Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Tax Laws Amendment (2009 Measures No. 5) Bill 2009. While there are a number of provisions being put forward in this legislation, such as clarifying the GST law and extending the exemption on interest withholding tax to debt issued by the Commonwealth, today I want to give particular focus, as other speakers have, to the amendments made in relation to the Helping Children with Autism package. Why? Because it is a program I advocated and supported in government and one that makes a considerable difference in addressing the special developmental needs of autistic children, supporting their families and reinforcing the proven fact that early intervention produces the best possible outcome for diagnosis in children. It cannot be stressed enough that early intervention is crucial to children with this autism condition.

As we have heard, this legislation makes tax-free the outer regional and remote payment under the Helping Children with Autism package. This one-off $2,000 payment assists families living in regional areas to manage the additional costs of accessing early intervention services, including travel and accommodation. Schedule 3 makes payments made under the package exempt from income tax, applying retrospectively to payments made in the last financial year. This is an important amendment and one that makes the difficult lives of our families coping with a child with autism slightly easier. I must at this point point out why this is important. In the past autism has not received the attention it should have because it was a not recognised as a syndrome but more as a condition and it did not get the funding or attention it deserved. This is actually promoting it to the status it should have.

The Helping Children with Autism package was an important coalition initiative and it is not surprising the Rudd government had the sense to carry it on. Autism is not a partisan issue, as we have heard here this morning. It is about giving children the best opportunities, addressing their special needs and supporting the different developmental needs. No party at all has a trademark on this epidemic. It is a national issue that needs national support. Autism spectrum disorders include autism, obviously, Asperger’s syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder. It is characterised by impaired social skills, poor communication and restricted and repetitive behaviours and interests. The distress of parents realising these early signs is heartbreaking.

Autism has grown to astonishing levels in the last 15 years. Around one in 160 children in Australia are now diagnosed with some level of autism spectrum disorder. An American bureau of statistics study showed that autism has increased by 870 per cent in the last 10 years. Parents of children with autism face immense challenges. Aside from the care of their child, the resulting stress is enormous, and studies show that up to 80 per cent of marriages where there is an autistic child fail. I myself have seen many times the pressure it puts on marriages and relationships. Unfortunately, there is no cure, so we must continue to invest in support and research to make sure families and children cope the best they can.

At the cornerstone of the package is, as I said, early intervention. Funding to assist children up to the age of six and their families gain access to better support, education and early intervention services is crucial. Autism-specific playgroups encourage learning and development, and childhood autism advisers help families find the best services to meet the needs of their particular child. Assistance is also provided in the form of Medicare funded services to diagnose autism; workshops and information sessions for parents with school-age children with autism; and professional development for teachers, schools and staff. It is so important that teachers, schools and staff are now getting workshops to help them cope. They play a vital role.

Securing additional services to assist autistic children has long been on my agenda. It was as a special needs teacher at a school in Perth, the Gladys Newton School in Balga, that I saw firsthand the impact autism has on children and their families and the difficulty many children have in coping in everyday surroundings. In fact, as a young school teacher at the Gladys Newton School my first impressions of autism—I can picture him now, one autistic boy—were that it was quite strange; I had never seen anything like it before. My heart went out to that boy’s mother in those days because I knew the difficulty she was having. She had just been abandoned by her husband as a result of the stress placed on their marriage.

Over a number of years I have supported a group in my electorate of Canning called the Unique Group of Mothers, a support group of families with autistic children. I will take this opportunity to talk about my friend Dermott Barnard, who adopted me through the Adopt a Politician scheme. Dermott is now 11 and was diagnosed with autism at three. In fact, if this program had been in place he might have been diagnosed much earlier. Since then, his mother, Lynne, has battled to make sure that her son’s needs are met. Most of the time she must feel as though it is a constant uphill battle but you never hear her complain. In fact, Lynne is a very brave and courageous lady.

I do not want to go into all the details, but Lynne has suffered so much sickness and ill health herself that we thought we had lost her several times. I suspect what keeps her going is the fact that she needs to care for Dermott and his sister. She has had constant surgery, including muscle transplants. As a single mother—who by the way is fighting to get family payments from her ex-partner—she really does it hard. I know what a tough and strong lady she is and I congratulate her for fighting through all this.

Dermott’s autism is relatively severe and, like many autistic children, he has several other conditions. He has dysphagia, intellectual disability, asthma, serious behavioural problems, as well as epilepsy. I have not caught up with Dermott as often as I should but I have watched him grow up over the years. Dermott is great with electronics, putting things together and taking them apart. That is part of his repetitive behaviour. We actually sat down and set up a car track and a computer together. Lynne does an outstanding job of coping as a single mother, as I have said. Obviously, Dermott’s condition puts great strain on her. Just to make matters more difficult, along with her poor health of late, she also has a younger daughter who suffers from several conditions herself. So she has two children with huge issues.

