PM takes aim at welfare
Michelle Grattan
April 14, 2011
Comments 115
PM pushes for welfare crackdown
JULIA Gillard has vowed to use Australia's economic boom to break welfare dependency, saying next month's federal budget and the October taxation summit would drive reforms to get more people working.
In a speech last night, the Prime Minister said the nation had a special chance to ''entrench a new culture of work and opportunity in families and communities who have been denied this for so long''.
''Every Australian should pull his or her own weight,'' Ms Gillard declared. ''It's not fair for taxpayers to pay for someone who can support themselves.''
Her speech, ''The Dignity of Work'', strongly reinforced her message that the May 10 budget will contain major reforms, with ministers looking at ways to reduce the number of people on the disability support pension, which at around 800,000 Australians, is vastly more than the number receiving unemployment benefits.
But the Prime Minister's agenda is also wider, targeting youth and general unemployment and underemployment.
The government will use the October 4-5 tax summit - forced on Labor as part of its deal with country independent MPs - to push change, making the issue of improving work incentives in the tax and transfer systems a central debate.
Ms Gillard has frequently referred to the value of work this year, and linked it with her personal values.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has also urged big changes to get people off welfare, including mandatory work-for-the-dole for the long-term jobless under 50, and a new benefit for people whose disabilities can be readily treated.
The two leaders agree on the objective, with the argument in coming months to be about the best means.
In her speech to the Sydney Institute last night, Ms Gillard said Labor was ''politically, spiritually, even literally the party of work. The party of work not welfare, the party of opportunity not exclusion, the party of responsibility not idleness.''
She said the reality of Australia was that there were people who could work but did not.
Australia's boom, with its unprecedented demand for skills and labour, created a quite different policy environment from earlier periods. ''I want to help individuals, families, and communities whose worklessness has seen them excluded from society and the economy through decades of economic growth,'' she said.
''It's not right to leave people on welfare and deny them access to opportunity.''
She stressed that not everyone on a welfare benefit could work, and that some others could not work immediately. Some needed practical help to overcome ill health or meet family responsibilities.
Today's unemployment rate is at 4.9 per cent, which economists regard as full employment. Ms Gillard said she saw low unemployment as ''a new opportunity to break persistent cycles of social and economic exclusion''.
''Our economy needs more workers, many Australians need work and our Labor values impel us to put the two together,'' Ms Gillard said.
''Welfare reform and workforce participation is an area where the facts of our economy, the demands of our society, new progressive policy and core Labor values can truly come together in a virtuous circle,'' she said, recalling the words of legendary Labor prime ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley on the value of work.
Ms Gillard said reforms she had made in education had been based on high expectations ''and I am extending this campaign of high expectations to welfare as well''.
''I will fight the prejudice that says some people's lot is drawing a fortnightly cheque, that we shouldn't expect anything more of them,'' she said. ''Relying on welfare to provide opportunity is no longer the right focus for our times.''
Reforms aimed at improving workforce participation would not only nurture the boom but also ensure the opportunities the boom created ''are felt across our country and for years to come''.
