Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

The Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Legislation Amendment (Further 2007 Budget Measures) Bill 2007 implements a number of additional measures from the 2007 budget. These include: changes to the pension bonus scheme, improvements to funeral investments, the extension of eligibility for the crisis payment to holders of certain humanitarian visas and the extension of the multiple birth allowance. Labor support these measures and we support the bill because we recognise that senior Australians and families are facing significant pressures due to the increasing cost of living. Therefore, I move:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that:

(1)

the cost of living pressures on older Australians are increasing;

(2)

families are facing skyrocketing child care costs, higher mortgage repayments after 5 interest rate rises since the last election, and increases in the cost of groceries; and

(3)

early intervention support for parents can provide significant benefits for their children’s start in life”.

We welcome the changes being made to the pension bonus scheme and to the treatment of funeral investments. We understand how difficult it is these days for pensioners to make ends meet. There have been significant increases in the cost of living in recent years, particularly in essentials such as food and petrol, not to mention the other basics around the home such as phone and electricity bills. Labor have long been a strong supporter of pensions for those Australians who need support. We certainly understand that the pension has to keep up to date with everyday costs.

At our recent national conference we endorsed the following as a key part of our policy platform: we remain committed to providing adequate income support for those who need it. The platform states that Labor will maintain the benchmark of maximum single adult rates of pension to at least 25 per cent of male total average weekly earnings, ensure that basic rates are indexed at least twice a year in line with movements in the consumer price index and ensure that those whose only income is provided through the social security system will not have to pay income tax.

Recently, Labor initiated a Senate inquiry into the cost of living pressures facing senior Australians. We wanted to listen to the concerns of senior Australians by giving them an opportunity to put their concerns directly to the parliament so that we could hear firsthand about the pressures on them—especially those coming from cost of living rises. According to the submissions to the Senate inquiry—and I will first refer to the submissions from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and from National Seniors—the living costs of age pensioner households have seen the highest increase compared to those of other household groups. The latest ABS analysis in the ‘Household, income and labour dynamics in Australia’ survey shows that, over the four quarters from June 2005 to June 2006, living costs for age pensioner households rose by five per cent. For self-funded retiree households, the rise was 4.6 per cent, while the consumer price index rose by four per cent over the same period. Over the eight years to 2006, the living costs of age pensioner households showed an increase of 29.2 per cent compared to the 27.4 per cent increase in the CPI.

Even the submission to the inquiry of the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs admitted that over 25 per cent of senior Australians—that is, over one in four—describe themselves as ‘just getting along’. There was a submission to the Senate inquiry from a National Seniors group in Queensland which looked into the cost of weekly grocery shopping. Buying the items on the list cost $55 two years ago but may cost $75 today at the local supermarket. They went through a number of the common items in most of our supermarket shopping trolleys: bread, margarine, mince, chicken—all of the sorts of everyday items that people buy. The comparison that this National Seniors group from Queensland put together shows just how difficult it is becoming for many pensioners. The Salvation Army highlighted the problem starkly in their submission when they said:

A significant percentage of older Australians presenting for assistance at Salvation Army services are assisted with food and/or food vouchers.

Fuel and utility costs have also hit many senior Australians very hard. From the inquiry we heard that many senior Australians are going to bed early or sitting in cold living rooms to save power. The Australian Pensioners and Superannuants League Queensland Inc. wrote the following in their submission to the inquiry:

The rising impact on the price of fuel particularly petrol has placed an added burden on Pensioners and Superannuants in their ability to maintain an active life and has forced them to rely more on the needs of public transport. This is particularly so for those pensioners who live in remote and regional areas and where the services of public transport is less available.

The league also said:

To keep costs down as a result of rising fuel costs Pensioners and Superannuants during the winter months are either forced to reduce the use of the their oil heating appliance (further impacting on their health) or use alternative heating appliances eg electric which increases the cost of their power.

This is the reality for senior Australians under the current government. The government seems to be saying to senior Australians that they have to turn to organisations like the Salvation Army or other charities for help. Even with this evidence, I have to say that it is extraordinary that we have a Prime Minister who is saying that Australian families have never been better off when we see in black and white before us just how difficult it is, particularly for older Australians.

