Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

The Social Security and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2006 is a minor housekeeping bill that will make various technical and similar amendments to social security, family assistance and related legislation. These amendments are to improve the operational effectiveness of that legislation. The amendments will remove anomalies, clarify the legislation in line with established policy and make technical corrections and refinements. Notably, the bill introduces no significant new policy and has no or negligible financial impact.

The bill includes several measures to do with childcare benefit. One of these makes sure that childcare benefit customers who use registered care for their children cannot be paid childcare benefit that exceeds the actual fee that they have paid for that care. This common-sense rule mirrors the current limit on childcare benefit for care provided by an approved childcare service. Similarly, a new rule for care provided by approved childcare services replicates the existing rule for registered carers. This measure will clarify that neither registered care nor approved childcare service care will attract childcare benefit if the care is provided as part of a compulsory education program. Clearly, childcare benefit should not be payable while children are in the care of their teachers as part of their normal schooling.

The bill makes numerous refining amendments to social security legislation, including a measure to confirm that two members of a couple who are living apart on a temporary basis may generally be regarded as a temporarily separated couple whether they are legally married or a de facto couple. The temporarily separated classification gives couples access to a higher rate of certain payments such as rent assistance and remote area allowance. At present only legally married couples fall within the definition and it is anomalous that de facto couples are not treated in the same beneficial way.

The income test for the low-income healthcare card has also been refined by this bill. A rule inadvertently repealed from the legislation in 2001 is being reinstated so that a social security pension or benefit is clearly income under the low-income healthcare card income test as intended. It is also made clear that two veterans’ entitlement payments, the Defence Force income support allowance and the income support supplement, which are of a similar nature to the current components of income, are income for the purposes of the card.

A further measure aligns the definition of homelessness that currently applies for special benefit with the similar definition that applies for the larger customer groups of Youth Allowance and young disability support pension recipients. This corrects an inequity between the two groups of customers. To tidy up the statute books, seven acts relating to housing that are no longer operational are being repealed by this bill. Most of the remaining measures of this bill are technical corrections and refinements, many of these consequential to the commencement of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003 and reflect new concepts and arrangements established by that act. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.