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Family First senator Bob Day pushes deal on Newstart

Victoria Editor
Bob Day

Family First Senator Bob Day has been encouraging Senate colleagues to push for a compromise option of a one-month waiting period rather than six. Source: News Corp Australia

FAMILY First senator Bob Day wants a “trial” to be run in South Australia where young unemployed people trade off wages in exchange for his support for a one-month waiting period rather than six for Newstart.

It comes as Tony Abbott was yesterday forced to defend his government’s struggling budget policy to deny people under 30 the Newstart payment for six months after a bipartisan human rights committee said the change was wrong. “I am all in favour of rights. I am also in favour of the rights of taxpayers not to have their money abused. I am in favour of the rights of taxpayers to say that young people should be doing the right thing by themselves and by our society,” the Prime Minister said.

Senator Day has been encouraging Senate colleagues to push for a compromise option of a one-month waiting period rather than six. Yesterday, crossbench senator David Leyonhjelm confirmed that Senator Day wanted a “trial” and he supported the concept. “They’ll have to be paid more than the dole otherwise they wouldn’t work. It will be more than the dole, less than the minimum wage,” he said of the ­proposal.

It comes amid a fierce parliamentary debate about the report by the joint committee on human rights that said “the committee considers that the measure is incompatible with the right to social security and the right to an ­adequate standard of living”.

Palmer United Party leader Clive Palmer yesterday ruled out any deal on the Newstart changes: “You really shouldn’t be discriminating against Australians because of their age”.

Coalition senator Dean Smith chaired the bipartisan committee but said he still supported the proposed laws. He said overall, the committee concluded the government’s broad social security policy was proportional in pursuit of a legitimate objective. The measure is due to be debated this week.

Last night, in a statement to The Australian, Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews said the government would continue to try to reach a deal on its changes.

Palmer deals dole compromise dead

Federal MP Clive Palmer says his party will not support changes to Newstart for people under 30. (AAP)
Clive Palmer says his party will not support Newstart changes on under 30s even if their welfare waiting period was decreased.
Source AAP

2 SEP 2014

Clive Palmer has given the kiss of death to the Abbott government’s apparent compromise on tough new dole rules for young unemployed people.

To try to win crossbench support for its changes, the government might accept reducing from six months to one its initial waiting period plan for Newstart payments.

But that’s not good enough for the Palmer United Party.

“If we support those things, we have got to say are we in favour of increased youth suicide or are we in favour of increased crime,” Mr Palmer told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.

Nor does the government have the backing of another key crossbencher.

“I wouldn’t support allowing a genuine jobseeker to have to wait for (even) one day,” Family First senator Bob Day said.

The government needs six crossbench votes to have its changes clear parliament in time for their planned rollout on January 1.

Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews said he was prepared to negotiate with anyone who understood the taxpayer cannot subsidise people who didn’t want to work or train.

“This is not an earn-or-starve provision, this is an earn-or-learn provision,” he told AAP in a statement.

The welfare sector hopes Mr Palmer will stay true to his word in what it says is a “high stakes” game on young peoples’ lives.

The Australian Council of Social Services cautioned the government against copying New Zealand, which imposes a one-month wait for welfare.

“The message we’re hearing (from there) is that it’s ugly,” chief executive Cassandra Goldie told reporters in Canberra.

The Australian Greens say even a one-month wait is a recipe for homelessness.

Tough new job interview rules for unemployed

UNEMPLOYED people who miss an appointment with their job provider without an “extreme” excuse will be docked welfare payments until they attend a new appointment, under a dramatic strengthening of dole requirements.

The Weekend Australian has obtained a letter sent from the Employment Department’s deputy secretary Jennifer Taylor to job providers which outlines how the tough new rules will work, including the possibility that those who miss an appointment may not have their payments backpaid when they start attending appointments again.

In an unprecedented move that is alarming job agencies, the new rules strip Centrelink of the power to make decisions and give job agencies unprecedented powers.

Under the changes, the allowance for “reasonable excuses” for not attending appointments will be changed to “extreme” reasons.

Welfare groups and job agencies will urge Labor, the Greens and crossbenchers to disallow the legislative instrument that is already before parliament to toughen the “reasonable excuse” provisions.

The previous Labor government sought to change the “reasonable excuse” rules in 2011, but was forced to back down. Groups including the Australian Council of Social Service and Welfare Rights will on Monday tell a Senate inquiry they will fiercely oppose the changes.

The instrument before the parliament provides examples of what would no longer count as a reasonable excuse for not going to appointments.

It says a person who was “subject to an assault a week before their failure would not have a reasonable excuse” because it would not “directly prevent them from meeting their requirement (unless they were still incapacitated as a consequence of the assault)”.

“However, if the assault had occurred the day before their failure, they may still be sufficiently traumatised by the incident to prevent them from complying,” it says.

Under the changes, illnesses must directly affect a person’s ability to attend an appointment, so people will no longer be able to say that an ongoing mental illness was the reason for missing appointments, for instance.

The changes come on top of a suite of welfare reforms that include taking unemployed people under 30 off the dole for six months at a time if they are not in work or studying, and requiring the jobless to apply for 40 jobs a month.

Assistant Employment Minister Luke Hartsuyker said he was committed to ensuring jobseekers did the “right thing” and met their mutual obligation requirements, such as attending scheduled appointments with their employment service provider.

