Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Hansard source

Labor will be supporting the Social Security and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2006. There is nothing particularly controversial in this omnibus bill. It makes a number of minor and technical amendments to various pieces of social security, family assistance and related legislation. The bill does not propose to introduce any significant new policy and the measures have little or no financial implications for the budget. The bill is intended to resolve anomalies, make technical corrections and refinements and to bring the legislation into line with established policy and practice. It makes changes in the areas of childcare benefit, social security arrangements for temporarily separated couples, income assessment for the low-income health care card and the definition of ‘homelessness’ for social security matters. It also repeals some redundant housing acts and makes various technical changes, many of which are necessitated by the commencement of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003. Consequently, as I said, Labor will be supporting the passage of this bill.

The bill makes various amendments to the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999 in relation to the childcare benefit. The bill seeks to provide the minister with the power to determine a class of individuals who are taken to have recognised training or study commitments for the purposes of childcare benefit entitlement. Individuals who satisfy the work, training or study test may be eligible for childcare benefit for up to 50 hours per week. Currently the legislation specifies circumstances in which an individual has recognised work, study or training related commitments, and the current legislation also provides the minister with a discretionary power to determine that individuals in a specified class are taken to have work or work related commitments. However, there is currently no power for the minister to make a similar determination in relation to study or training commitments, so the bill will provide this power to the minister and should provide for a less restrictive administration of the study and training test in the calculation of entitlement for childcare benefit. We certainly believe that that is a positive step forward.

The bill will also serve to ensure that childcare benefit is not available for care provided by a schoolteacher as part of a compulsory education program. In general, schools and childcare providers should be considered to be separate entities. However, an increasing number of schools are offering programs which demand attendance outside school hours, and attendance at these programs is supervised by a teacher. This increasing trend necessitates the clarification that childcare benefit eligibility does not extend to parts of the compulsory education program.

The bill also provides that the departmental secretary has the power to determine that an approved childcare service is the sole provider in a particular area, should they be satisfied that the service is likely to close without such a determination. Currently that power rests with the minister and that can involve unnecessary bureaucratic complications. This change should lead to greater administrative efficiency and is more consistent with the role of the secretary in general with regard to childcare benefit eligibility under the family assistance act.

The final major amendment in relation to childcare benefit is that which limits the benefit available for care provided by a registered carer to the fee amount paid. It is currently possible for users of registered care to receive more childcare benefit—that is, more subsidy from the government—than the amount that they pay in childcare fees. That possibility will be removed by this amendment. That is another sensible change.

Another major change made in the bill is to amend the Social Security Act 1991 to include de facto couples in the definition of temporarily separated couples. Temporarily separated couples are eligible for a higher rate of certain supplementary social security and family payments. However, this eligibility is currently limited to legally married couples. Consistent with the treatment of de facto relationships in other areas of social security law, this amendment will ensure that de facto couples, like legally married couples, will benefit from eligibility to a higher rate of benefits such as rent assistance.

Perhaps the most important part of this bill for my purposes as the federal member for Sydney, however, is the part that amends the Social Security Act to include Lord Howe Island within the definition of ‘remote area’ for social security purposes. This will mean that the island’s residents will be eligible for payment of remote area allowance. Mr Deputy Speaker, I am not sure whether you have ever been to Lord Howe Island, but Lord Howe Island is a World Heritage listed island. It is extremely beautiful. In fact, there is probably no more beautiful place on the planet than Lord Howe Island. Because of its World Heritage listing, the sensitivity of the environment there and the fact that Lord Howe Island depends on tourism for the bulk of employment on the island, the employment status of individuals there can be quite precarious. Tourism on the island is limited to fewer than 400 beds on any given night, and of course in winter, when the winds blow, most of those tourist beds are not occupied. So there are times when people experience pretty straitened circumstances.

On top of that, because Lord Howe Island is hundreds of kilometres away from either Sydney or Port Macquarie, where supplies are likely to be obtained from, the cost of living on Lord Howe Island is much higher than it is in most other parts of New South Wales. The cost of groceries is very high; the cost of building materials is very high. Even the fact that things like clothing have to be bought by mail-order from the mainland in most circumstances means that the cost of living is very high, and this puts a lot of strain on people on fixed incomes.

There are also a number of other issues that Lord Howe Island faces because of its isolation, including the health services available to islanders and aged care services. People who live on Lord Howe Island want to stay on Lord Howe Island—and who could blame them? But as they age, the services available to them, including home and community care, are under enormous pressure. As is the case in most parts of Australia, there is an ageing population and limited resources to support that ageing population to stay in their own homes.

The young people on Lord Howe Island have the most idyllic lifestyle. They run to school in the morning in their bare feet and attend a fantastic little school, the Lord Howe Island Central School. But issues such as access to the internet and the breadth of their educational experience have to be taken into account, as is the case in any remote area community. The fact that the residents of Lord Howe Island seem to live in paradise does not help when they are struggling to pay the bills, and it does not help when they are wanting to ensure that their children get the best and broadest experience of the world.

I certainly welcome this proposal regarding eligibility of Lord Howe Islanders to additional benefits because of the new definition of Lord Howe Island as a remote area for social security purposes. I am sure the residents of Lord Howe Island will be pleased with this, but I am sure there are a number of measures that the government could implement to improve support for people living on Lord Howe Island. They face all of the same increases in the cost of living associated with fuel increases, for example, as do we here on the mainland. As is the case in any remote community, when the cost of fuel goes up, the cost of living goes up exponentially.

Other changes made by this bill include providing clarification that carer allowance is not payable during imprisonment; the clarification that job seekers in receipt of youth allowance are entitled to the automatic issue of a health care card; and the alignment of the definition of ‘homelessness’ in regard to special benefit payments with the meaning of ‘homelessness’ that applies more broadly for benefits such as youth allowance and disability support pension. As I have indicated, the bill also repeals a number of redundant housing acts, makes other minor amendments, corrects technical anomalies and drafting errors. As I said earlier, Labor will be supporting the bill.

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