Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

The Family Assistance and Child Support Legislation Amendment (Protecting Children) Bill 2017 introduces new No Jab, No Pay and Healthy Start for School measures, along with a range of improvements to the Child Support Scheme. The bill will ensure that, from 1 July 2018, children must meet immunisation and health check requirements before their families can assess the full entitlement to family tax benefit part A. The current No Jab, No Pay and Healthy Start for School compliance measures will be abolished and replaced with a new measure linking immunisation and health check requirements to a family's fortnightly rate of family tax benefit part A.

The new measure will serve as an immediate incentive and constant reminder for non-compliant parents by reducing their family tax benefit part A payment throughout the year rather than when their family assistance is reconciled at the end of the year. If a child does not meet their immunisation requirements after a 63-day grace period has passed, an amount of around $28 will be reduced from the child's fortnightly rate of family tax benefit part A. The choice made by some families not to vaccinate their children is not supported by public policy or medical research. Nor should such action be supported by taxpayers in the form of family payments. Families who receive income support payments will also be encouraged to ensure that their four-year-old child meets the health check requirement for the Healthy Start for School measure or be subjected to a reduced amount of family tax benefit part A. This is not a cost-saving measure. It replaces and builds on the existing Healthy Start for School policy and the No Jab, No Pay policy, which has already achieved significant increases in child immunisation coverage rates across Australia. The new No Jab, No Pay measure is expected to achieve further increases in immunisation compliance.

The bill also introduces a range of child support measures that demonstrate this government's clear commitment to making meaningful improvements to the Child Support Scheme. In the 2017-18 budget the government committed $12.4 million towards the implementation of three priority recommendations from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs inquiry into the Child Support Scheme. The bill introduces changes in relation to recommendations 8, 12 and 22, which were identified as key areas in which current policies can lead to outcomes that are inconsistent with the objectives of the Child Support Scheme or require parents to go through onerous processes to arrive at the correct outcome.

From 1 January 2018, child support and family assistance legislation will be amended to provide better outcomes for parents who are in dispute about their children's care arrangements. Child support legislation will also be changed to allow amended tax assessments to be taken into account for child support purposes in a broader range of circumstances. For disputed care changes that occur within the first year of a court order, this bill will extend the current 14-week interim period that may apply before the actual care of a child is reflected in the child support assessment and for family tax benefit purposes up to 52 weeks. Where a disputed care change occurs after the first year of a court order, the 14-week interim period will be extended to up to 26 weeks if the person with increased care does not take reasonable action to participate in family dispute resolution. For care arrangements in a non-enforceable written agreement or parenting plan, the interim period will remain at 14 weeks where the disputed care change occurs in the first year after the agreement or plan is made. For older agreements and plans, the interim period will also be 14 weeks if the person with increased care does not take action to resolve the dispute. However, where the person with increased care does not take reasonable action to participate in family dispute resolution, a shortened—four-week—interim period may apply.

These amendments to the interim period provisions are designed to strengthen incentives to comply with court orders or participate in dispute resolution processes about care. They also introduce a requirement for the person with increased care to participate in family dispute resolution in order to have the current, shorter interim period apply, which appropriately recognises their role in withholding the child by putting the onus on them to take action to try to resolve the care dispute. These provisions will not apply if there are special circumstances in relation to the child, such as where there is evidence of family violence.

In regard to amended tax assessments, the legislation does not currently allow an amended tax assessment to be taken into account in a child support assessment unless the amendment was made due to fraud or tax evasion. The government is fixing this issue to allow an amended tax assessment to always be taken into account in a child support assessment if it results in a higher taxable income. Amended tax assessments that result in lower taxable income will also be taken into account if a parent seeks the amended tax return within 28 days of receiving their original tax return, within 28 days of becoming aware of an error in their original tax return or if special circumstances apply. These amendments will allow a parent's true taxable income to be more easily reflected in their child support assessment and will result in more accurate assessments, helping to ensure that separated parents are taking responsibility for the costs of raising their child in line with their capacity to do so.

The bill will also amend child support legislation to make it easier and simpler to set aside child support agreements in certain circumstances and to create greater equity in the collection of child support debts and overpayments, to take effect from 1 July 2018. Parents who entered child support agreements prior to 1 July 2008 were not required to seek independent legal advice before entering into the agreement. However, when limited and binding agreement types were introduced into child support legislation on 1 July 2008, these older agreements became transitional binding agreements and have since been governed by the same strict rules that apply to binding agreements, in which both parents must have sought independent legal advice prior to entering the agreement.

This bill introduces a separate and less restrictive test for a court to set aside a transitional binding agreement where one of the parties to the agreement did not obtain legal advice. In addition, this bill introduces provisions that will terminate or suspend the effect of a child support agreement if the person who is entitled to child support for a child under the agreement ceases to be an eligible carer of the child—that is, where the person's percentage of care for a child falls below 35 per cent. This will ensure that a person who is no longer caring for a child will not be entitled to finances that were intended to meet the needs of that child under a child support agreement. The ability to administratively terminate or suspend an agreement removes the need for a paying parent to apply to a court, enabling changes in circumstances to be more easily reflected in child support assessments.

In regard to overpayments of child support, the bill expands the methods available to the Department of Human Services to recover a child support overpayment from a payee to align with the current methods available for recovering child support debts from payers. This amendment simplifies the administration of the scheme by ensuring the government is able to collect child support overpayments in the same way as payer child support debts and ensures money owed by either parent is treated in a similar manner.

The bill also expands the basis upon which an overpayment is recoverable to ensure that all backdated reductions to a child support assessment, which had previously been collected by DHS on behalf of the payee, will be recoverable by DHS. Additionally, new backdating provisions will provide a fairer basis for retrospectively creating a child support overpayment or arrears. These changes will increase the fairness of the child support scheme by ensuring that payees with overpaid child support are treated in the same way as payers with debts and by improving the backdating provisions for certain changes in circumstances. The child support legislative changes contained in this bill will help to ensure correct outcomes and improve the administration in around 90,000 to 100,000 child support cases each year.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.

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