Kay Patterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have one other thing, and I will put a question at the end to legitimise it. One of the other measures in this bill is about family tax benefit overpayments and looks at the situation in which a person, when they received lump sums of child support in arrears, was penalised because they lost the income free benefit level—they only got it for one year instead of three years because the person paid the lump sum three years in arrears. I want to say that we as members of parliament need to always have our ears open to suggestions. The suggestion for this change came from a journalist who had a friend that this happened to. Suddenly, she received an overpayment. The journalist was Alex Kirk. I told her that this was the Kirk amendment. She said to me that this did not seem fair, and I did not think it seemed fair, either, and so it is here in legislation. Somebody listened to what somebody else said and told me, and we were able to change it.

One of the things we have done is bring in a whole suite of measures to reduce overpayments. This is part of those measures. There are two more to come in on 1 July which will further reduce the chance of people receiving overpayments. I do not think the minister needs to reply; I can give him the answer. This is a measure that will reduce overpayments and prevent people from having an overpayment when they have no control over someone paying them their child support in arrears.

Bill agreed to.

Bill reported without amendment; report adopted.