Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Shortland’s speech was interesting and informative. She has drawn to the attention of the House that this legislation, the Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Veterans’ Affairs Legislation Amendment (2006 Budget Measures) Bill 2006, is very generous. As outlined by the member for Shortland, the skills shortage that has been such a problem, particularly in Western Australia, is the result of the strong economy that has been built day by day, week by week, month by month by the Howard government, including the ministers who are supporting the Prime Minister.

I rise today to support this bill, which gives effect to several measures announced as part of the 2006-07 budgetary decisions. The Howard government believes that older Australians and carers should share in the prosperity they have helped to create. In the last budget, delivered in May of this year, the government provided $586 million in additional funding support for older Australians. In that budget the government also committed to allow more rural residents to access the age or service pension, at a cost of $173 million. We saw the fruits of the first part of that budgetary promise come to pass on 1 July of this year, when two government initiatives were released, one being the one-off payment of $102.80 to older Australians and the second being the one-off payment of $1,000 to carers on a carers payment and the $600 one-off payment to carers on carer allowance.

This bill sets out the second half of this year’s budgetary promises by enacting the government’s initiatives for older rural Australians. Prior to this year’s budget, some people in rural areas of Australia could not access the pension due to the value of the land surrounding their family home. Through this bill, the government is seeking to change this situation by introducing concessional assets test treatment for older Australians who reside in rural and rural residential areas. This test will assist age pensioners, age pension carer payment recipients and age and qualifying Department of Veterans’ Affairs service pensioners who live on farms and rural residential blocks of more than two hectares.

The concessional assets test treatment reflects the view of the Howard government that older Australians on farms and rural residential areas should not be forced to move from their principal home, where they have lived for a long time, to gain an adequate retirement income—that is, they should not have to move from their family home in order to access the pension opportunities that are offered to other Australians. The concessional assets test treatment will, in certain circumstances, increase the maximum amount of land that can be exempt from the assets test from two hectares to encompass all the land on the same title as the person’s principal home. This test and its concession have been embraced by older Australians in my electorate of McMillan in Gippsland in Victoria.

The McMillan electorate covers 8,300 square kilometres, from the Great Dividing Range in the north to Wilson’s Promontory in the south and from the eastern outskirts of Melbourne at Pakenham to the edge of the Latrobe Valley in the east. In my electorate, 15.4 per cent of the population is in the 65 years and over age bracket—higher than the average for Victorian rural electorates. One of my constituents, Mr Sonneman of Lillico, has been in contact with my office over this issue—that is, curtilage. Mr Sonneman had several questions in relation to the amalgamation of titles in order to maximise his advantage from the concession. I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and his department for their very helpful fact sheet and question and answer sheets, which have helped explain fully the concessions to Mr Sonneman.

In his second reading speech, the minister explained that to access the fairer assets test the person must show that land with commercial potential is being used productively to generate an income. The minister said that the government recognised that some pensioners will have the potential to make an income while others will have lease arrangements in place or have the younger generation working their properties. Other properties, such as many rural residential properties, will have very limited capacity to generate income. This bill recognises that fact. Clearly, this will increase pension payments or allow pensions to be paid to these rural people for the first time, improving their living standards while allowing them to stay in their long-term family home. Most meaningfully, perhaps, it will help retired farmers who are no longer able to work their properties to stay on the land while encouraging the land to be worked to its full potential by those who are capable of doing that work. The government has taken seriously community concerns over whether older Australians in rural and city areas were treated equally when city dwellers had recently experienced substantial increases in the value of their home properties and yet were not being asset tested.

I would like to recognise the work of my parliamentary colleagues the member for Forde, Kay Elson, and the member for Gilmore, Joanna Gash. I am probably leaving others out, but they are two important members. I recognise them for raising this issue, for their never-say-die attitude and for passionately and persistently knocking on this door until it fell down. Both these women are energetic, hard-hitting members of the House and this bill as presented today is a result of the very hard work that they put in. Many people will benefit from their work over many years to come. Even though the member for Forde is retiring, her legacy will live on in this bill. The concessional assets treatment test is a demonstration of the government’s appreciation and acknowledgment of the contribution older Australians and carers have made and continue to make in our society.

Other vitally important measures that this bill establishes include provision for a new one-off payment to support people who have been subjected to domestic or family violence and who choose to stay in their house. The support is in the form of a crisis payment, which is currently around $230 dollars and is payable up to four times in any 12-month period. Sadly, according to the Australian Government Office for Women, domestic violence can be exhibited in many forms, including physical violence, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, intimidation, economic deprivation or threats of violence. Domestic violence occurs in all geographic areas of Australia and in all socioeconomic and cultural groupings, although domestic violence is a more significant problem for certain groups, such as regional and rural Australia and some Indigenous communities.

As incidences of domestic violence often go unreported, it is difficult to measure the true extent of the problem. According to a study conducted in 1998 by the Australian Institute of Criminology, called Reporting crime to the police, most assaults against women where the victim knows the offender go unreported. The work of community based organisations such as the Gippsland Family Violence Prevention Network facilitates information gathering on this issue across the whole of Gippsland. They work with groups such as CASA. They work with people who have what were described to me today as ‘unhealthy relationships’—that is what they call them. They have a very proactive program, which begins next year, where they are proposing to go into schools to do in-service work with teachers who are untrained at this time for the problems that they face in the classroom.

