Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Further 2008 Budget and Other Measures) Bill 2008 because it is a bill that directly benefits some of our youngest Australians. I think that is particularly important. The member for Dobell gave a great speech on this bill. He has a long and proud history as National Secretary of the Health Services Union and has a great interest in this area. I think he is a real benefit to the House. The member for Blair also gave a great speech; I commend them both. This bill provides for three important changes. The first is to the maternity immunisation allowance, the second is to partner service pensions and the third is to child support. All three directly affect my electorate of Wakefield. Wakefield has young families, a strong and vibrant veteran community and also an extraordinarily large number of both payers and receivers of child support. You can see the very great changes to the structure of society and the structure of families in Wakefield.

One of the great challenges for government in the future will be how it responds to constellation families. We have fewer nuclear families than we once had and, increasingly, we have constellation families where people do not have just one family; they have sometimes two or three. They have biological children and stepchildren, and they have a multitude of relationships. These family relationships do not always fit neatly into government programs. Child support is one of those areas that we are trying desperately to improve, but it does not always fit that well into people’s personal situations. This bill is an attempt to improve that situation and to have some regard to people’s personal circumstances. As I said before, how we respond to those changes will be one of the great challenges of modern government.

These changes reflect a government that is concerned about advancing Australians’ living standards but is also aiming at balancing the books and maintaining budgetary and economic responsibility. We know that you cannot improve people’s lives by funny accounting or by Peronist policies. The opposition want to pretend that we can be all things to all people, that we can just promise everything to every group, that there is a magic pudding out there and that you can take a spoon, dip it in and keep dipping it in just like in Norman Lindsay’s book. My mum used to read The Magic Pudding to me. The member for Fadden is a great believer in the magic pudding; he seems to be for everything. The Howard government had the magic pudding policy. They kept on spending and spending, and the IMF picked up their explosive rate of spending in the last couple of budgets, which fuelled inflation. That is a matter of record and history now. It is obviously costing those on fixed incomes in particular greatly.

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