Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Security and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2006.This is a bill designed to do minor housekeeping, to tidy up anomalies, to clarify and make some technical corrections and refinements. It is a bill that introduces no significant new policy and has negligible or no financial impact. This is indeed the bill’s virtue. This bill brings order and correction where required and, despite the assumption it has negligible or no financial impact, the effect of this bill is to save the taxpayers money.

Two of the measures in this bill relate to childcare benefits. This is an area where there has been some confusion and uncertainty and, in some cases, debts have been incurred resulting in Centrelink overpayment. This bill seeks to eliminate that confusion and uncertainty and to ensure that childcare beneficiaries who use registered care for their children cannot be paid a childcare benefit that exceeds the actual fee they paid for that care.

In the electorate of Greenway we had 2,600 approved childcare places in 2005—an increase of 44 per cent from 2001. In the electorate of Greenway we have an estimated 29,966 parents who are employed and there are an estimated 13,459 families where both parents work. There are approximately 3,200 single parents working full time or part time. Child care is critically important to all these parents and families. For those people, this bill will align the childcare benefit paid for registered childcare services for their children with the existing limit on childcare benefits for care provided by an approved childcare service. The effect of this alignment is to ensure that people are not overpaid and not paid more in childcare benefits than the cost of that child care. This is one of the benefits of this bill. It removes any loophole for overpayment and removes inconsistency or uncertainty. I am sure that people using childcare services will appreciate the certainty that this bill will bring.

This bill will also introduce a new rule which will again provide additional consistency. Further amendments make it clear that care provided by an approved childcare service will not attract a childcare benefit if the care is provided as part of a compulsory education program. This is consistent with the existing situation for care provided by a registered carer. A childcare benefit for any type of care should not be available when children are in the care of their teachers as part of their normal schooling. In other words, if the care is provided as part of a compulsory education program, childcare benefits should not be available while children are in the care of their teachers as part of their normal education. This is reasonable, logical and very practical. It ensures that the childcare benefit is targeted as originally intended and it is obvious that savings will be made by tidying up this technicality.

The bill also provides a measure of certainty for de facto couples in the definition of temporarily separated couples. No-one likes to see relationships broken up but, as someone who worked extensively with families and with couples to ensure that they worked together to resolve their conflicts and wherever possible stay together, there are reasons and circumstances where separation is unavoidable and at times necessary.

What happens to couples receiving benefits when they separate? What about those day-to-day decisions that affect each partner when they find themselves having to look after themselves as individuals or themselves and their children without the assistance of a partner? There are issues like rent assistance and remote area allowance that have to be attended to. As in all structured administrations, there are rules and there are definitions to fit those rules that determine whether a person is eligible for payment at one level or at a higher level.

This bill ensures that those people are not left out of the loop and their needs are met. By providing a definition of a temporarily separated couple, this bill ensures that de facto couples are eligible for the same high rates of some supplementary payments as legally married couples. Not only should the bill be acknowledged for its technical efficiency but it should also be supported for its fairness. Other social security issues tidied up by this bill include a reinstatement of a rule that a social security pension or benefit is income under the low-income health care card income test. This rule was inadvertently repealed from legislation in 2001. Reinstating this rule ensures that applications for a low-income health care card are assessed accurately. Included in this provision are two veterans’ entitlements payments, the Defence Force income support allowance and the income support supplement, which are considered income for the purposes of the card.

In the parliament, we place great importance and value on the words we use and the effect those words have on the wider Australian community. A misplaced or omitted word can be the dividing line between someone who is eligible for a benefit and someone who is not. This bill contains a further amendment that corrects an inequity in the social security law. It does so by aligning the definition of homelessness that currently applies for a special benefit with a similar definition that applies for the larger groups of youth allowance and young disability support pension recipients. To put it another way, the word ‘homelessness’ in this amendment now carries a greater import than existed previously. Alignment of the word ‘homelessness’ will remove—

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