Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When the Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Legislation Amendment (Child Support Reform Consolidation and Other Measures) Bill 2007 came before us, there was such a sense of familiarity because, as we all know, this is an ongoing process of looking at reform of very complex legislation. When we were preparing for this process we were lucky enough to have yet another attempt at a Senate committee to consider these changes. We well remember in this place that when the second tranche of legislation in this process came through, there was an unholy rush—to rush through the committee process, to rush through what was then consideration with the community and also to make sure that we met a deadline that was imposed from outside the process, to meet an expectation that the legislation would go through this place, which then was not met because something more important came up. So all that rush around the second tranche of the legislation was unnecessary in many ways. We were looking at something that has been going on in the community for a very long time.

I am not going to go into the particular technical aspects of the bill and I do not think anyone has time to go into them because they are so complex. We have been looking at effective child support legislation in this country from the time the first round of legislation was introduced under the Hawke government. No-one pretended that the legislation was going to be perfect. When dealing with the issue of broken families, there is no way that legislation can appropriately respond to all the needs. However, from the time that the first round of family support legislation was brought forward, there was concern in the community and in the various departments—I think they have changed names a bit since that time but I think the expertise, the knowledge and the commitment remain—that these processes were complex, they would need to be looked at very closely and they would need, most importantly, to have the engagement of those people who were affected by the legislation. The only way that this process was going to be improved was to have some hope of looking at what was the key expectation of this legislation from day one, which was the protection and wellbeing of children—no-one argues with that; that has always been the No. 1 priority—and the attempts to work with this legislation have been based on that.

We know there have always been concerns, and I do not think that there will ever be legislation that will be able to respond effectively to all the concerns. Given that, we all shared the understanding that, from the time that the House of Reps committee report Every picture tells a story was presented, there would be a close look at the existing legislation and a commitment from all those involved that we would work to improve it and that it was going to be a long-term process. Certainly it has been long term, and I think we all come together now to make sure that we, as effectively as possible, move forward. This third round of legislation is supported by Labor, but we need to raise our ongoing concerns at this time or we are not doing our job.

From the time that the legislation came through in response to Every picture tells a story and in the supplementary approach, the Parkinson inquiry, we were concerned about who were going to be the winners and the losers out of the changes. That would seem to be an automatic response. When you change an existing system, you should have clear knowledge of how the current system works, who is impacted by it, who would benefit from it and what the impact of the new legislation is going to be. We would expect that in the drafting of the legislation and a formal impact statement there would be widespread community consultation.

The government and the departments involved have continued to commit to this community consultation. We were told through the Parkinson process there were clear understandings that, through these long-term deliberations, whatever happened into the future, there would be ongoing consultation and engagement of the various stakeholder groups. ‘Stakeholder’ is a term I do not like, but it is the current term in legislation so we will work with that. There was an understanding that the stakeholders would continue to have automatic and important involvement in the process—not just the cursory window-dressing of calling a few meetings but absolute involvement in what was going through.

There was no promise and, I believe, no understanding by anyone involved that that would mean that people would automatically agree. Indeed, in this particular area I feel that there is possibly no agreement except on the key issue that the children must be the most important element of where we go in the future. But, in terms of getting the various groups together, we have seen, even through the very truncated Senate committee process, that there are widespread and entrenched differences between people who have views on this process. So, although we were told in the second round of legislation discussions that the stakeholders committee would continue to meet and that they would have involvement in what happened next, we know that there has been only one meeting of the stakeholders group in the time between the second and third round. We hope that there will be more meetings. In fact, everybody said there were going to be more when we had the discussion at the Senate committee.

If the minister can assure me that there have been more and effective meetings, I am happy to hear that, but the evidence that we heard at the Senate committee was that there had not been extensive meetings of the stakeholders committee. What we need is transparency around what will happen in the future and to know that all the groups that have expressed their desire to be part of the process will have that opportunity. No-one can control whether or not they take that up or whether they feel that they can actually agree with other people sitting around the table, but the transparency must be that the stakeholders feel that they are part of the ongoing process.

