Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

This bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Family Assistance Alignment and Other Measures) Bill 2016, proposes a number of technical amendments to strengthen the legislation to better achieve its original intention. It is not controversial.

Schedule 1 amends the date of effect provisions for the calculation of family tax benefit supplements in order to prevent payment of a supplement where an entitlement would have existed had the recipient complied with existing reporting timelines. Schedule 2 consists of contingent provisions, which repeal schedule 1 in the event that the government passes its family tax benefit supplement cuts and the changes in schedule 1 become redundant. Schedule 3 corrects an unintended consequence in the youth allowance rate calculator which results in underpayment of some youth allowance recipients.

As I said, the contents of the bill are not controversial, and so we will support its passage through the parliament. But I do want to take this opportunity to make it very clear that Labor does not support any further cuts to family tax benefit end of year supplements. I have had many, many people email me about this issue, so I want to make it crystal clear—and I am very glad that the minister is at the table—that Labor will not be supporting any further cuts to family tax benefit end of year supplements.

I want to speak briefly about the date of effect provisions in the bill. Family tax benefit is paid in fortnightly instalments, at a rate based on an estimate of adjusted taxable income. At the end of each financial year, reconciliation occurs, and the amount of family tax benefit paid is compared with the amount of family tax benefit that would have been paid, had the actual taxable income been known, with the amount of any part A and/or part B supplements factored in. The reconciliation process therefore can result in either the creation of a debt or a credit. The reconciliation process is triggered by the lodgement of an income tax return or by seeking a review.

When a recipient of family tax benefit is not required to lodge an income tax return, they must notify the Department of Human Services in order to trigger the reconciliation process. The department must be notified within a year of the end of the relevant financial year that an income tax return was not required to be lodged. When notification happens more than a year after the end of the relevant financial year and the reconciliation result is that the recipient is entitled to receive a family tax benefit top-up or supplement, this amount is not paid as a result of the reconciliation occurring out of time. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal has interpreted the date of effect provisions to allow for payment of additional family tax benefit where the department was notified more than a year after the end of the relevant financial year. This is inconsistent with the intention of the original legislation and the practice of the department, and this schedule amends the legislation to ensure that this is not the case. So we do support the intention of the bill before us.

As we are talking about family tax benefits in this bill, I do want to draw the attention of the House to some very dodgy numbers that the Minister for Social Services has been taking around to newspapers, trying to scare people into accepting unfair cuts to vulnerable families. In a recent article in The Australian, the minister used a highly selective example of a single parent family with four children aged between four and 13. First, I would just remind the House that, according to ABS data, only around four per cent of single parents have four or more children. But, more significantly, the minister was completely wrong to say in the article that a single parent earning a salary of around $45,000 would be better off not working. As ACOSS said in a statement, the government's example compared 'apples with oranges'. ACOSS stated that: 'a sole parent with four children is over $20,000 better off when in paid work on a wage earning the part-time median wage of $46,500 and over $25,000 better off when earning the full-time median wage of $61,300.' Greg Jericho of The Guardian described the government's figures as 'patently absurd'. Fairfax's Ross Gittins described it as a 'cock and bull' story. Ross Gittins suggested that the government planted it because it:

… wants us to believe the federal budget is close to bankruptcy but, in truth, it's this government that's nearer to being morally, politically and economically bankrupt.

Cassandra Goldie, the CEO of the Australian Council of Social Service, said the claims were part of a disturbing pattern. She said:

It appears to be a deliberate strategy to generate a story which creates this impression that we've got a social security system which is 'bloated and too generous' when the facts will show it's completely to the contrary.

So what we have here is the Minister for Social Services prepared to twist the numbers, prepared to cherrypick figures to suit his political argument and, I am sorry to say, prepared to scare people with misleading numbers. You might ask: to what purpose? What is the ultimate objective of this scurrilous scare campaign?

I am concerned that it is about frightening the Australian people to try to force them into accepting unfair and unnecessary cuts, like those which we saw in the 2014 budget. This, I think, is the ultimate political objective of this Liberal government—to try to scare people into accepting another round of harsh and unfair cuts. I am pleased to say that Labor certainly will not be letting this government get away with it. Just as we stood up to the cuts in 2014, we will do the same.

I just want to remind the House of the $8.5 billion that the previous Liberal government tried to cut from families. They wanted to remove family tax benefit part B from families when their youngest child turned six. They wanted to freeze indexation of family tax benefits. Every single Liberal member of parliament voted for these cuts. All in all, they would have meant that ordinary Australian families would have been around $6,000 a year worse off. Ten per cent of their income would have been ripped away. Of course many, many people fought against those cuts, Labor included. I am very pleased that many of them were abandoned by the government. Unfortunately, there are still around $2 billion worth of cuts in front of the parliament that this government does want to take from families.

We will support this bill today, as it is a technical bill. But we certainly will not be letting this government get away with a misleading campaign that targets vulnerable Australians. We certainly will be standing up for Australian families and be holding this government accountable for what can only be described as an outrageous scare campaign.

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