Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Barker for his question, and I commend him on his humanitarian outlook, which I have been very impressed with, both in terms of his past life as a lawyer in Mount Gamier, and in the qualities that he brings to his representation of the people of Barker. Indeed, I recall that during last year's Pollie Pedal I had a forum with the Prime Minister and with a number of disabled people and young carers in Barker. One of the announcements in the budget—of bursaries for young carers—directly arose out of that meeting that we had in Mount Gambier in the member's electorate just on a year ago.

Representations like those that the member for Barker brings to this place about real issues concerning real people are things which we in this government are listening to, and we will continue to do so. I was in the electorate of Logan in southern Brisbane last week, where I saw a very impressive operation employing disabled people, where a person who had worked in the abattoirs there had set up a commercial lawn-mowing business. All the people employed in that commercial lawn-mowing business are disabled. In that operation he employs something like a dozen or 15 people driving commercial lawnmowers. He has vast contracts throughout the area for councils, parks and gardens, and things like that. All of those young people, under the age of 35, had moved from being on the Disability Support Pension, onto full-time employment. That just shows that, if we have the desire, there is a way in which we can assist many disabled people.

When I meet with disabled people around this country—as we all have, over a long period of time—they invariably say that they would like to work. People want to participate. They want to be part of the life of this country. They want to be part of the economic life of this country. So we need to find ways to encourage them to do that.

One of the measures in this budget is aimed directly at doing that. We are talking about young people under the age of 35, who are on the DSP and who are capable of working more than seven or eight hours a work—so they can do some work—who are not manifestly disabled. We are not referring to people who quite clearly cannot work but people who are capable, maybe, of doing some part-time work. In the past there has been a requirement that they have a participation plan but there was no requirement for them to follow it up. There was no requirement to go and do some work experience if that was what was in the participation plan. There was no requirement to undertake some form of training if that was what was in the participation plan. So in this measure we are proposing that people on DSP, under 35, who are capable of doing some part-time work, should have a participation plan and that we should follow-up that participation plan with them. In that way we would encourage them to get into work if that is what they are capable of.

This is not going to affect their DSP, so they will still have that safety net. I remember the changes we made back in 2005 in relation to DSP. One of the things that people were concerned about was that if employment did not work out for them the safety net would still be there. That is something which I think is very important in this regard.

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