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

As you can expect, the Greens have a number of questions relating to these amendments and very deep concerns about the impact that they are going to have and about the fact that they are not going to be effective. Unfortunately, during the short time that we had during the committee process, we did not get to ask many questions on this quite far-reaching legislation. Not only that, the answers to the questions that we put on notice—with all due respect to whoever wrote them—provided us with little additional information. So, unfortunately, I am going to have to ask them again—and take the opportunity to ask some much more detailed questions.

There are provisions that apply specifically to the Northern Territory and there are provisions that apply to the broader community. These are then broken down to apply to children that are not regularly attending school, to children who are at risk, to income management areas in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory and Queensland and to remote communities. So there are some quite specific issues that we would like to address.

The first issue that I would like to address is about people who are covered in section 123U(b)—persons who are subject to the income management regime in the relevant Northern Territory area. As I understand it, that is anybody who is in the area physically from 21 June to when their last payment period was. That is correct, I think. If you were there at that time, the provision catches you unless you have an exemption from the minister. You could be travelling in the area and have to get an exemption from the minister not to be caught up in this if you are getting the various forms of income support that are covered by these provisions.