Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

Labor will be supporting these amendments. I want to briefly make a contribution on this issue, which Labor followed up in Senate estimates in November last year. This is one of those situations where it appears one arm of government is not clear about the impact of its policy changes or legislative changes on another arm, with potentially poor impacts on children.

Family law changes went through this parliament in 2005 or 2006. My recollection is that Labor supported those. Amongst other things, those changes encouraged couples to enter into more shared care arrangements. Yet under the Welfare to Work changes we have a situation where it appears that potentially one parent in a shared care or fifty-fifty care arrangement will be significantly disadvantaged because the government is insisting that only one parent can be identified as a principal carer. It seems rather bizarre that, on the one hand, the government will be arguing that parents need to spend more time with their children and share more responsibility and yet, on the other hand, they will be putting in place restrictions and requirements under their social security legislation which make it more difficult for parents to do that. Of course, the group that will be most disadvantaged by this are the children, who, in such a scenario, will be in situation where one of their parents will have activity requirements and may also, as Senator Siewert pointed out, be financially disadvantaged as a result.

I actually raised this issue in estimates in November 2006. I asked the department about this issue. I asked how, under the family law changes, if there was a fifty-fifty care and custody arrangement, the principal carer would be determined under the government’s policy. Essentially, the department answered in this way: it is the first person who identifies as the principal carer. I asked, ‘What do you mean by the first?’ The department answered, ‘The first person who puts in the claim for payment.’ I made the point in the estimates hearing that it appears that the government’s policy decision around this comes down to a race as to who first puts in their claim for income support and that, if there is a disagreement about that, the delegate from Centrelink will make a decision. Unless the minister is going to indicate that the policy position of the government has changed since November, it did not appear from the answers at estimates that there were in fact any policy parameters around that.

It is important when we are dealing with policy change that we do look at how various aspects of policy overlap and also at their cumulative impact. Certainly, when it comes to children, one would hope we could get away from a silo mentality within government and actually look at how the totality of legislative and policy reform affects children. It appears the government has failed to do that. It is something that needs to be addressed in the interests of both the children and the parents concerned. We are supportive of the amendments moved by Senator Siewert.