It was drawn to my attention today that we have not only the stereotype difficulties in family relationships but also boyfriend-girlfriend difficulties involving domestic violence. You would immediately ask: why doesn’t one or the other person in an abusive boyfriend-girlfriend relationship—at a young age, perhaps—get out? Why isn’t one of them walking away? I think that everyone in this House would agree that, if a young person finds themselves in a violent relationship, that is no place for them to be and there is only one way to go: you seek help and you get out as quickly as possible.

If anything comes from my address today, it should be this short call: anybody who is in a violent relationship—any young person who is suffering intimidation or a threatening experience in a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship—should take the safe road home. Go and get help. Go to the web that our young people are so effective at using, like we did today when we googled the Gippsland Women’s Health Service. That is just in Gippsland. I am concerned for those young people who are experiencing violence in a relationship. In my experience with those who have had difficulty in this area, it does not change unless you get help. I respectfully suggest to all of those people that they get help today and get out of the relationship as quickly as possible. These organisations operate not only in my electorate but also in Peter McGauran’s electorate, the electorate of Gippsland, reaching all the way down to the Bass Coast Shire Council, which covers the Bass Coast area, including Phillip Island.

The 2005 Australian Bureau of Statistics Personal Safety Survey estimates that 36 per cent of women who experienced physical assault by a male perpetrator reported it to the police in 2005 compared to 19 per cent in 1996, and 19 per cent of women who experienced sexual assault reported it to the police in 2005 compared to 15 per cent in 1996. Whilst the data is patchy, research suggests that domestic violence is a significant problem in remote and regional Australia.

A Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics publication for 2006, About Australia’s Regions, reported that domestic violence rates were highest in very remote Australia, followed by remote and outer regional localities. By contrast, major cities had the lowest rates of domestic violence. The New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research records rates of apprehended violence orders by region. When broken down into statistical divisions, a striking regional discrepancy becomes apparent. Every one of the non-metropolitan statistical divisions in New South Wales registered apprehended violence order rates well in excess of the state average. By comparison, every one of the metropolitan divisions, barring inner Sydney, had apprehended violence order rates considerably lower than the state average.

To this end, a crisis payment is already available to people experiencing hardship in certain personal crisis situations such as if they have to leave home and start afresh because of domestic violence. However, some people who have been subjected to domestic or family violence find it more viable to remain in their own homes, particularly when they are striving to maintain stability for children. Even so, there are often costs associated with such a crisis situation, especially in securing the home and other related expenses. Making crisis payments available will give valuable support to people to make these practical arrangements at these challenging times in their lives.

The Howard government continues to be proactive in the areas where people have been found to fall through the cracks. We need vigilant members, like the members for Forde and Gilmore, who continue to be ever mindful in their daily work of their constituents and the wellbeing of this great nation. After all, do not these women show that this vigilance is the first and most important responsibility for an elected member? I have praised the work of those two members of parliament. It is not usual to recognise the consistent work done by backbenchers of this parliament in drawing the attention of ministers and the executive to issues that are of crucial importance to them.

We take on and look at payments through Centrelink and Veterans’ Affairs across our community where people have fallen through the cracks. We look at the drought situation that is now facing the nation, all the way from the west through to Victoria. That is going to put added pressure on families and households, particularly in rural and remote Australia. Farmers particularly are struggling, after many years of drought. Others are just having a terrible season whereby their finances are impacted. Yesterday you heard the Prime Minister saying that the Howard government will do everything it can to address the issue of the drought across this nation. But when we talk about family violence we have to realise that those families under pressure are going to need as much help as they can possibly get.

I think the member for Rankin, who is about to speak, would agree that when families are under pressure quite often the smallest things, which are of no account in normal times and good times, become major issues. That is why these organisations right across Australia are there to help. The problem I see is getting people who have never sought help in the whole of their lives to take the one step of picking up the phone and asking for support, whether it be family counselling or rural counsellors for farmers—which I have in Gippsland and which we have right across the nation. You cannot sit back in your home and do nothing when you are struggling to that extent. We want you to reach out to the services that are available through the federal and state governments—even if you only get somebody to make the call to Centrelink on your behalf so that you get the opportunity to talk to a counsellor or even a referral service. The plea goes out now that if you are suffering pick up the phone and make that call. Do not take it all on yourself when there is help out there, being offered at a federal, state or local government level, that can be delivered in one way or another.

It would be a great opportunity for me now, if I so chose, to bash the state governments of Australia for their failure to invest in infrastructure, particularly water, in the capital cities. I think now we all have a joint responsibility—Liberal, Labor, Democrat, Independent, everybody—to take a look at what this nation can do at a local level, even a personal level, to save water. In my maiden speech, way back all those years ago, in 1990, I talked about recycling water and what we were doing at the Pakenham sewerage authority. I have recently been condemned for even talking about the Pakenham sewage authority in my maiden speech because it was a trivial matter. It is not a trivial matter anymore. It was one of the first organisations to use money from the local community to invest in water recycling. In those days, all the water boards were only tiny and run by local councils, and I was part of the local government. Whether it be domestic violence, water saving or other national challenges that we have, we need to come together as a nation and face up to the issues of the day.

See this speech in context