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

We are waiting for the Senate to pass our Medicare surcharge tax cut to working Australian families, couples and singles. We are waiting on the other place to pass our budget, and I would just encourage members opposite to do that.

The first of these reforms is the change to the maternity immunisation allowance, the MIA, to bring it in line with our National Immunisation Program. In 2006-07, the maternity immunisation allowance assisted with the immunisation of almost a quarter of a million Australian children at a cost of $56.2 million. That $56.2 million is very well spent. It helps families. It assists people who have young families. It assists those in school, because it prevents diseases from damaging our young people. It represents a significant contribution to 270,000 Australian families. People want a health system that is focused on maintaining health and preventing disease rather than responding to it. Families know that prevention is better than cure. They know that immunisation is far better than being sick, going to hospital or visiting a doctor later on—all of which take extraordinary amounts of time out of a family’s life and are distressing. Immunisation is an essential part of effective healthcare policy. In particular, it is important for parents who are concerned about protecting the health of their children.

In Wakefield, there are almost 10,000 children under the age of six. Obviously we want to make sure that they are inoculated against preventable diseases. The level of immunisation in Wakefield is about 93 per cent, which is a great achievement. It is a high rate and one that we want to improve. There are a lot of young families in the area, so having high immunisation rates is particularly important. The mid-north region includes the lovely town of Clare. It is great wine-growing territory—I know the member for Adelaide has been to Clare and tried the wine on occasion. Clare has some great tourist opportunities. That area has had the biggest increase in early childhood immunisations of any division of general practice in South Australia. So it is great to see that a vibrant country region can lead the way in immunisation in South Australia. It is a record which I am sure other parts of South Australia envy, and it is something that the electorate of Wakefield can be proud of. We would like to improve those results in the future and get even higher rates if we can.

The current flaw in the maternity immunisation allowance is that it is delivered as a lump sum payment. Any sort of payment has an effect on people’s behaviour. As the payment is available without means testing, on or before a child’s second birthday, most parents aim to provide standard immunisations for their child at around 18 months. By providing the lump sum there is an incentive for parents to get those immunisations at the 18-month mark but no incentive, and importantly no reminder, to get the second round of immunisations at age four.

We know that taxation policy and social security policy—anything that involves a payment—alters the community’s behaviour. If we are interested in eliminating this flaw and driving up the immunisation rate for four-year-olds, this bill will assist to do that. We know that immunisation rates for two-year-olds are significantly higher than for school-age children. Ninety-three per cent of children aged two are fully immunised, but that drops to 88 per cent by age six. So it is clear that some families, caught up in work, school and all those pressures that are on families these days, do not follow up with immunisation to the four-year-old mark. If people do not follow up their child’s immunisations, the policy is less effective over time.

With many older children missing out on the second round of immunisations, as recommended in the National Immunisation Program, the prevalence of illnesses like diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, mumps, german measles and polio in the Australian community is affected. We want to eliminate those diseases. Polio went through a lot of families of the baby boomer generation. My own aunts and uncles and my grandparents’ family had a spot of it themselves. It was a very distressing disease but one that my generation—generation X—have happily missed.

This bill eliminates this flaw by providing an incentive for parents to secure those recommended immunisations and as a result will increase the proportion of four-year-olds who are fully immunised. Under these measures, from 2009 parents and carers who have children that meet the immunisation requirements for an 18-month-old will be paid the first half of their maternity immunisation allowance payment, currently $118.40 and indexed, when the child is aged between 18 months and 24 months. The second maternity immunisation allowance payment will then be available when the child has received its vaccinations at four years of age and must be claimed on or before the child’s fifth birthday. By changing the method of payment, families still get the benefit but the pattern of payment will help to enforce and change behaviours and make sure that we drive up immunisation rates for that second group of children. Those payments will continue to be indexed twice a year, so in practice the second instalment will be higher than the first, due to subsequent indexation.

This bill does more than just provide incentives for a more effective National Immunisation Program; it also increases support for families with children who are adopted from overseas. Currently some older adopted children are excluded from the program due to their age. Under this bill they will have access to the program within two years of arrival in Australia. With more and more families adopting from overseas this is a very important measure.

This measure reinforces the fundamental purposes of the maternity immunisation allowance—namely, to support the immunisation of all children in Australia, whether they are born in Australia or are newly arrived through adoption. The measure itself is a recommendation of the bipartisan 2005 House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services inquiry into overseas adoption in Australia. It is good to see the work of committees being incorporated into the law of the land. It is nice to know that all those committee meetings that we attend with such vigour, hearing from experts and from those who are most affected by the legislation that we enact, are worth while. It is great to see that their work is incorporated into the law of the land. It makes for better practice in the House of Representatives and ultimately better law.

This bill also provides for changes to the partner service pension, which will require some readjustment in the community. The first change is to cease eligibility for partners of veterans who are separated but not divorced after 12 months of separation or if the veteran enters into another marriage-like relationship. The second measure recognises that a partner of a veteran who is a recipient of less than the special rate but above the general rate disability pension or who has at least 80 impairment points under the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act should have a lower eligibility age for the partner service pension. Under these amendments that eligibility will be set at 50 years. These changes will contribute to a responsible budget and responsible measures to ensure that our repatriation system is strong and equitable into the future.

The bill before the House today also makes changes to the child support legislation to address anomalies in relation to the child support formula reforms that commenced this July. As I said before, these changes are important to make sure that people pay their child support, but they also enable changes in people’s circumstances and lifestyle to be reflected in adjustments to their child support assessments. The nature and pattern of people’s families change, as do their proportion of care obligations and their income, so these child support formula reforms are very desirable. Anything we can do to make the system more responsive to people is important.

These are important measures and they fulfil the community’s expectation of what a caring and responsible government does. This bill supports parents in ensuring their children have access to proper preventative health care. We are endeavouring to make our system of supporting veterans more responsible and responsive to their needs. We are also aiming at making the child support mechanisms more responsive to the community’s needs. For these reasons I support the bill before the House.

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