Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to associate myself with the comments of my colleague, Senator Fawcett, in supporting the Social Services Legislation Amendment (No. 2) Bill 2015. I pick up on the point that Senator Fawcett concluded with. That is that it ought to be the objective of all of us in this place, and in the wider community, to give to every member of the community the skills that they will need to be able to fulfil a useful life and to be able to realise their potential.

In terms of income management element of the bill, I wish to make some observations, if I may, towards that objective. I think the issue that we have been finding is that there are people through the school system and leaving school—young adults and older adults—who simply have never been given the skills of managing their own household budget and managing their own affairs. In some ways, is it a surprise when people receive funds—never, ever having had the training, skill or preparation in their home—that they are not able to budget, not able to prioritise their expenditures and not able to flourish as human beings? In that sense, I want to support the continuation of this program and the funding the two-year period that has been proposed in this bill.

As has been said previously, income management in this country was introduced in the Territory in 2007. It has now been extended. It was a compulsory measure at that time for welfare recipients in 73 communities. It has now been extended, as we know, to other states in Australia—my own home state, Queensland, South Australia, Victorian and New South Wales. I am interested to see that the budget allocation is some $146.7 million over the two years to continue the program up until the end of June 2017.

But the points that I want to make this evening do go to this question of the capacity of people to be able to manage their money. We know that the welfare budget in this country is around about one-third of the entire expenditure budget of the federal government. We want to make sure, as a generous country, that the funds that are made available to those recipients are used for the purposes for which they are intended—that safety net for which they are intended.

In the family context, there would be nobody who would disagree that the primary objectives of the funding when there are children in the house should be for their protection, for their adequate nutrition, for their housing, for their education and for the family unit itself—however that is structured—to ensure adequate food and that rent and utilities are paid for in the first instance. All too often, as has been said by others, we find a circumstance in which, because of the inability of people to be able to prioritise their spending, we have seen and continue to see expenditures in areas which detract from and leave inadequate the funding for the purposes that all of us would recognise as being essential.

This came home to me during a hearing of the joint committee chaired by the member for Denison, Mr Wilkie, who, at the time, had proposed a mandatory precommitment associated with poker machine gambling. Senator Bilyk may also have been a participant in a hearing in Hobart. A gentleman appeared before the committee. His was not a happy story. He had spent time in jail, he was a chronic alcoholic and was, I think, afflicted by drugs. This man had many issues in his life, but the worst of them, I think, was his inability to be able to control his addiction to gambling, particularly through poker machines. I recall him being asked, 'What was the worst feature of the addiction?' He said, 'Simply, when you have spent all of the money, you then have to go back and face other members of your family'—that is, you have to face up to the fact that you have denied adequate funding to those in your family for the purposes that I have just mentioned: education, food, clothing, housing, payment of rent and payment of utilities.

I also remember he was asked, 'What if a situation existed whereby the payments that were made to you on a fortnightly basis were paid on the basis that there was adequate food in the family for the children and for the adults, that rent was paid, that education costs were met, that utilities were paid and that whatever was excess would then be available to spend?' I recall him saying something like, 'That would be of enormous benefit,' and that it would remove the guilt associated with the spending of moneys on activities such as gambling, in that particular case. It really came home to me then that some of the objectives of the income management program played out in the mind of that person.

We know that in this country there have been evaluations through a number of reports assessing the effectiveness of the different trials. A substantial number of people have reported that income management does make their lives easier. It makes it easier to manage their money, it makes them feel safer—and that is an interesting point that I hope would be reflected also in those for whom they have responsibility—and it has improved their lives and those of their children. That is a topic to which I have referred.

The report A review of child protection income management in Western Australia in 2014 found that this was a useful tool to help achieve the stability required so that families could stay together by reducing the risk of neglect or homelessness. Child protection staff reported that at first many clients were not happy about being put onto income management, but they then found that the person would realise the benefits of stabilised housing, reduced stress through the payments of bills and debts and greater certainty in being able to provide food and clothing for themselves and their children. Once again that theme comes through.

