Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

On my reading of the advice to me—and obviously I am not on top of the day-to-day detail—it is not that it is not possible but that it is complex. As you know, with the Child Support Agency reforms, dealing with shared care was a very complex process. Not all of us agreed with the final landing point but everyone accepted the complexities. As I understand it, there are broad policy, administrative arrangement and other systems implications of the proposal. Carer payment requires the carer to provide care and attention on a daily basis. Obviously in shared care arrangements that is not going to be the case, because it is going to be shared.

The proposal implies that a person who does not provide constant care for a child with a disability or medical condition should be able to qualify to receive carer payment as well. As I say, we are basically saying it is not currently possible, and considering changes of this nature to carer payment (child) would have significant implications for eligibility not just for this but for other social security payments and for the participation requirements for payments such as parenting payment and Newstart allowance.

We are not saying it is impossible but we are saying it is a huge and complex job, and we are certainly not at the point where we could do that sort of thing on the run. As you remember with the child support changes, everything has a flow-on impact to eligibility for everything else. So the response is really that this is a big issue. It is complex and has lots of implications. It is not something that has been taken up in this legislation and it is not something where we could say: let’s have an amendment and fix it. Obviously it is an issue that can be pursued, but the government is not inclined to consider it as part of this, because of those complexities.