Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. Will the minister update the House on the government’s election commitments to develop a national child protection framework and related policies?

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Makin for his question and his understanding that payments like the baby bonus are intended to serve the interests of children. If that is not happening, the government needs to act to make sure that it does. I want to draw the House’s attention to what a caller had to say on the Alan Jones program yesterday, talking about the baby bonus:

I am a recovered drug addict—

a caller said—

I exploited the system. It was heaven for me with an extra $5,000 bonus, mate, and I’m telling you right now I wouldn’t spend one—I didn’t spend one cent of the bonus. I just took it off my missus.

He went on to say:

I know hundreds of people who have no intention of getting work who are on methadone and drugs and everything else and it’s heaven when they get the bonus. I don’t see any new prams or extra clothes for the kids, mate. I’m telling you that right now.

That is appalling. It is appalling that this misuse of government support is going on, and it cannot be allowed to go on any further. So that is why the government are intent on delivering on our election commitments to ensure that payments like the baby bonus serve the interests of children and are not spent on gambling, drugs or alcohol. That is why we have already begun the work that is necessary to develop a national child protection framework. One aspect of this national child protection framework will be to give the state and territory child protection authorities the power to recommend to Centrelink that family payments, including the baby bonus, are able to be income managed or quarantined so that those payments are spent in the interests of children, on things like food, rent or clothing for children, and are not spent on drugs or gambling.

Most parents do the right thing. Most parents spend family payments or the baby bonus in the interests of children. Unfortunately, some do not. Where parents are responsible, then the baby bonus will continue to be paid in the normal way. But where they are not responsible, where they neglect their children, it is time that we made some serious changes.

Those changes are underway already in the Northern Territory. One of my first decisions as Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs was to implement income management in a number of Northern Territory communities. Decisions such as this mean that the baby bonus is quarantined; in fact, 100 per cent of the baby bonus is income-managed in these communities. We have made a commitment also to income-manage the baby bonus in the Cape York welfare trials, and the same will take place in the income management trials that we will undertake in the Kimberley with the Western Australian government. It is true that these are not easy decisions to make, but they are decisions that should be made to protect children.

I might remind members that the extension of income management to these payments, like the baby bonus, would not have happened if the Howard government had continued in office. They did copy Labor’s policy—the policy that we put forward in opposition—but, unfortunately, they did nothing to fund the measures in that policy. There was no money to fund them. There was a lot of talk from the previous government, and even the passing of legislation, but no money put into the budget and no action taken to make sure that these changes were made. This really is not good enough. This government is getting on with the job, making sure that family payments, including the baby bonus, are there to be spent in the interests of children, not squandered on drugs or gambling.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services, Indigenous Affairs and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On indulgence, Mr Speaker: I would like to say that I thoroughly support what the minister has said, and it completely confirms the measures that were put in place by the Howard government.