Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Hansard source

As Senator Bartlett has indicated, the change proposed by government is to treat the disability assistance payment in the same way that other payments are being treated under the Northern Territory intervention legislation. We treat this measure in the same way that we treated those measures. We strongly support the principle that family payments, whatever they might be, should be paid for the benefit of children. We also support an income management system that provides the essential elements that a child needs to grow up in a healthy, happy and safe environment. We therefore also support the quarantining of welfare payments with the provisos that they should not be open-ended and they should not be arbitrary. It must target only parents who are putting their children at risk. After examining the proposal and assessing Senator Bartlett’s amendment, Labor will not be supporting Senator Bartlett’s amendment because the proposal from the government is consistent with those principles. Therefore, we support the child disability assistance measure being treated as other social security payments were treated in the legislation we debated in the last sitting.

While I am on my feet—and I am very mindful of the time—I have to respond to Senator Colbeck’s allegations. Senator Colbeck told only part of the story. Let us be very clear. The original offer from the Commonwealth to the states was that there would be no increase on the base CSTDA multilateral agreement. The only increase that was offered was a very small indexation which, as we identified during the inquiry, does not meet the increase in costs of delivering the current services. Many witnesses to the inquiry said that it is in fact a cut. That is the first fact.

The second fact is that, earlier this year, Minister Brough offered the states dollar-for-dollar funding for supported accommodation. That was on a bilateral basis outside of the multilateral negotiations. States were told to go back to their treasuries, find new money and come back to the Commonwealth with an indication of what money they could provide to match the government on a dollar-for-dollar basis. In the original correspondence and in messages to the states through the negotiations there was no indication of a cut-off or closing date for those applications to be received.

So, Senator Colbeck, it is disingenuous in the extreme and part of the classic blame game to say that your state did not even respond to the letter. The rules changed halfway through the game. On 4 July this year, the minister withdrew the offer, but the original offer did not say that it would close on any certain date. I put on the record that it is disingenuous of you to say, ‘My state didn’t even answer.’ You do not know what your state was doing from the time the letter was originally received till there was a bolt from the blue on 4 July saying, ‘Sorry, the deal’s now off.’ That is what happened. And for you to accuse me of engaging in the blame game, while telling only part of the story, is disingenuous. I do hope that that is the end of the debate.