I will turn to the changes in the bill to the Pension Bonus Scheme. The Pension Bonus Scheme was introduced in 1998 and is designed to financially reward seniors who defer claiming the age pension. A one-off tax-free bonus is paid for each year that a person is eligible for the age pension but does not claim it. The schedule creates a new payment—the pension bonus bereavement payment—which enables the bonus accrued by the Pension Bonus Scheme participant to be paid to their surviving spouse if the participant dies before claiming the bonus. Under current rules no bonus is payable if the participant dies before claiming the bonus. This proposed change is to apply to the surviving spouse. Labor certainly supports this change.

The Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs has advised that 460 older Australians die each year before they can claim their pension bonus, which is worth up to $32,000. We think it is unfair that a bonus rightly earned by an older Australian who participates in this scheme is not able to be passed on if they unfortunately die before claiming the bonus. So, as I say, we support this change. However, I ask the minister why the benefit cannot be passed on to the next of kin if there is no surviving spouse. I also ask the minister why the bonus cannot be transferred effective from the date of the budget. My office was contacted by someone whose husband recently passed away before he claimed the bonus, and she has been told that she cannot receive the payment. I ask the minister in the spirit of compassion to consider changing the eligibility date for the transfer to a surviving spouse—or next of kin if he is willing to consider that—to the date of the last budget when the measure was announced rather than 1 January 2008. There will not be that many people affected, but for those few who would otherwise miss out it would be a generous thing to do in what are otherwise very difficult circumstances.

Schedule 4 of the bill increases the threshold for funeral investments that are exempt from the pension income and assets test from $5,000 to $10,000. The new threshold will also be indexed to the CPI. This schedule also inserts a new provision for determining whether an investment is an exempt funeral investment for social security purposes. Labor supports these changes.

We also support the changes that will increase access to the crisis payment. The crisis payment is a one-off payment equal to the total of a person’s pension or allowance and is available in cases of extreme financial hardship. This bill adds holders of certain humanitarian visas to the eligibility list. As I understand it, the qualifying humanitarian visas will be determined by the minister in a legislative instrument. Once again, Labor supports these changes.

I want to touch on some issues that are also putting significant financial and other pressures on families. I have indicated that many senior Australians are doing it tough, but many Australian working families are also under pressure. With that said, I think we would all agree that, even in testing times, parents are pretty resilient. Those of us who have brought our children up know that you have to go through an enormous range of ups and downs, watching and helping them grow. We all understand that it is not easy, and it is certainly not getting any easier for parents. Labor understand that parents do not want to have to rely on government to help them bring up their children, but parents do appreciate governments giving them choices and making their lives easier when that is possible. We want to make sure that governments offer choices to parents, especially so that they can give their children the best possible start in life.

One of the most difficult things that faces parents at the moment is the stress as they juggle their work and family responsibilities. That is why the Leader of the Opposition has announced that Labor, in government, would establish an Office of Work and Family within the Prime Minister’s department and that this Office of Work and Family would be a focal point at the centre of government for addressing the concerns of families. One of the key tasks of this office would be to provide detailed family impact statements on all submissions presented to the federal cabinet under a Labor government. These assessments at the moment are the responsibility of departments which are themselves developing cabinet submissions together with the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. Unfortunately, it seems that the Howard government has not always taken these family impact statements seriously and, as I understand it, in the case of the Work Choices legislation, no family impact statement was completed.

Under a Labor government family impact statements will be given much higher importance. The Office of Work and Family will also assess the economic impact of policy proposals on family wellbeing, the impact of measures on work and family balance, and how proposals affect children’s health, development and general wellbeing. We have announced that a Labor government would publish an annual ‘state of the family’ report, analysing key issues and trends facing Australian families. That report would include looking at critical issues such as the increasing number of parents caring for children and their ageing relatives, the impact of longer periods of education and the educational debt that students now carry on family formation, and measures to assist parents balance work and family responsibilities. These are just some of the areas that we think an Office of Work and Family should focus on.

The recent snapshot, released by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, of how Australian families spend their time shows that parents with children under the age of five are most likely to feel time pressures but that these pressures do not ease all that significantly as their children grow.

A recent study by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission found:

Despite a decade or more of economic growth and prosperity, many Australians say they are not living the lives they want. They feel pressured, stressed and constrained in the choices they can make, particularly at key points in their lives.

Members should contrast that statement with the comments that we have heard from the Prime Minister that ‘working families have never been better off’. That, yet again, demonstrates how out of touch this Prime Minister is. The Prime Minister does not seem to understand the impact of the five interest rate rises that working families have had to endure since the last election. To give people an idea of what that means, families with a mortgage on a median-priced Sydney home are now paying $384 a month more in mortgage repayments since the Prime Minister promised to keep interest rates at record lows at the last election.

