly amazed when I hear people say: “Oh this bill is all about encouraging people to get off the benefit and into work.” and yet I cannot see how this bill will do that for people with disabilities. 
Everywhere I have gone across the country one of the No. 1 issues that people with disabilities raise with me is their concern around not being able to get work. They share with me their stories about how they cannot get work. The barriers to employment are not because of their own lack of willingness to get work; the barriers to employment are out there in society. It may be the attitude of employers. 
One example I would like to give is of a woman called Judith who is deaf. When she saw a job in the paper that she thought she could apply for she rang the number that was available for an application form. Because she was deaf she used the relay service and she was told that the job was already filled. When her friend rang—her friend with hearing—the employer said: “No problem. We will send you the application form.” So she could not even get an application form sent to her because she was ruled out right from the start on the basis of being deaf. 
There are endless stories like this of the kinds of day-to-day challenges of trying to even get a foot in the door for people with disabilities. This is why there is so much concern around the focus on the work assessment model. We know that in the UK the work assessment model has not worked and that it is causing constant litigation huge suffering for people in the UK and indeed a spike in suicides as a result. People with mental health issues are particularly vulnerable to the kinds of assessment models that might focus on whether they can lift something—it does not look at what the real barriers to employment are and what they can really do. It should not be part of this bill. Assessment models can work if the sole focus of assessment is to help the person identify what they can do best identify their strengths and abilities and find work that matches these strengths and abilities. It will not work if it is focused on what they cannot do and tries to boil that down to a series of mechanistic tests. 
The other major concern that we have about the bill is around the social obligations for parents. I have already spoken in the second reading about how many parents have simply decided their children are simply not ready to attend an early childhood learning education centre. But a huge proportion of solo parents in particular with a child on a benefit—about 26 percent of them—have a child with a disability and certain disabilities are actively discriminated against in access to early childhood education. 
I have just been contacted by a mother of two young children with very severe disabilities. The early childhood education centre said they cannot take both of them together at the same time. It cannot provide for that and the most that it can do is to provide for one of them for 9 hours a week. These are the kinds of real challenges that parents of children with disabilities are facing. Some early childhood education centres have been petitioned by other parents to remove children with disabilities from their centres because the other parents do not like having these children there. 
There is more discrimination at the early childhood education centres than there is at secondary or primary school level where there is an obligation—