Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2013, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to do this and to reflect on the range of provisions that are in this bill. It includes everything from gambling reform and income management in Cape York to changes to our social security system. It is what we call an 'omnibus bill', with a range of different measures in it, and they need to be considered measure by measure.

The first measure relates to gambling reform, and we have had many, many debates here in this chamber about the important and serious issue of problem gambling in this country. For too many Australians, gambling can be incredibly destructive. From our previous inquiries we know that it affects around five million Australians, including friends, families and employers of people with a gambling problem. So the social cost of problem gambling in this country is estimated to be around $5 billion, and that social cost comes in addition to the almost $19 billion which is lost annually by gamblers around Australia. Those figures come from 2008 and 2009, so it could actually be even more by now. That is a huge burden for Australian families, and the Productivity Commission identified in its 2010 report:

The significant social cost of problem gambling … means that even policy measures with modest efficacy in reducing harm will often be worthwhile.

In 2012 Labor introduced measures to help protect people whose problem gambling was hurting them and their loved ones. They were meaningful reforms aimed at tackling problem gambling. The bill before us removes all of the measures contained within the National Gambling Reform Act that would help problem gamblers. Despite this, Labor continues to support meaningful measures to tackle problem gambling in our communities. As a party we will need to revisit this issue to determine the best way forward, together with stakeholders across the community, and we have revisited the issue. That is certainly what we intend to do, and what the shadow minister has foreshadowed she will be doing.

The legislation also extends income management in Cape York. We have always been strong supporters of Cape York welfare reform trials, and I have had the opportunity to go and witness some of them in practice. After coming to government in 2007 we committed more than $100 million towards those trials, including the $24½ million in this year's budget. We have always been strong advocates for the work being done in the cape, and I am particularly proud of our government's work in that regard. In 2012 there was actually an evaluation of the Cape York welfare reforms, which made very interesting reading. It found that there had been significant and measurable gains in school attendance, parental responsibility and restoring local authority in leadership. It was a very empowering process, because the people in Cape York are working with local, state and federal governments and local organisations to drive genuine change across the cape.

The Family Responsibilities Commission, which is part of the Cape York suite of measures, has been at the centre of the welfare reform process, and its objectives are to rebuild Indigenous authority and to restore social norms by reforming incentives to support socially responsible standards of behaviour at the individual, family and community levels. In the first three years of those trials, half the population in the four Cape York welfare reform communities had direct contact with the Family Responsibilities Commission. So it has become a very significant part of each of those communities, and now a majority of people in Cape York support its role in their towns. That progress is very pleasing.

It is also important to note that the lessons that community and government have learnt from those reforms that have taken place in Cape York are being shared with other communities across the nation, communities that want to take the lessons and the progress that has been made in the cape and adapt them to their own circumstances—communities such as Groote Eylandt and Halls Creek. And this year a delegation from the NPY Women's Council also visited Cape York to see the measures and how they might assist them in the Central Desert. So we are seeing that there is Indigenous ownership of this kind of welfare reform, and that is translating very much into community action in those communities.

The bill also makes a number of changes to our social security system. Senator Siewert has been through most of those in terms of the evidence that was provided to the committee last week, so I will not go through those. There are changes made to the rules of Australian working life residence. Australian working life residence rules operate to determine how much of the age pension a pensioner can receive if they travel overseas for more than 26 weeks. So, if a pensioner spends less than the specified Australian working life residence period in Australia before going overseas, they receive only part of the pension and are still subject to means-testing. The reform reflects the principle of shared responsibility, that the retirement costs of a person should be shared fairly between the countries where a person has lived or worked during their working life. In such cases there is also an expectation that a person, through periods of time living or working in another country, will be eligible to receive a pension from that country. So Labor is definitely supporting that measure.

The legislation also makes changes to the Pension Bonus Scheme. In 2009 the Labor government's pension review found the Pension Bonus Scheme did not encourage older Australians to remain in work. The review also found that pensioners thought the scheme to be too complex and inflexible. So back in 2009 the Labor government closed the Pension Bonus Scheme and replaced it with a more targeted and effective seniors work bonus to encourage older people to continue working. Thousands of age pensioners who are working part time or in sessional jobs are better off now because of Labor's work bonus for pensioners. Many senior Australians choose to undertake seasonal work, so Labor's work bonus has enabled many age pensioners to keep more of their fortnightly pension when they work in this way. The work bonus allows age pensioners to earn up to $250 a fortnight from employment without it being considered income under the pension test. This is on top of the income-free area. When we closed the Pension Bonus Scheme, however, we left it open for people who qualified for the Pension Bonus Scheme before 20 September 2009 but who had not registered by that date. These people were able to backdate their registration if they had been working since then and had not received the age pension. This legislation brings to a close late registration for the Pension Bonus Scheme. From 1 March 2014 people will no longer be able to register for the Pension Bonus Scheme. Eligible people can still register for the scheme before that date. Again, that is a sensible proposal and we support it.

I turn now to the measure in the legislation which extends indexation clauses on higher income thresholds for family payments and family supplements. Labor believes in a strong family payment system that reflects the needs of modern Australian families. When we were in government we made responsible decisions over a number of budgets to better target family payments. We did this by targeting assistance to low- and middle-income families who need the most support. In the 2009-10 budget we announced a number of indexation pauses on higher income thresholds. We believe that to be a very sensible reform to limit the growth in family payments at the top end and make them sustainable for the future. Today in this bill the government is seeking to extend those pauses on higher income thresholds and we support the measure.