Lynne has fought battle after battle but always puts a smile on her face. There have been ongoing clashes over Dermott’s entitlement, for example, to aid time at school, and I am pleased to say that I have been able to help. Ensuring that Dermott has adequate and intensive support at school is imperative to his progress. Dermott requires assistance in the classroom and supervision due to fears for his safety. He requires monitoring at mealtimes, because if he did not have that he would choke because he has trouble swallowing, and at bathroom breaks

Lynne was among the thousands of parents who welcomed the program, particularly relating to early intervention. At the time, she said:

It’s a great package because it is designed to integrate autistic children into general schools and programs. We don’t want to return to the days of ‘special’ centres.

In fact, it is not that long ago that they used to call the centres for these children ‘slow-learning centres’, and they were isolated from the rest of the school population. Now they are integrated into the school program, as they should be because it helps their development progress and it also helps the other children in the classroom to show compassion and understanding for children less fortunate than themselves.

The sooner a diagnosis is made the sooner early intervention can get underway, so this program is outstanding. In Perth, a new early-learning and care centre for children with autism spectrum disorder is underway. In a partnership with the Autism Association of Western Australia, Curtin University and Jellybeans Child Care Centres, the centre will be staffed by trained professionals and will help children to develop structured social skills. In turn, this will give them confidence and make the transition to school significantly easier. These centres will also provide parents with greater peace of mind and support and will leave them feeling less isolated and frustrated.

One of the things that have not been addressed yet, and I know that parents are desperate for it, is respite care. The ability to organise respite care at short notice is crucial to these parents. If you book a child in for, say, a fortnight’s time that is one thing, but when the parent or the carer is absolutely at their wit’s end they need immediate respite. We have heard of tragedies in this country where some parents have not coped and they have done away with their child. It is a fact of life and it is very sad. That is why they need emergency respite. That is not being done yet but, hopefully, this is something we can build on after this program is initiated.

There is a lot more I could say about this issue but I will move on. I briefly note a couple of other important provisions in this legislation. Giving greater flexibility to the distribution of Victorian bushfire appeal funds can only help the rebuilding process. Schedule 6 of the bill allows the Victorian Bushfires Appeal Fund to use donations in ways that would not generally be deemed as being for a charitable purpose. The amendment means that the Australian Red Cross Society will not risk losing its charitable status as a result of undertaking this wider variety of work. This is a practical amendment and it makes sense. When it comes to rebuilding towns, you are  basically starting from scratch. People have donated money for this purpose and agencies should not be restricted by bureaucratic red tape. No-one can question the motives behind this amendment to give long-term assistance to orphans, provide assistance to individuals whose homes were destroyed by bushfires, provide up to $15,000 to individuals living in transitional housing and provide up to $10,000 in financial assistance to primary producers. I am sure that many Canning schoolchildren and families who generously donated to the appeal would support their money going to any of those purposes.

This past weekend I was in Dwellingup to celebrate the centenary of the pegging of the town. I mention this because the devastating Dwellingup fires of 1961 virtually destroyed the town and brought its thriving timber and milling industry to a complete standstill. Everything was burnt to the ground except—can you believe it?—the local pub. As I understand it, this happened in Marysville or one of those towns recently. As I said on the weekend, somebody has a rare sense of priority.

For Dwellingup residents the memories of the fires remain, and they sympathise with the victims of the Victorian fires. Out of the ashes of Dwellingup they banded together and started again. The fires burnt out 1.8 million hectares and 160 buildings and cost $35 million in lost homes, businesses and livestock. Today Dwellingup is a picturesque town which thrives on being a very enviable destination for tourists, so it has moved from being a timber town. It still has a couple of smaller boutique timber mills, but it is moving towards being a tourism town, including for ecotourism.

Finally, I am pleased that the legislation also provides an income tax exemption for payments made under the Continence Aids Payment Scheme. The coalition invested heavily in the program, doubling it in 2007, because it provides financial support at a basic level for thousands of Australians with incontinence due to neurological conditions, such as paraplegia, multiple sclerosis or spina bifida, and also the parents of disabled children. Incontinence has physical, social and economic ramifications for people of all ages, for carers and for the community as a whole. I want to mention a certain multiple sclerosis sufferer, athlete et cetera. I particularly want to mention the MS Society champion Betty Cuthbert, who lives in my electorate. I know that she has been a big advocate for this scheme because it has been extremely expensive and her carer has come to me on a number of occasions regarding the incontinence pad situation for Betty. With all that, I commend the bill to this House.

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