Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

If the government is not going to speak on this, I will take the right of reply and basically pick up where Senator Bartlett left off. I believe that it is part of our role as legislators, particularly in this chamber, the house of review, to review the implementation of very significant pieces of legislation such as this, which will have impacts on the real lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians—Australians who are the most disadvantaged in our community and Australians who in many circumstances are providing care and support for those with disabilities that need support. In many cases, carers are the ones that are going to be affected by this piece of legislation.

I could not let this opportunity go past without again referring to the issues of family carers and the fact that under this piece of legislation family carers are not being adequately addressed and looked after. The government quite rightly moved to exempt foster carers from this process but they forgot family carers. Although I am told—we have not seen the guidelines—that there are some measures in the guidelines to provide temporary exemptions to family carers, they are not covered in legislative instruments, and I do not know if they are going to be significantly and properly covered by the guidelines. There is no mention, again, of family carers in the legislative instruments, and that is another issue that I think needs to be reviewed.

I think that the Community Affairs Legislation Committee should be given the role of reviewing these instruments. They made a very strong recommendation that a lot of issues be covered in instruments. Now I think that they should be reviewing those instruments. We need to know whether these instruments are going to work and whether they will cover all the issues that have been raised and that come out of the implementation of this act.

This is an extremely significant change—probably the most fundamental change to the welfare system in this country in a very long time. You would think that, if the government thought they had got it right, they would be willing to have these legislative instruments scrutinised. You would also think they would want to know if there were problems that were impacting on the hundreds of thousands of Australians that are affected by these changes.

I urge the government to support this reference to find out whether they have got it right—whether this legislation is putting in adequate checks and balances, whether it is fair and just and whether people are missing out and being unfairly disadvantaged. But clearly they do not want to do that. They do not want to know if they have got it right, which disappoints me greatly and I think is to the detriment of the hundreds of thousands of Australians that are affected by this legislation. I moved the motion that these legislative instruments be referred to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee so that we can have full scrutiny of whether these instruments are actually doing the job that they are supposed to be doing.

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Siewert’s) be agreed to.