The legislation also makes changes to the rules for receiving payments overseas and enables changes to limit the amount of time that people can be overseas and retain access to Australian payments. Currently, families living overseas can continue to receive family and parenting payments for up to three years. This legislation amends that to a maximum of 56 weeks, and Labor supports that measure. The legislation also extends deeming rules to account based income streams. This was a measure proposed by Labor in April this year and we will support it again today.

The government has several other amendments and measures in this bill, some of which Senator Siewert has spoken very passionately about. The first of these is the proposal to charge interest on certain welfare debts. While Senator Boyce was a bit sceptical about why that would be stressful, the students already on income support who would be caught by this measure are receiving Austudy, youth allowance and Abstudy and are already doing it tough trying to meet the costs of their education. We see this as a very mean-spirited reform and we will oppose it. People on welfare benefits are already pretty vulnerable and they do not need further punishment. We believe they need support. We have heard the government's arguments about that.

Another measure in the legislation is the extension of the freeze on indexation of the upper limit of $7,500 on the annual childcare rebate. Labor will oppose this measure as well. We have been strong supporters of increased support for Australian families struggling to meet the costs of child care. When we were in government we increased the childcare rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent and we increased the annual cap from $4,354 to the current limit of $7,500. While we proposed the savings measures that are in this legislation, the fact is that the savings were to go directly to support the $300 million Early Years Quality Fund. As the government have put a freeze on this fund, they are left with no justification for pursuing $100 million in cuts by freezing indexation to the upper limit of the childcare rebate, so we are not supporting that change.

The Paid Parental Leave scheme change proposed in the legislation, seeking to remove the role of employers in administering paid parental leave and giving that function entirely to Centrelink, is one we have great concerns about. Since its introduction the scheme has been administered in part by employers. When we designed the Paid Parental Leave scheme the employer role was included in order to help employers retain their skilled staff. It was also a way of enabling people, especially women, to remain connected to work and their careers while they were taking time out of the workforce to have a baby or to adopt a child. But, as the scheme progressed, we listened to business and understood that in tough economic environments small businesses needed to be able to devote their scarce time to adapting and thriving in a changing economy. That is why, for the 2013 election campaign, we adopted a position of allowing businesses with fewer than 20 employees to streamline administration and to have Centrelink make the payments to employees on parental leave. We believed that to be a very sensible balance between the need for employees on parental leave to maintain a relationship with their employer and the need to give small business the option of having their paid parental leave administered by Centrelink. This legislation today takes it a step further, completely abolishing the role of the employer in administering paid parental leave. Our view is that that does not strike the right balance.

Another of the measures before us today that I have not mentioned yet is the eleventh-hour inclusion of the postponement of the implementation of the Charities Act 2013 from 1 January to 1 September 2014. This is quite an extraordinary move by the government, taken at the eleventh hour, as I said, and with no explanation except to say that it would allow the government time to consult charities law experts on winding back the ACNC and the possible establishment of a national register.

As I said the other night when I was speaking about this, this is a nonsense. This has been going on since the Howard government introduced the Charities Bill after the inquiry in 2001. We have had nearly 20 years of debate, starting with the Industry Commission in the nineties, about how charities should be governed in Australia, how we can strengthen transparency and governance standards and how we can actually build community trust and confidence in our charitable sector, which is now one of the largest employment sectors in Australia.

But this government, in trying to slip this one in at five minutes to midnight, is creating some very serious unintended consequences in this amendment bill, the first of which is to do away with the four particular definitions of charity that were included that are not in the common-law definition. This has been thrashed out across the world and across Australia and New Zealand for the last 10 years. The definition that was finally achieved in the Charities Bill is one that has come from Australia's best charity law experts, following a very significant charity laws conference that was held in Queensland in 2010.

The consequence of not including the Charities Act to enable it to begin on 1 January is very important. The first consequence is that, if there is a natural disaster such as the bushfires or floods that we have seen over several summers, we are creating exactly the same problem that we tried to address after the Victorian bushfires, because of those community organisations that lost community assets but did not have any kind of deductible gift recipient or tax status. They are small community organisations with assets, and there is no legal capacity to provide money to them from philanthropic funds, whether they be public philanthropic funds, funds raised by a national campaign or private philanthropic bodies. Philanthropic bodies, under the law, cannot give to an organisation that is not registered with the ATO and the ACNC for DGR status. That is the first problem.

The second problem that we had to deal with was the issue of Indigenous organisations which are based around family groups and which would not be perceived, under the current legislation, as being wholly of public benefit. That is a reality in many remote communities in Australia, where a large family and clan based organisation does not meet the requirements under the current arrangements for deductible gift recipient status. We need to fix that. There are many organisations trying to work with those communities who cannot actually engage and get their own tax-deductible considerations correct because of this anomaly.

The third is the issue of advocacy, and we have canvassed this—the notion that promoting a change in government policy, advocating for government policy change, is a legitimate role for not-for-profit organisations seeking DGR status. Political activism is excluded from the definition, but there are organisations such as environmental organisations, preventive health organisations and arts based organisations which are looking to advocate for change in government policy. That is a charitable purpose under the Charities Act. We will eliminate that right again in this bill.

We on this side of the chamber have deep reservations about many of the measures that are very unrelated that have been cobbled together into this omnibus bill and introduced here in these last days of the parliament. We believe that there is a much more sensible way to go about this, but we know this is very ideologically driven. This is part and parcel of laying the way for the Commission of Audit findings. We are going to see a massive number of cuts across the board for portfolios which are all going to be dealing with the issues and the fallout of these kinds of measures. The government is pushing this through. The opposition are not supporting all of the considerations that are in these measures, and we will be voting accordingly.