Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

Centre Alliance does not support the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019 in its current form. And, although there are elements of this bill that we may be willing to consider with the government, the flaws in the bill would need to change substantially in order for it to garner our support.

There are three schedules to this bill. Schedule 1 is the enhanced residency requirements for pensioners. We can somewhat understand the government's desire for people to be residing in this country for a substantial period of time and, indeed, in their working years prior to receiving a pension. Schedule 2 I'd particularly like to make note of, and I have some real concerns here. Schedule 2 seeks to stop the payment of the pension supplement. I know what Labor said about stopping the pension but I think there is a bit of hyperbole over that. It's about stopping the pension supplement for people who are receiving the disability support pension or the age pension once they are overseas for six weeks.

The purpose of the pension supplement payment is to assist pensioners with their utility, telecommunications and medicine costs. Centre Alliance recognises that there should be some limit to this payment where a person is overseas for an extended period of time or they've chosen to permanently relocate overseas. However, we believe cutting the supplement after a mere six weeks is unfair. Centre Alliance will continue to have conversations with government about this. I think it's really important to recognise that for many pensioners, once they enter the age pension phase, in particular, return to their homeland often once, and they often do it for a substantial period of time. Sometimes it's for relieving other family members, in their homeland, with caring responsibilities. So we would really urge government to reconsider the six-week cap on this. We can understand if a person moves permanently overseas, because those supplement payments were designed to assist with the specific costs of living in Australia. But to cut it after six weeks, we feel, is grossly unfair.

Schedule 3 seeks to double the period a person will wait to receive a range of Centrelink payments if they have liquid assets over certain thresholds. Centre Alliance is opposed to schedule 3 of the bill. We believe Australians should not be penalised for having accrued savings at the time of becoming unemployed. The government's proposed policy would create a greater perverse incentive for people to quickly spend their savings or otherwise distort the allocation of their personal funds, to different asset classes, in order to fast track a Centrelink claim. COTA, the Council on the Ageing, is particularly concerned about this schedule. As a party we, instead, welcome and encourage Australians to continue to take individual responsibility for their financial futures, noting that the normal income and assets test for Newstart, youth allowance and Austudy will remain in place regardless of this proposal.

In closing, we understand that the social security aspect of the budget continues to grow. That is an accepted part of the fact that we have an ageing population, and we understand that the government is seeking to shape and reshape funding and how they allocate funding, with respect to that budget line. However, Centre Alliance will not be supporting this bill in its current form. We will continue, though, as always, to have an open door to government to see how the bill can be improved.

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