Beaumont Carol: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:13187] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to agree with other colleagues about our fundamental concern regarding the provisions of the Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill and particularly about the provisions in it around work testing and the discriminatory nature of the bill. I think the really concerning thing is the statement in the commentary on the bill about the unrelenting focus on work. It is as though if we say something often enough that makes it true. That seems to be the approach of this Government. It thinks that if it says the word “productivity” often enough then people will believe it is doing something about productivity. It thinks that if it says it has an unrelenting focus on work then maybe people will believe that it does have an unrelenting focus on work. 
The reality is that in substantial part this bill is nothing less than an attack on beneficiaries and a discriminatory one at that. It is unfair. The Attorney-General has judged the bill to be discriminatory. It certainly does not focus on work. This bill does not create any jobs. As the Minister for Social Development and Employment Paula Bennett said it is really about giving a kick in the pants to beneficiaries. The regulatory impact statement said there is no available research that accurately quantifies the size of the behavioural response to these changes in policy. In other words this is about politics rather than practical work. It is about the Government liking to use the old dog whistle as one of my colleagues said previously. There are a few dog whistles that it likes to roll out now and then and beneficiary bashing is one of them. There was no consultation with beneficiary groups before this bill was introduced. Virtually all of the Government departments that were consulted over this bill had concerns about it. It certainly seems that all of the submitters or the overwhelming majority of them believed that this bill is about beneficiary bashing. 
I say that what really needs to happen is for the Government to focus on creating jobs. There are 159000 people who are out of work. We all know that the best way to get people off benefits is to have jobs for them to go to. That is simple. If we look at the number of jobs available we find that benefit numbers fall when job numbers increase. It really is quite remarkable that the Minister actually acknowledged that changes like those in this legislation should not be implemented when there is no labour-market recovery. She said that herself. Perhaps this legislation needs to be delayed now in light of the most recent unemployment figures. The unemployment rate has gone up from 6 percent to 6.8 percent in the June quarter. Perhaps we should look at some of those figures a little more. That is 159000 people—up by 19000 over the last 3 months. That is above the number that Treasury had predicted. Since this Government has been in office unemployment has increased by 53000 people. What is the Government doing to create jobs? What is it doing to adjust the economic fundamentals that provide the macroeconomic policy settings for the creation of jobs? Nothing; there is no plan. 
Let me take the time to talk about just one particular area which is skills development. In this country it is absolutely shocking that in a time of high unemployment we are not investing more in upskilling our workforce and dealing with some of the fundamental gaps that we have in our labour force. I had a woman come into my office the other day. She had been made redundant after she had worked in a job for 30 years. She had no idea about job hunting and furthermore her skills were very narrowly focused towards the job that she had been doing for the last 30 years. I do not think that that is amusing. There was no opportunity for her to change that situation. She wanted to have a job and she would have put effort into trying to change her situation. But of course adult and community education has been fundamentally destroyed by this Government and furthermore there is no real focus on providing opportunities to upskill our existing workforce. Attention is being paid only to pre-entry training and even there we find really significant limits. There are limits on access to tertiary education for example. 
If we look at skills development for the existing workforce what do we see in this Budget? I tell people that we see absolutely nothing. This year’s Budget had no new initiatives in that area. We saw Department of Labour funding going from the skills area to the area of hazardous substances and new organisms. The hazardous substances and new organisms area is important but skills development in an economic recession like the one that we have now is far more important. 
Part 1 agreed to. 
Part 2 agreed to. 
Part 3 agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: There is a typescript amendment in the name of the Hon Annette King to the definitions of abatement levels in Income Tests 1 and 2. The Government has decided to exercise its financial veto so these amendments are out of order. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Annette King to clause 13 be agreed to: 
to insert the following subclause after subclause (6): 
(6A)Section 3(1) is amended by deleting “15” from the definition of  
part-time work 
 and substituting “20”.