Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move opposition amendment (1) on sheet 8425:

( 1) Clause 2, page 2 (table item 2, column 1), omit "Parts 1 and 2", substitute "Part 1".

The opposition also opposes schedule 1 in the following terms:

(2) Schedule 1, Part 2, page 35 (line 1) to page 39 (line 12), TO BE OPPOSED.

As I outlined in my second reading debate remarks, Labor and I understand the Greens also have concerns with the impacts of schedule 1 part 2 in this bill in relation to retrospective payments. We know that there are delicate issues to be weighed up here, in terms of who owes money to whom, but our priority is to ensure that parents, and indeed their children more specifically, aren't worse off in circumstances where accidental errors have been made in tax assessments. We believe further consideration of these issues should be given before the Senate deals with these specific matters in this legislation, which is why we are seeking this carve-out. Should the government object or we're not successful in having this carve-out then we've got specific amendments that we would move, but that is not our preferred way of dealing with these issues. We're proposing to remove part 2 of schedule 1 from the bill in order to give the Senate further time to consider these important issues. We've distributed both sets of amendments to the chamber.