Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation (2006 Budget and Other Measures) Bill 2006 on behalf of the Centrelink and Veterans Affairs’ income support payment recipients who live in the electorate of Banks. There are two million people nationally relying entirely on income support payments who have literally become invisible people as far as the 2006 budget papers are concerned. While the government spent up big on its mates at the top end of town, the Treasurer did not see fit to include those on incomes under $10,000. In fact, in the charts produced by the Treasurer which purported to show how families benefit from this budget, there was literally no mention of those under the $10,000 level. The reason is fairly obvious: there was no benefit.

In the electorate of Banks in 2005 there were 13,557 people on age pension, 3,295 people on disability support pension, 2,123 people receiving the carer allowance, 1,936 people receiving Newstart allowance, 1,713 people on youth allowance, 2,045 people receiving the single parenting payment and 1,118 people receiving the partnered parenting payment. That is a total of 25,287 people in my electorate who receive precisely nothing from this so-called big-spending government.

But it does not stop there. This year the government provided an additional $20 million over four years for increased access to mental health services for veterans. I note that $17 million was provided for various commemorative activities, yet so many of our veterans are doing it tough. In the electorate of Banks there were 3,178 DVA pensioners as at 6 January this year. This figure includes 926 disability pensioners, 1,041 war widows, 1,995 service pensioners, 839 partner service pensioners, 853 on income support supplement and 52 social security age pensioners. In addition, there are 3,497 beneficiaries of DVA treatment cards.

While I acknowledge the desperate need for mental health services for our veterans, I despair at the lack of increased support for this group in the area of general health. Australia’s targeted benefit system has been battered by this government. As Senator Evans stated on 29 March this year in a speech to the Senate on a welfare related bill:

We need a simple, streamlined, integrated system which is transparent, user-friendly and well administered.

The current system is becoming more complex, inefficient and unwieldy as the government applies another political bandaid. This government provides only quick political fixes for systemic problems. We are seeing that now in the Indigenous affairs area. The minister is taking an overly simplistic view of the problems in remote Aboriginal communities and putting it all down to law and order. It is a lot more complex than that and he is setting himself up for a fall. In the 1996 budget, this government cut funding to the Aboriginal affairs portfolio by $470 million. We have seen youth support services and women’s refuges fall over and there have been changes to Abstudy. All these things have come home to roost.

What we need are solutions which will provide long-term benefits to various communities—not quick political fixes. Senator Evans observed that our welfare system should interact effectively with other government systems to meet meaningful social goals, to provide real incentive for hard work and to encourage workforce participation. Our welfare system should help families tackle disadvantage and should be built on the principles of fairness and equity. It must provide a decent system of support, not punishment, to families and others who have fallen on hard times.

This bill includes measures which will be of benefit to families in particular. There is an increase in the income threshold for family tax benefit part A recipients from $33,360 to $40,000. As a result of this increase to the threshold, more than 40,000 families will become eligible for the low-income health care card. I applaud this change on behalf of the 1,000 to 2,000 families in Banks who will be directly affected.

On the other hand, it might be useful for the government to consider the payment of family tax benefit part B, which reflects the ideology of this government. It provides a non-means-tested taxpayer funded bonus to wealthy families. Because the rules governing the payment of FTB(B) ignore total family income, families earning more than $1 million a year can receive this welfare payment. I understand that nationally there are more than 70 families earning more than $1 million a year who receive more than $3,300 a year in welfare payments.

During the recent debate in the Senate on the Family Assistance, Social Security and Veterans’ Affairs Legislation Amendment (2005 Budget and Other Measures) Bill 2006, Labor moved an amendment proposing that an upper limit of $250,000 be placed on this payment. This amendment was unsuccessful. It is patently obvious that our welfare system has been abused for party political ends and to mould Australian families into the 1950s model that the Prime Minister promotes. Why is family tax benefit part B the only welfare payment that cannot be effectively means tested? I note the extension of the large-family supplement to include families with three children. This used to apply to families with four or more children. Perhaps this is the reward from the Treasurer for those families having another one, or even two, children for the country.

I am pleased to finally see the creation of special disability trusts to assist families to make private financial provision for children with severe disabilities. Over the years, I have had representations from ageing parents who are terribly concerned about their disabled children and what will happen to those children when they die. In my view, this area requires more attention. A lot of compassion was shown recently when the Beaconsfield situation came to national prominence. Provisions were made and special funds were set up for the town by this government. I think that is appropriate, but it seems to me that you should not be paying benefits or lauding people just because they come to national attention. What you need is an appropriate value system that says that all people in a certain category should be looked after to a particular level. The disabilities area is one that continues to sadden me because the government is taking an ad hoc approach, and that is not sufficient. Life is hard enough as it is, but for families looking after people with severe disabilities there are added burdens.

I do not have a problem with having a safety net provided by government. That is the test of a compassionate, fair and decent society—a humane society that does not ignore people as if they were not there. Disabled people are the forgotten people. It is like the Indigenous situation. We have this minister new to the portfolio. Everyone knows he is bagging the previous ministers mercilessly as he travels remote and regional Australia. He thinks he is going to come along and fix the situation—it is not going to happen. I am not saying he is not making sincere commitments, but he does not have the depth or breadth of experience. He is a boy in a man’s job. It might be politically popular to go out there and talk about law and order, but you will be judged over time on the results that you achieve.

