Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is an important issue. It slips through when everyone is trying to be politically correct around the way we view and identify issues, particularly those associated with welfare. What the member for Wakefield has been able to do is to ensure that our focus is firmly and unwaveringly fixed on families and children in particular. Just to reiterate, income management is an arrangement whereby a percentage of the income will be quarantined to be available for priority goods for families, such as food, housing, clothing, education and health care.

Income management is an essential tool necessary for individuals to participate, particularly families, in the normal discourse of life and for ensuring that their families will not miss out. There are many families in Australia that sometimes struggle to stretch their budget to ensure that they are providing the necessary support for basic elements of life. Sometimes, regrettably, because of various choices, particularly bad choices, that people make there is not enough money available in the family budget to ensure that provision for their family, particularly for their children, is met in an appropriate way.

One thing that this initiative seeks to do is ensure that individuals have the necessary skills and knowledge about how to manage their finances, things that many of us take for granted. But the truth of the matter is that it does not equally apply to everybody, particularly those on a limited income through a welfare system.

When we discuss things like this, often people want to talk about the fundamentals of human rights. In fact, the member for Durack just referred to that. I often speak about human rights in the House. But, first and foremost, in any discourse on human rights must be the human rights that prevail for children. A child who is being neglected or at risk of being neglected deserves to be assisted in having a brighter future under the care and guidance of their parents, particularly those who are capable of taking care of them. Sometimes they have to learn to take care of them. It would be a great tragedy to see people lose custody of their children simply because of lack of education and information on how to manage their family finances.

I have only been in my current electorate for a little over 12 months but within my former electorate was Macquarie Fields, which is a very significant housing commission area and certainly an economically challenged area. There are many issues there. I spent a lot of time there with people such as Father Chris Riley, trying to do things, particularly post the 2005 riots. I met up with a bloke who freely admitted he was a drug addict. When we were having some discussions about his financial situation, he became very morose. He admitted to me that if there had been some greater effort to actually control his welfare he may not have lost his three children. He thought he had a system available to him where he got his payments and all the rest of it. He had good intentions of looking after his kids, sending them to school and doing all the other things that most parents do. But when he got into drugs and alcohol and things like that, a lot of that fell away. In fact, so did his parental responsibilities of ensuring his kids went to school and a few other things.

The consequence was that the New South Wales government, through DOCS, moved in and, rightfully, put the children into foster homes where they, at least, could have an opportunity for a future. This bloke asserted to me, 'If there were some system of intervention, some system that could have prevailed, other than "Give me the cheque every fortnight"—some way that I could have been held to account for what I was not doing, I might have woken up to myself.' I think that is the point that the member for Wakefield made. This is not necessarily a case of people being bad or squandering their money and doing all those other things; a lot of it is just inexperience in doing the right thing, failing to learn and failing to see the relevance of that to children. (Time expired)

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