I do have the benefit of being able to draw on relevant experience in a different country. In 2008 I was invited to be a founding member of the board of the MyKasih Foundation in Malaysia, and I continue to be an active member of that board. In that country there is no established safety net and there is no equivalent of Centrelink. I am very proud to say that the MyKasih Foundation now assists some half a million people in Malaysia on an annual basis with the provision of funding to assist with household management. This particular foundation is blind to ethnic background; it is blind to geographic background; it is blind to religious background. It works on the basis that funding is given on a fortnightly basis to the mother of the family. It goes specifically to the mother of the family because in that culture it is she who has the responsibility for the provision of these services in the home.

The funds are made available onto a card system, which happens to be the Malaysian identification card, the MyKad. That gives that lady the dignity of being able to shop throughout the week using a card—a feature that we take for granted in this country. In countries such as Malaysia, a credit type card will normally only be available to people of higher socioeconomic status. In this particular case, the mother of the family, the recipient, is able to shop in supermarkets. It is a barcoded system. She cannot purchase, for example, alcohol products, she cannot purchase tobacco related products and she obviously cannot purchase gambling or pornographic material, but she has the dignity of being able to shop for her family using the funds on the card provided to her.

The funding support is for a two-year period, unless the need is demonstrated beyond that. The hope is that that family will be able to re-establish its own financial circumstances. Coming back to the point that I made at the beginning of my contribution, at the same time, in this circumstance where so many people do not have the basic skills, she must commit to participating in basic home budgeting so that she comes to understand and develop the skills associated with this.

It is interesting in the context of the Australian model, which is costing us $150 million, that the entire funding for the MyKasih Foundation is based on philanthropy and philanthropic donations from corporations and individuals, with some now very minor and limited support from the government. In fact, the total cost of the running of the MyKasih Foundation and the software associated with it is actually donated. So those philanthropists who do provide their financial support to this program know that 100 per cent of their contribution goes to the recipient families. It is also interesting that, as an extension of this program—and I think it is one that we could look at in Australia—some of the philanthropic support goes to skills development for the mother and family and associated microfinancing, so that the mother can develops skills. One, for example, that is supported by the Caltex organisation is referred to as 'Sew for Life', where she is given sewing skills. Under the microfinancing program, she can actually purchase a sewing machine and, hopefully, then commence a small home-based business. In the last 12 months—under the previous Indonesian President and carried on by the current President in Indonesia—the MyKasih Foundation has actually started a pilot program in Indonesia as well.

In lending my support to this particular program, I want to make the observation again that it is incumbent on us, in my view, to be able to provide not just the financial support and not just the safety net for those who may need that support. There is an obligation, firstly, to give the skills to people so that into the future they will not be dependent on such funding and not be a victim of an inability to budget and spend in the priority order in which they wish, and ensure, as part of that process, they may be able to move towards gainful employment and, therefore, remove themselves from the need for welfare.

Others have spoken of the other two measures in the bill, which are associated with aged care. Payments have been made to the provider of residential aged care—often for up to a week prior to a resident taking up their residency. I think it is entirely logical that there is no real need for that expenditure to take place. That, of course, is the first point related to aged care. The second one is associated with an advisory service. Again, based on the history now that has been built up, we do not appear to need those Aged Care Planning Advisory Committees.

Further to that, I simply make the observation of Senator Fawcett: in this whole aged care space there is, I believe, an urgent need for good, easy, useable data, so there is the capacity for people not used to the aged care sector to glean information and find out the necessary services available and the restrictions on them. As others in the chamber have no doubt found themselves: most of us in the community know very little, if anything, about the whole structure and management of the aged care sector. In my own case, I knew absolutely nothing about it until my mother suffered a severe stroke. In a very, very limited period of time, I went from knowing nothing to needing to know 100 per cent of all issues associated with aged care. My own experience, and that of my family in assisting my mother in that circumstance, is that there needs to be, in the system, a data collection service, a website and indeed better access to current relevant knowledge so that we can help families and particularly the person who finds themselves in need of such aged care.

I am pleased to lend my support to the elements contained within the Social Services Legislation Amendment (No. 2) Bill. I emphasise again what I believe to be a very, very good measure in terms of income management and income protection.