Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I stand to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Family Payments Structural Reform and Participation Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2015. I often hear talk about sustainability, especially from the other side of politics—and I think it is relevant too. They will talk about sustainability in relation to environmental and ecological measures, which are very important. We need to maintain sustainability in all things, the environment being one of those, and it is a very important facet of our community and our life.

Unfortunately, not as commonly do I hear the other side talk about sustainability when it comes to financial measures. Often we will hear them saying that we are just custodians of our land and our water for our children and our grandchildren—and so we are. But we are also custodians in regard to finance for our children and our grandchildren. We are borrowing from our children and our grandchildren right now, and governments need to be very prudent in the management of financial resources as well as of other resources.

This legislation, in particular, is about making sure that the government does provide for the vulnerable in our community. We all know that, for many reasons, some people may be doing it tough or may have reached tough times, and a government and a society is always judged by how it looks after the vulnerable. We need to continue to look after people who need help in our community, and this bill is about two things: targeting those who are most vulnerable and making sure that they are still helped, and ensuring that the system that we have is sustainable so that the help and the things that we are doing for those who are vulnerable in our community will be funded into the future.

There are three basic measures in this bill. One is that the family tax benefit part A fortnightly rates will be increased by around $10 for each child aged up to 19 in the family. It will also amend the rules and introduce a new rate structure for the family tax benefit part B, and there will be a phasing out of the family tax benefit part A and part B supplements. The family payments reform package brings forward a set of measures which aim to achieve long-term sustainability of the family payments system—as I mentioned earlier, one of the key targets of this—while continuing to deliver help to families who need it the most, now and into the future. The family payment reform package will support the important task of budget repair and help to pay for the government's $3 billion Jobs for Families childcare package, because, as we know, we have a budget that does need to be sustainable in the future and, at the moment, changes need to be made to make sure that it is.

The government is also proposing to increase the FTB part A fortnightly rates from 1 July 2018 and increase the fortnightly rates of the youth allowance and the disability support pension to align with the new FTB part A fortnightly rates. Around 1.2 million families, including those on income support, will receive the fortnightly increase which will assist them with day-to-day living expenses. They are the most vulnerable.

The FTB part B payment structures will also be reformed to provide more support to families when their children are born and better encourage workforce participation when their youngest child is older and their ability to participate in the workforce is enhanced. From 1 July 2016 the standard rate of the family tax benefit part B will be increased by $1,000 per year for families with a youngest child aged under one. This measure will help around 142,000 of the more vulnerable families as well. The current standard rates will be maintained for families with a youngest child aged between one and 13. Standard rates will also be maintained for single parents who are at least 60 years of age and for grandparent and great-grandparent carers with a youngest child aged between 13 and 18. A reduced standard rate of $1,000 will apply to single-parent families where the parent is under 60 and the youngest child is aged between 13 and 16.

We acknowledge, as a government should, the important role of parents in the primary care of their children and maintain a range of programs and payments to support them. Currently, the government spends a substantial amount of money in three main areas of family support each year: around $20 billion in the family tax benefit, $6 billion in the childcare benefit and the childcare rebate and around $2 billion in paid parental leave.

The government's commitment to supporting parents in caring for their children also needs to be balanced with the responsibility to ensure that family assistance and social security payments are targeted to those who are most vulnerable and, as I said earlier, are sustainable into the future so that the programs can be maintained. The government believes these sensible changes will ensure the sustainability of family payments and that the system provides support to families who need it most, now and into the future. This is a sensible package of measures that contain the required savings from family payments to offset the additional investment in the childcare package, which will help families and encourage workforce participation.

As I said at the start, the role of government is to look after those who are most vulnerable, and this set of measures targets increased assistance to those families who we believe to be the most vulnerable, and it also addresses the sustainability of all these programs. The savings in the package are designed to do that. The easy thing in government is to spend money. Every politician would like to hand out as much money as they can to people in a range of circumstances, but we need to do it with prudence, in a way that is sustainable and in a way that is targeted. As I said earlier, it is proper that we talk about sustainability as far as the environment goes—it is proper that we talk about sustainability when it comes to ecology and borrowing resources from our children. It is all true, but the other thing that we need to always recognise is that we are going to pass the functioning of our economy to our children and our grandchildren, and it is very important that we do not borrow heavily from them as well.

I commend this bill to the House.

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