“Most jobseekers do the right thing,” Mr Hartsuyker said. “Unfortunately there are some jobseekers who are intent on flouting the rules.

“Missed appointments are a significant waste of taxpayers’ money and employment service provider resources. The government’s changes will provide a stronger incentive for people to do the right thing.”

The letter sent to job agencies reveals that a new “streamlined non-attendance reporting process” will be introduced to replace the “current complex connection failure and contact request process”.

All jobseekers, including those with a “vulnerability indicator”, including homeless people, will have their income support payment immediately suspended if their provider decided to report the non-attendance to the Department of Human Services.

The “reasonable excuses” jobseekers can use will be tightened from July 1 next year.

“The government considers jobseekers need to be proactive in meeting their requirements and informing their provider beforehand when they are unable to do so and held responsible when they fail to meet their requirements,” the letter says.

Providers will decide whether to deny people back payment if they fail to attend an interview, even if they attend the rescheduled meeting. Under current rules, backpay of suspended payments is automatic if people attend a rescheduled appointment, with the rules focused on re-engaging the jobseeker rather than punishment.

The letter says the government is “serious about reducing red tape for employment services providers” and expects that the significant reduction in time associated with the changes for reporting non-attendance at provider appointments will more than offset the additional responsibility placed on providers to book new appointments (from September) and make determinations on their excuses (from January).

Maree O’Halloran from the National Welfare Rights Network said that if the changes went ahead, they would mean increased financial hardship for people living on $36 a day and more red tape for thousands of employment service providers.

“If employment providers assume responsibility for decisions to deny income support payments for people missing regular appointments we fear that this will fundamentally alter the nature of their relationship with jobseekers,” Ms O’Halloran said.

“Under these reforms, employment providers will be required to become instant experts on complex social security rules.

“This is unlikely and unrealistic.”

Jobs Australia chief executive David Thompson said the changes were unprecedented.

“It represents a significant shift of responsibility from government to contracted providers and is a matter of very grave concern to mission and values centred non-profit services from a moral point of view,” Mr Thompson said.

“On a practical level it will make it hard to establish effective helping relationships with the unemployed because job agencies will become the enforcer. This is quite unprecedented.”

Dole ‘emergency’ as unemployment line triples

LONG-TERM unemployment is a “national emergency” that has more than tripled in the past three years, according to data that shows more than 350,000 Australians have been living on the dole for more than two years.

Data provided through Senate estimates reveals that, in March, 355,876 people had been on the Newstart Allowance payment for more than two years, up from 106,491 in June 2011.

As the majority of the increase in long-term unemployment occurr­ed in the final two years of the Gillard-Rudd governments,

Employment Minister Eric Abetz last night blamed Labor for the surge. “This is the Labor-Greens government legacy and highlights why the government is so abso­lutely focused on creating more job opportunities for Australians by getting the economy back in shape,” Senator Abetz said.

“Regrettably, our first nine months in government were frustrated by the Labor-Greens major­ity in the Senate. Having created the mess, they refused to help us clean it up.

“Their manic and destructive commitment to the carbon tax and the mining tax has delayed the economic recovery and jobs growth we are seeking to ­implement.”

National Welfare Rights Network president Maree O’Halloran said the surge in the number of people out of work for more than two years was alarming.

“Many of these 355,000 jobseekers have been living lives of unseen desperation on manifestly inadequate social-security support,” Ms O’Halloran said. She said the influx of 52,000 single parents on to the Newstart Allowance, after the Gillard government changed the eligibility for the single Parenting Payment, had clearly had an impact.

“Nevertheless, it does not account for the huge increase in the numbers of people who have been out of work for such lengths of time,” she said. “The extent of long-term unemployment is a nation­al emergency and it needs more than populist fixes like work for the dole.

“The shocking rates of youth unemployment and this growth in long-term unemployment requires government, business and unions to work together to give skills, jobs and hope to people locked out of the labour market.’’

There were 695,907 Newstart Allowance recipients as of March 28 this year. Of these, 204,025 — 29.2 per cent — were older than 50.

Two-thirds of all recipients have been on the payment for more than 12 month and 76.1 per cent of all unemployed people on Newstart are single.

There are 14,717 single parents reliant on the Newstart Allowance. One in six people living on Newstart are raising children on their own, one in 10 are indigenous, and one in five have a disabil­ity and are on Newstart, with a partial capacity to work.

“As a nation, we need to get ser­ious about finding workable solutions,” Ms O’Halloran said. “Everyone knows that there just aren’t sufficient employment oppor­tunities of every person who desperately wants (a job).

“On the back of these numbers, it would be a misguided government that persisted in denying income support to some jobseekers under 30 for any period of time (existing waiting periods aside).”

Deal looms on wait for the dole under Newstart Allowance plans

Deal looms on wait for the dole under Newstart Allowance plans

UNEMPLOYED people under 30 would face a shorter wait for the Newstart Allowance payment than the six-month proposal unveiled in the budget, as the Abbott government prepares to compromise in order to get its controversial welfare reforms through the Senate.

The Australian understands that senior members of the ­Coalition have conceded that getting the proposal for a full six months off the dole through the Senate is extremely difficult, or even impossible, and are prepared to accept a shorter waiting period. The government is expected to be able to get the radical measure through if it settles for a waiting period of one month, as operates in New Zealand.

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