Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Improved Support for Carers) Bill 2009. I am pleased to say that this is a bill in which we are more united by our joint concerns. In fact, carers payment was introduced by a Labor government in 1983 as a new welfare measure, but I note that carers payment (child) was introduced by a former coalition government in 1998 and that that same coalition government put in place the review that has led to the amendments that are being made here today. I think it is important that we recognise that not one side of politics has a mortgage on caring for people in this situation.  The changes that we are making to this legislation were recommended in a report Carer payment (child): a new approach by the Carer Payment (child) Review Taskforce, which was, as I said, set up in 2007 by the coalition government. I think we would agree that they are important changes.

Each of us as a member of this parliament does have interaction with families who are in this situation. Each of us understands that the difficulties that are faced by these families vary. I, for example, have had very close contact with one family caring, for over 20 years, for a young man with a disability. I have watched as his parents have worked hard to create for him an independent adult life. I also know of one teenage girl who was essentially abandoned by her mother at a day respite centre because her mother had been unable to adequately care for her whilst working. Whilst this was a very distressing circumstance for them both it was the only way in which she could see that her daughter would be well catered for in the future. It is the future of many of these people that is very much at the forefront of the minds of those providing care: their parents, who wonder what will become of their child once they themselves have passed on, and you see this situation a lot in later life. It is a substantial worry and we need to continually look at it into the future.

The report of the task force threw up, at least to me, one odd imbalance—that is, the percentage of recipients of carers payment (child) was about three per cent, or 3,600 recipients, of the total 116,600 recipients of carers payment overall, yet the lesser sum, the carers allowance (child), actually accounted for 28 per cent of all of those on carers allowance. This has an interesting implication in relation to the changes we are talking about making today in that the carers allowance (child) was paid to people based on the amount of care that the child needed. The carers payment was, in these circumstances that we are seeking to change, based on the actual disability or illness suffered by the child.

It could be said, I think with some veracity, that a number of people whose children needed care, for which they were being paid carer allowance, ought to have been receiving the carer payment. The change that we are making, as I have said and as was pointed out in a document issued by the Parliamentary Library, is now consistent with the application of the requirements for the carer allowance. The Parliamentary Library document went on to say—and we should be aware of this—that one of the problems with the assessment tool which we used in the past was that no two care situations are the same and that the same medical condition or disability affects individuals differently. The capacity of a person to cope with a disability or a medical condition varies between individuals and, therefore, the care needs vary. I could say, too, that there has been some discussion on taking the assessment tool that is about to be used for children and transferring it directly to assess people of 16 and above for the carer payment for adults. One of the points that is made quite strongly is that a child requires a degree of care from a parent simply by being a child. The disability degree will add to that level of care. It may or may not be a degree of disability or illness that will entitle them to have a carer in adult life. With a number of these things, adults are better able to cope.

I think that there have been some suggestions emanating from the Greens that an amendment to this legislation might be moved to reflect that transition, but I would say that, in a genuine consideration of the issue, we would need to take into account the parental care that is given to a child anyway and that the new arrangements, which we do introduce through this legislation, should be determined based on the additional care that is required.

There are a number of changes in the legislation. Obviously, the methodology of determining who is eligible is the centrepiece of the legislation. As a number of speakers have said, it adds 19,000 people to those who are likely to receive the carer allowance. I think that is a wonderful thing we as a parliament do. If there are people who deserve our help, it is those who are struggling to raise children with serious illness or disability and particularly—and I have not seen much written about it in relation to this bill, although there were some examples given in the task force review—families where there is one child with a severe or profound disability and other children in the household as well, recognising the actual difficulties of treating all your children fairly when one requires so much of your time.

These are difficult jobs and for people to be required, as they were simply by the fact that their payment was in the area of $52 per week as a carer, to go out and find work to raise children—one or more with a disability—is I think really flying in the face of what we are about as a country that does have a welfare system in place to assist people in difficult circumstances.

