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

The Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2013 is cause for a great deal of concern for the Greens because of the many provisions it contains. Therefore, while I cannot say that we will be opposing all of it, we will be opposing most of the schedules. However, there are a few that we could support, and that of course will need to be dealt with in the Committee of the Whole.

The issues contained within this bill are significant and have significant implications for students, pensioners, low-income families and the not-for-profit sector. The bill seeks to undermine at least two major pieces of reform from the previous parliament, by repealing the reforms in the National Gambling Reform Act 2012 and delaying the implementation of the long debated and consulted-over Charities Act 2013. It is completely inappropriate to seek to pass so many different and complex issues through what is really one omnibus bill, particularly as there has been totally inadequate time to consider these major amendments, and we will be moving to make sure that we can vote on each of these schedules separately. I also want to point out how disappointing it is for stakeholders to have less than a week to contribute to the Senate inquiry, particularly given that most of these measures are not time sensitive and are extremely important amendments because they have ramifications. It is particularly important that they be looked into.

There are some aspects of this bill that we can support: namely, schedule 8, parts of schedule 9—I say 'parts' because we do not support the changes to the indexation of the childcare rebate, and my colleague Senator Hanson-Young will be talking about that particular issue—schedule 10, schedule 11 and schedule 12. I have already circulated in the chamber amendments to schedule 9, separating out the indexation of the childcare rebate from the family tax benefits provisions.

However, there are significantly more aspects of this bill that we do not support, particularly the university cuts, the gambling repeals, the freeze on the childcare rebate, the delay of the implementation of the Charities Act, the changes to the family tax benefit rules, extension of income management and the changes to pension portability. As you can see, this wide range of issues significantly impacts across a range of portfolio areas. There are four of us in the Greens who are dealing with these issues, and I know it is the same for other parties. The extent of our concerns can be found in the fact that there have been contributions to three separate committee inquiries because the range of these provisions crossed so many areas that they had to be subject to three Senate committee inquiries. I will leave it to my colleagues to raise the issues specifically related to the areas of gambling, the childcare rebate and the university cuts, and I wish to speak particularly about charities, family tax benefit and income management.

When it comes to the issues around charities, the Greens strongly oppose the government amendment that delays the implementation of the Charities Act for nine months. The definition contained within the Charities Act does not introduce any significantly new concepts; rather it codifies and consolidates the growing body of charity case law into a single act, which provides greater clarity and certainty to charities. As a result, it clarifies that working on activities such as housing and Indigenous issues can form a charitable purpose. It also enshrines in legislation the freedom to advocate and makes explicit that advocacy is a legitimate charitable purpose, provided that advocacy is not in aid of a specific candidate or political party. This directly reflects existing case law, particularly the AID/WATCH case and the subsequent tax ruling TR 2011/4, in a way that reduces ambiguity for charities in understanding how advocacy may fit within their charitable purpose. Refining the definition of a charity has been on the political agenda for over 10 years, and the passage of the legislation earlier this year was overwhelmingly welcomed and accepted by the charity and not-for-profit sector.

The charities who spoke to the committee inquiry into this bill were caught completely unawares by the government's intention to postpone the implementation of this bill. Slipping this amendment into this huge omnibus bill at the eleventh hour is completely inappropriate. None of the submitters to the inquiry could point to a clear reason why the government would defer the implementation of this act. Given that one of the stated aims of the government is to reduce red tape on the charities sector, delaying the implementation of the Charities Act is completely contrary to that goal. Submitters pointed to the significant legal costs that charities face in trying to understand the charities case law. The Charities Act will reduce red tape and uncertainty in the sector, something the government claims to want.

The government would not treat business like this, so why has it shown such complete disregard to our charity sector, which is one of the biggest employers in Australia? As I said in this place the other day, if this were business, this would be on the front page of the Australian. The Australian Greens would be extremely concerned if the purpose of further consultation is to try and wind back the advocacy component of these bills. Undermining the role of advocacy will only put more pressure on charities who speak out about public policy. One of the biggest risks that charities face is the winding back of the DGR status for failing to operate within their stated charitable purpose. There were several attempts during the Howard government to undermine organisations such as the Wilderness Society by challenging their DGR status. If it is the goal to dismantle the legislative protection for advocacy, this is extremely disappointing and we will oppose it at every turn.

