Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I will take that interjection from the member opposite, who says that we are just making excuses. What I say to the member opposite, who I believe should know better, is that he should go and speak to some of these families and he should go and speak to some of these people who are genuinely wanting to get a job but who are not prepared to leave their family home for very good reasons. Quite frankly, I believe he is totally out of touch with some of the communities that I have gone through when he says that young people, and in particular vulnerable young people, should simply leave home if that is what they need to do to get a job. The better answer is to try and help those people to get a job within their own homes by providing additional kinds of support and job opportunities in the industries that there are there.

We know that, as a result of these kinds of policies, the people who are going to be hit the hardest are those who already have some kind of problem within their lives, whether it is a mental health issue, whether it is homelessness or whether they are Indigenous people living out in rural and outback Australia. These are the people who are most likely going to be in a situation where they find themselves having breached their Centrelink requirements. These are the people who are most likely going to be hit the hardest.

I note that over 13,000 notices were issued last year to these very people who had known vulnerabilities. My concern is that it is these people who are going to be hit the hardest under this legislation. If you are homeless or have a mental health problem, it is not always possible or practical for you to respond to the obligations that are put upon you by Centrelink. If you are homeless, you may not have access to an IT system to be able to respond and get your forms back. You may not have even received the very notices from Centrelink that will be sent to you because you do not live in any particular location. All of this makes it very, very difficult for someone who does not live in and does not fit into what I call normal society. It is all well and good for those who do; but, for those who do not, it makes it very, very difficult. Certainly, it can be very, very difficult to always get rational thinking from someone with mental health problems such that they comply with the responsibilities that are put upon them.

I want to quickly talk about one more matter in the time that I have—and that is that this all comes down to people having to go to Centrelink and comply with all of the requirements. In recent weeks, I have had numerous people contact my office about the difficulty they are having contacting Centrelink. They have been asked to telephone Centrelink and, when they do, it rings out or they get no answer at the other end. If they do manage to get through, they are kept on hold for hours on end. I have been told by some that it is for hours on end. How can they comply when, on the other hand, the government, I suspect, is cutting staffing levels in Centrelink and making it almost impossible for people to get through to them? That is the clear message that is coming back to my office—that people are finding it almost impossible to get through to Centrelink.

If they go to Centrelink, as the member for Bowman suggested earlier on, they are told, 'We will not deal with you at the front counter. There is a telephone over there. Here is a telephone number: ring it.' When they ring it, they are kept waiting for hours—if they can get through. We are asking them to comply but then making the office that they have to comply with impossible to get through to. This legislation, as I said from the outset, hurts the most vulnerable in the community and is another example of this government attacking those who can least afford to be attacked by the government.

See this speech in context