The clause relating to episodic care will, for the first time, enable people to be paid a carers payment for a short period while a child for whom they care receives treatment. The example given in the explanatory memorandum is of somebody receiving periodic treatment for leukaemia. It is very important that there is an adult carer available if there is a child in that circumstance—I suppose it is also important that an adult in that circumstance has support available—and this legislation allows for adult carers to receive carers payment for the period of that treatment if it is from three to six months. During the inquiry into the legislation by the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs there was some discussion about whether that should not need to be renewed for each period of treatment but remain open for two years. There may be some merit in that but there is also some merit in the answer that was given by FaHCSIA, which suggested that an application for a second round of treatment would be a very simple matter. I do not know but I think it could be as simple as a phone call, given that the parameters have been met for the first round of treatment.

The exchanged care provisions will be welcomed. The previous speaker raised a view I share with him with respect to modern family circumstances where families separate and where increasingly—and thankfully—rather than there being a lot of fights there is shared care of children. If the care of a child with a disability were being shared 50 per cent by each parent then neither of them would qualify for an allowance, yet each of them would have been restricted in the income that they could earn. I think that as we progress this legislation we will be able to look at making arrangements to assist those kinds of people.

I have spoken a little about transitional arrangements. We have improved those to a three-month time frame in which the assessment for transitioning from carer payment (child) to carer payment (adult) can be done. That has been welcomed by the organisations involved. Apart from the idea that if you qualify for a carer payment (child) then you should automatically qualify for a carer payment (adult), which I think is problematic, these provisions have been well received.

There are also changes to provisions regarding hospitalisation. Previously, if a child in someone’s care spent more than 63 days in hospital then that person lost their entitlement to carer payment (child). They will now retain that, subject to a 12-weekly review. The person would need to submit, through Centrelink, to FaHCSIA the need for ongoing care for their child. Any of us who, for any reason, have had a child in hospital for an extended period know that it is very important that the adult be available to the child through that time.

With the Disability Care Load Assessment (Child) Determination, the new document that people will fill out is one that, I understand, has been developed in association with the University of Wollongong. It was only made available in recent days. I would indicate that I have discussed with the minister’s office the matter of concerns about the document being discussed with organisations that are active in this area, whether it be Carers Australia or the association that was established for parents of children with disabilities, prior to the document’s implementation. I have been told that those discussions are actually taking place and that some recommendations have been made to government. It is a bit early in the decision-making process to decide whether or not we take them on board. What needs to happen here is, of course, for there to be a document that simplifies the process as much as possible.

I imagine that other members of the parliament have had occurrences of a situation that has happened a number of times in my office, namely, instances of medical practitioners, for example, ticking the wrong box when they are doing an assessment of a constituent who is seeking to apply for the disability support pension and, as a consequence of the mistake on the form—rather than it being a matter of the person not qualifying for the disability support pension—the pension has not been provided to the person concerned. This particular document is enormously important in relation to what we are trying to do. Never let it be said of course that what is happening is a simplification. This is still a very complex area of welfare legislation but the interaction with people and the issue of their entitlements need to be simplified as much as possible.

I want to deal with a couple of the issues that were raised by the Australian Greens in the minority report to the Senate committee inquiry. Five changes were suggested. I have already dealt with the first of those—that is, aligning the carer payment (adult) assessment with the carer payment (child) assessment. I do not think that that is a reasonable thing to do. The second and the fifth of the issues raised in this context by the Greens were to do with the extension of provisions of this legislation to adults. Whilst I would not say that the Greens were wrong, I would say that this is the wrong piece of legislation in which to do that. This legislation does not deal with that; maybe they should seek another vehicle. Two years for episodic care, something I mentioned earlier, could reasonably happen.

This government is serious about making sure that there are adequate provisions for carers as we move our society forward to become much more caring for the people within it. In the recently delivered federal budget there are provisions in relation to extra support for carers. Through the mechanism we are debating today it will open up to 19,000 additional recipients of carer payment (child). That is 19,000 additional people receiving the equivalent of the pension. They will of course be pleased by the additional amount of pension but also by the carer supplement and the carer payment. The carer supplement will go to people who receive both carer payment and carer allowance. It is set at $600 per annum. A person on carer payment (child) will automatically qualify for the carer allowance because of the alignment of the two qualifications and also the annual child disability assistance payment of $1,000. So on top of the carer payment (child) there is an amount of about $2,200 a year that will be paid to them. I commend the bill to the House.

See this speech in context