I turn briefly to income management. The application of income management in Cape York, which relates to schedule 2 of this bill, is quite widespread. While income management is meant to be applied as a measure of last resort, 25 per cent of those living in the welfare trial sites had been subjected to it by December 2011. Although an income management order is meant to exist for between three and 12 months, the average time for the basics card is 16.8 months. Clearly, income management orders are applied frequently and often extend beyond their original time period. While the Australian government argues that income management has been instrumental in improving school attendance, care and protection of children and community safety, there has not yet been any objective analysis of income management in Cape York to show that it has delivered on these outcomes. The continued application of a highly coercive program such as income management needs to be justified before the Australian Greens can support extending it in any guise. The report commissioned by the Australian government is unable to demonstrate conclusively that income management in Cape York has met its stated aims. On the weight of the evidence the Australian Greens believe that income management is a failed and expensive policy that the government is persisting with in the absence of any real justification. There are a number of other programs which are not coercive in nature, such as Centrepay, that can be used to help people manage their money better.

The Australian Greens support direct investment in programs in communities that address the underlying causes of the disadvantage rather than income management, which is expensive to implement and punitive. The money being spent on income management around Australia would be better invested directly into communities in order to provide specialist, direct programs to address things like financial management, education, better access to fresh food, a reduction in alcohol and drug abuse and better support for parents and people looking for work. Although people point out that the Cape York income management is different to other schemes, it is still punitive in approach and has not comprehensively demonstrated that it does increase the measures that the government claims it does and there is very little evidence to show the measures used there are more successful than measures used elsewhere.

I want to talk briefly about family tax benefit eligibility, which is another schedule in the bill. Raising teenagers is an expensive exercise—and anybody who is raising teenagers will know that—for low- to middle-income families in particular. Access to government support programs does play a significant part in the budgets of low- and middle-income families. However, the proposed changes to the family tax benefit eligibility will mean that some families lose access to this payment. There is clearly a cohort of families who will be affected by this measure, as demonstrated by the predicted savings outlined in the explanatory memorandum. This measure effectively acts as a penalty for 16- to 17-year-old children not enrolled at school or university or in the workforce. The Australian Greens believe using the threat of reduced family payments to motivate families to keep their children in education is counterproductive. It detracts from the purpose of family payments to ease poverty among children; it has not been demonstrated that making family tax benefits contingent on school enrolment has a positive impact on school attendance or transition to other forms of activity, particularly for that cohort of young people. Again, I will point out that, if you are a parent of teenagers, you will know how difficult it can be to convince them of a particular course of action. Rather it has been demonstrated through the application of other programs such as SEAM and welfare quarantining that the pressure on families that results from reduced payments can in fact act as a source of further dysfunction and negatively impact on family relationships. A more progressive and reasonable method would be to allow family tax benefits to continue until the child turns 18 or completes their final secondary year and becomes eligible for youth allowance.

In conclusion, this bill is a grab bag of social policy measures, few of which we can support but most of which we believe are deeply unacceptable. Government has combined these measures in order to ram through appalling changes, and we will not help facilitate this. We will not accept all of the measures just so that a few of those we accept will be passed. It has not given an appropriate amount of time for debate or consideration of these measures that have profound effects on many people in our community. Potentially, this bill affects millions of Australians. Although there are 12 measures listed, there are actually 13 because of the charities provision that was snuck in at the last minute as schedule 1A. There are 13 different measures here and some of the schedules have multiple effects, such as schedule 9, which contains the freezing of the indexation of both the childcare rebate and the family tax benefits. This, we believe, is symptomatic of the way the government holds in contempt, although it professes not to, the not-for-profit sector, social services and low-income families.

As I indicated, the Greens will be circulating amendments to this bill—I have already done so. We will be seeking to have the schedules dealt with separately in the Committee of the Whole so that we can express the will of the Senate on each of those particular schedules. We believe that there are some schedules that we can support, but we cannot support the vast majority of them. Therefore, we will be moving to allow a vote on each of the schedules separately.