Delahunty Catherine: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Delahunty Catherine: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3780. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koutou. The Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill is the unlovely love child of the Welfare Working Group and the National-ACT Government. It is a polite description to call it misguided. I would like to go back to Michael Joseph Savage and the 1964 original Social Security Act which emerged from the realisation that some people at some time in their lives need State support. Statistics make it very clear that it is often for a matter of months rather than years so I am not sure what this beat-up is all about.  
It is clear that the original Act recognised terms that we might now find archaic like “woman alone” “disabled” and “invalids benefit”. Some of those names are disempowering in contemporary terms but what was behind them was the recognition that the State has a role in supporting people who are sick who are caring for children or who are caring for other people and that that is actually a valid thing to do. In the case of a woman alone it was a recognition which is now denied by this bill that in fact women who care for others end up on less income when they are older. A simple fact of pay inequity and the voluntary work they do often means they have less money. That benefit is gone. There is no guilt if you are a working parent but equally there is no guilt if your work is at home. So let us forget about guilt and get real about what is going on for parents.  
What was proposed in the original Act sounds like common sense decency and human dignity and it is especially true in a recession when our society has become one of the most unequal in the OECD. The Government says and I have heard it a lot this afternoon that it wants to help people on benefits—I think the word used was “liberation” which was kind of ironic—by giving tax cuts to the top 10 percent and then sanctioning the poorest people. I find that term “liberation” rather fascinating. It is a little bit like the George Orwellian quote that the louder you make it the bigger the lie. However I would like to go back to the work of my own colleagues who have done a great job on this bill.  
I would like to go back to the work of Holly Walker and her Supplementary Order Paper on the need for a child impact assessment. What Holly was talking about was the need to recognise that this entire bill impacts on children and that if a thorough assessment had been done on that impact it would be a very different bill. It would be a very different bill if it was a child-centred bill and if it was going to recognise that existing poverty should never be exacerbated for our children. The Government’s decision to veto our amendment to give Work and Income the discretion not to apply a sanction if it was detrimental to child well-being is effectively an admission of how harmful this bill will be to children. It is shocking that the Government is already banking on the savings of hundreds of millions of dollars by imposing sanctions and it shows you what the attitude of Work and Income staff will be when deciding whether to sanction or not. The Government has already banked the kids’ lunch money.  
It is also really really disappointing to see that the Government would not support Jan Logie’s amendment. A drop in the bucket of $5 million to $15 million would have made a huge difference. The mother’s education as we know from the evidence is the best predictor of the child’s outcome. So if you want children to thrive you support their mothers to get an education. You also make sure children have access to their parents rather than making sure their parents are out being work tested or walking the streets looking for jobs. They need their parents to be around. Here is the opportunity for the Government to talk about an investment approach. However it has failed.  
During every recession there is a tiresome and damaging beat-up and it is always beneficiaries. No one pretends that living on a benefit is easy even in the good times. The Green Party believes in job creation and educational opportunity not work testing for non-jobs and cuts to what is currently a pittance. What saddens me about this bill is that children women disabled people and others who are under attack and can be sanctioned cannot actually fight back. They cannot get up and say: “We are decent people who would love the dignity of work when it’s workable not the stigma and sanction that the powerful will now take their opportunity to impose upon us.”  
The bill is unworkable in parts of the country. Work and Income already knows that it is unworkable so really the whole thing is what I would call a giant non-step in the wrong direction. It is a fiasco. Thank you.