The other area in which families are facing very significant financial pressure is in childcare costs, which are skyrocketing. In the last year alone they went up by 12.8 per cent. Families have now faced four years of double-digit increases in their out-of-pocket childcare costs. Of course, that is on top of the increases that parents face as they try to put healthy food on the table, whether it be fruit and vegies, or other grocery items. The price of most of those things has increased well beyond the consumer price index. So across the board families are under significant financial pressure. Members on this side of the parliament understand the impact of those pressures on families. We also understand that even though families are facing these pressures they expect governments to do what they can to help and to not be told by the Prime Minister that things are just fine for them.

Another measure in the bill that Labor welcomes is the extra support for large families. Schedule 5 extends payment of the multiple-birth allowance to family tax benefit children from six years to 16 years, or older if they are undertaking full-time study, until the end of the calendar year in which they turn 18. The multiple-birth allowance is an extra component of family tax benefit part A, which is paid if an individual has three or more family tax benefit children and at least three of those children were from one pregnancy. Caring for large families is certainly stressful and I can imagine that dealing with triplets must be extraordinarily demanding.

Those families do a great job, and we understand that they need every bit of extra help they can get. That is why the opposition supports this additional payment. Interestingly, between 1986 and 2004 Australia has had 1,690 sets of triplets, quads or other multiple high-order births. So a large number of children will benefit from this measure, and we think that is a good thing. It was in fact a Labor government that introduced a multiple-birth payment for families with triplets or quads way back in 1985, so we certainly support this extension of the multiple-birth allowance for children up to the age of 16, or 18 if the child is still in full-time study.

As this measure obviously recognises, the special costs of raising multiple-birth children does not diminish once they turn six years old and at the stage when we are getting them off to school. It is not only one of the most significant and emotional times for many parents but it is also a very expensive time. Labor recognises that it is an extremely important time for children’s development. That is why today the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Perth and I announced that a Labor government will work in partnership with the Brotherhood of St Laurence to establish 50 community programs nationwide to give parents the skills and confidence that they need to prepare their children for school. Federal Labor will provide $32.5 million over five years to roll out the home interaction program nationally in disadvantaged communities where children are at risk of falling behind. This is yet another instalment of federal Labor’s education revolution. This is a two-year program for three- to five-year-olds and provides for home tutors, books and associated educational resources to help parents get their children ready for school.

Hopefully, we will have the opportunity to work in cooperation with the Brotherhood of St Laurence to establish the program across the country in 50 communities. It will be established in preschools and in some of the 260 new childcare centres that Labor will locate on primary school sites. We want to ensure that this home interaction program works from those sites. From there the tutors will go out into parents’ homes. Each individual program will have qualified tutors working intensively with approximately 65 families and more than 3,000 families in total. As we have heard from the Brotherhood of St Laurence, this program, which has been operating since 1997, has been very successful. Qualified instructors visit parents every two weeks to provide personal mentoring, tutoring assistance and support, as well as the educational resources that I have mentioned.

One of the important things about this program is that it helps parents to develop confidence in their own ability to get their children ready for school. We all know that parents are the first and most important teachers of our children. This program is so important to ensuring that children who otherwise might not start school at the same development level as other kids get a chance to do well.

Each of these programs will prepare children for the learning they will get at school, and give confidence to their parents, improve parents’ relationships with their children and, most importantly, help parents make a more positive contribution to their child’s education. I am sure that all members of parliament know that the evidence shows that investing early delivers significant social and economic benefits to individuals, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This leads to better school results, improved school retention and much greater participation in society and the economy, bringing productive benefits to the nation as a whole.

For these reasons, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation recently called on countries to expand and improve comprehensive early childhood learning, especially for the most disadvantaged and at-risk children. Labor have certainly picked up on this evidence and the initiative we have announced today builds on a number of other very significant policies that Labor have announced. We have given a commitment to make sure that every single four-year-old in Australia will have access to a preschool program. We have committed $450 million a year to make sure that those 100,000 four-year-olds in Australia who are missing out on preschool will get access to that very important early learning. We have committed to build 260 new childcare centres on primary school sites, where it is possible, and other community land. We have committed to a national action plan on literacy and numeracy, including individual learning plans; and also we have committed to a national roll-out of the Australian Early Development Index. I think all of these initiatives together demonstrate Labor’s fundamental commitment to making sure that our youngest children do get the best start in life. The announcement today will particularly focus on those who are most disadvantaged.

See this speech in context