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

I move:

That the House of Representatives be requested to make the following amendment:

(6)    Schedule 11, page 165 (after line 5), before item 1, insert:

1A  Subsection 5(18) (and the heading)

Repeal the heading and the subsection, substitute:

Principal carer—a child may have more than one principal carer

      (18)    If:

             (a)    a court orders that more than one parent is to have a significant proportion of responsibility for the care of a child; and

             (b)    the difference in percentage of responsibility for the care of a child between the two parents is 12% or less;

both parents must be treated for all purposes of this Act as a principal carer for the child.

1B  After subsection 5(19)

Insert:

   (19A)    Notwithstanding subsection (19), if a court orders that more than one parent has a significant proportion of responsibility for the care of a child and the difference in percentage of responsibility for the care of a child between the two parents is 12% or less, the Secretary must make a determination that each parent the subject of the court order is the principal carer of the child.

Statement pursuant to the order of the Senate of 26 June 2000

The effect of the amendment would be to allow an increase in the number of claimants eligible to be the principal carer of a child and therefore eligible to receive payments for the care of a child. These payments would be met from the appropriation from the Consolidated Revenue Fund under the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999.

This increase in the number of claimants eligible to receive payments would have the effect of increasing expenditure from the standing appropriation, and the amendments are therefore presented as requests.

Statement by the Clerk of the Senate pursuant to the order of the Senate of 26 June 2000

The Senate has long accepted that an amendment should take the form of a request if it would have the effect of increasing expenditure under a standing appropriation. This request is therefore in accordance with the precedents of the Senate.

These are the same amendments that I moved last time we had FaCSIA legislation in this place, and I will continue to do it until the government does something about principal carers. To articulate the argument, which I have done on a number of occasions in this place, the manifestly unfair nature of the legislation now impacts on people who are sharing parenting. Family law went through this place last year and required equal shared parenting. Welfare to Work legislation went through and had, as part of its core, the notion of a principal carer. The principal carer could only be one parent, and yet we have a piece of legislation that has established the concept of equal shared parenting. But if both parents unfortunately happen to be on income support, only one of those parents can be a principal carer. Therefore, if the children are living in two households, each with 50 per cent care—50 per cent with dad one week and 50 per cent with mum another week—only one of those parents will be able to be identified as principal carer and receive the benefits that go with that. Therefore, for one week a child is living in a household that has the benefits of the parent being a principal carer, and that parent has reduced work participation and can access other benefits such as PBS and other concessions. The next week the child goes to the house of the other parent who is not the principal carer. That person does not receive those benefits and, therefore, has increased Jobsearch requirements, although they are still looking after the child and they do not receive the concessions. How can this conceivably be considered fair? We have one piece of legislation that says parents are equally sharing parenting and they are equal under the law, and another that says that they are not.

The last time we discussed this, the government undertook to look into it. When I asked questions during estimates, guess what—no action was taken. They could not answer any of my questions. At the moment this probably impacts on a small section of our community. I acknowledge that. But as the family law amendments are implemented more and more, we are going to see more parents in this position.

I think last time we discussed this, Senator Abetz said that there were only a couple of hundred people who were affected. There will be more in the future. Even if there are not more in the future, there are 200 families that are being unfairly treated. It is not as if the government did not know that this was happening, because it has been raised on a number of occasions and they have not acted to fix it. So we are trying to fix the legislation and I will keep on trying to do it until amendments are made or until the government acts to remediate this problem. So I move our amendments to implement a fair process for principal carers.