My view is that the minister needs to pull back, genuinely seek bipartisan support, pull some of those dusty reports off the shelf and sit down and actually talk to Aboriginal people. When I was Aboriginal affairs spokesman, I was not going in there as a missionary trying to save them from themselves. I took it upon myself to sit in the sand with Aboriginal people, to listen to them and to become their advocate. It strikes me that the minister has talked to the odd person here or there and come up with simplistic solutions.

We live in a country that, in my view, is the best in the world—without peer—but there are those in our society who are suffering. The hallmark of the government in the last 10 years is that they have been awash with money. They have thrown money at certain constituencies like drunken sailors. What worries me is that it will all come home to roost eventually, because it is not good public policy. I support means testing because I think there is a section of our community that can look after itself. There is always an argument about the appropriate level of the means test, and that becomes a public policy argument. With the limited resources that we have, to turn around and say, ‘Nope, no means test will be associated with these payments,’ is not a proper allocation of those resources. The money could be used in other areas.

In the disabled area, this bill will allow families to set up trusts to the value of $500,000 to provide for current and future care of a severely disabled family member. I understand that this will not impact upon the person’s pension entitlements. I applaud that. At the same time, it does beg the question of how those unable to find the money will make financial provision for their disabled relative who, I argue, is truly in need and is entitled to assistance from the government. We should not apologise for that, just as we do not apologise for supporting farmers in rural and regional Australia who cop it in hard times. We say that payments need to be made to those people so they can to continue to live and work in those areas—that equality actually requires differential treatment, not the same treatment for everyone.

That is where I think the minister for Indigenous affairs gets it wrong. True equality does not require treating Aboriginal people the same as the rest of the community. It requires differential treatment to bring them up to the same level. That is what the international conventions say. If he did a bit of study before he opened his mouth, he might be a bit better off and he might produce some decent policy.

The extension of the carer payment eligibility to carers of children under 16 years who have a severe disability is a positive step. But I do worry, as I said, that the eligibility criteria to allow others to access carer payments have not been considered. The government’s one-off payment to carer payment and carer allowance recipients in the budget, however, does not make up for the damage of having $107 million removed earlier this year from the carer allowance. The replacement value of carers, according to a recent study by Access Economics, is $30.4 billion per year. Yet this government, earlier this year, ripped $107 million over three years away from carers by reducing the backdating of the carers allowance to only 12 weeks.

In a post-budget media release, Senator McLucas quoted from a recent AMP-NATSEM study which found that the average carer is $5,600 worse off each year than someone with no caring responsibilities. One in every seven Australians is providing primary or informal care for an older, frail relative or one with a disability, with the burden falling mainly on women. The report stated that the demand for care for those with disabilities and older Australians is projected to grow significantly over the next 25 years, but the number of carers will fall.

Carers are more often than not family members supporting those with a disability, chronic condition or mental illness or who are frail aged. They provide services day in, day out, 365 days a year and they need more certainty about their income from the government. Despite the Treasurer’s rhetoric, this government has yet again failed to properly look after the needs of those who make great sacrifices to care for others.

I know several of my constituents who will be very pleased that late child support payments from the previous year will not mean that their family tax benefit part A is accidentally reduced in the current year. This will seriously reduce the distress suffered by some single parents when their payments suddenly stop and they have nothing left to buy groceries or to pay bills. This does happen, as those distressed constituents who have visited my office seeking assistance have found. The government has had an unprecedented opportunity this year to actually deal with some of the social and economic inequities in our society. It is disappointing that the family tax changes we are discussing today do not go further.

In its budget response, the Australian Council of Social Security noted that, while it welcomed the increased investment in mental health, child-care subsidies for parents studying, carer payments and aged and disability care, it would like to see:

... greater investment in services like housing, indigenous health, dental care, child care, supports and services for jobless Australians to change the lives of people on low incomes.

There was nothing in the budget to assist housing affordability. Senator Carr noted in his post-budget press release that:

There is:

not one dollar to support homelessness or related crisis services; and

not one new dollar for the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement under which the Commonwealth provides funding to the states for public housing.

It is a sad fact of life in Australia, in the 21st century, that we see emerging a ‘two Australias’ policy.

Homelessness is an important thing. Public housing is an important thing. When I was the shadow minister for housing in the last parliament, I looked at the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement. It is going to be a problem in the future because the Commonwealth is continually paring back that agreement. At a state level, that has resulted in very little new public housing becoming available. Queues are growing longer. In future generations we are going to have many more people who will be unable to access public housing. I think we are all diminished by that. At a time when there is great wealth and when productivity is increasing, we should share that productivity.

I came into public life not to help people who can help themselves but to direct my energies towards those who need assistance, who cannot fend for themselves—the disadvantaged, Indigenous Australians and a whole range of other people who, because of their station in life, do not have the same opportunities. We do not all have equal opportunities. As I said earlier, true equality requires differential treatment. If we all sat around the table, we would find that we all have different strengths and weaknesses. For example, if we all wanted to have the same level of knowledge in mathematics, it would require intensive learning at a different level for each person around the table. The same is true with goods and services and in the provision of human services for our fellow Australians.

I keep getting quoted back to me that 24 per cent of Aboriginal men live to the age of 65 and 35 per cent of Aboriginal women live to the age of 65. And we call ourselves a civilised society. Those figures are not replicated in Third World countries, but they are figures that we have to acknowledge in our country and that are to the eternal shame of parties and governments of all political persuasions. We at least should be doing something about it, not beating a law and order drum that is going to lead nowhere.

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