In terms of where we go, questions that we asked in this place at the second stage of the reform of the legislation were around the effective modelling and review of the impact of this legislation on the people involved, when we saw that, at exactly the same time as the Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Legislation Amendment (Child Support Reform Consolidation and Other Measures) Bill 2007 was going to be implemented and impact on the community, in particular on single parents, the government were implementing their Welfare to Work changes. All the way through this process we consistently asked: who has looked at the combined impact of these two significant pieces of legislation on the people who are living the experience? That is not necessarily academic involvement in the process—although the involvement of effective, committed and well-trained academics must be valued and must continue—but the use of the life experiences of people who are now raising children alone, often as a result of broken family relationships. What is the combined impact of legislation coming at them from both sides?

Again, at the recent Senate committee hearing, it was confirmed to us that that degree of modelling has not happened; that degree of examination has not happened yet. There was goodwill and an understanding of a commitment from the government to do that. There was also urgency from people at the Australian Institute of Family Studies and FaCSIA as a whole that that must happen and that it would happen in the future. But, once again, we have very significant and complex legislation being brought down on a group in our community and there is a real element of ‘trust us; let’s see what’s going to happen; let’s hope that it’s going to work’. We all hope that. What we must have at this stage in the whole process is at least some degree of trust from all those who are involved in the process that there is a willingness to move forward together and that there is an understanding that these issues will be considered.

I know that Senator Siewert has some particular issues around child care—who has responsibilities and the financial acknowledgement of that degree of care. Senator Siewert will raise that, so I will not touch on it. Labor, as I have said—and Senator Stephens will take this up—will support this legislation, but, once again, it is with some genuine concern about what happens next. This group in our community has suffered immensely. In evidence to the committee, we were led to believe that the kinds of figures that could be under consideration in this legislation on a fortnightly basis—for people who are single parents—are enormous for people on a fixed income. While people here can look at the loss of $60 or $70 a fortnight as something that can be budgeted around and that we can move forward effectively on, there are people who are currently living on a very tight budget. I know that people in the department looked very closely at the evidence that came forward in both committees. There was gut-wrenching evidence about the effectiveness of budgeting by families who know exactly where each dollar goes. So, when we are talking about legislation that is being introduced that will cut any of that income, there must be acknowledgement that there is pain and that we need to make sure that the whole environment in which these changes are made offers the best hope of support for the people involved, otherwise this legislation comes in by itself and those people will be lost in the transition.

Briefly, before Senator Siewert makes her contribution, I want to add something about the proposal in this legislation to make sure that all births are registered. This was raised in the committee. Many on the committee felt that there was an understanding that people had to have registered births before they were able to claim payment under the Centrelink system. It was enlightening to find out that that was not the case and that we needed to have this legislation in place so that we can be absolutely confident that we have effective statistics on the growth of our population and we can effectively use those statistics to plan for the future—in particular for putting the welfare of children most importantly at the forefront of any legislation that we deal with that comes under the heading of ‘families and community services’.

As a member of the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs I would like to put on record my concerns: ensuring that the people who are most engaged in this process, by living the experience, continue to be involved; acknowledging that they have genuine input to any change in this legislation; and acknowledging that there is not a political attempt to enhance disadvantage but a genuine attempt to maintain certainty, so that people know that they are able to effectively raise children in our community.

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

The Australian Greens support the need for reform to the Child Support Scheme. The last time we debated the new scheme we indicated our support for it. However, we raised some concerns. The Greens are supportive overall of the intentions of the proposed changes in the Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Legislation Amendment (Child Support Reform Consolidation and Other Measures) Bill 2007. However, as we have said previously, we have several concerns about this bill in particular and also some ongoing concerns. Firstly, the Greens are concerned about the nature of the amendment to the baby bonus scheme, which I will go to shortly. Secondly, yet again I am raising the issue of principal carers, as I will ad infinitum until the government takes this on board. Thirdly, we are particularly concerned about the development of models to investigate the impact of the changes to the child support arrangements.

The Australian Greens recognise the potential temptation of misuse associated with the lump sum baby bonus payment which led to the proposed amendments in this bill. However, we believe that this issue extends to a wide range of expectant parents, not just to those under the age of 18. We believe that these provisions should apply to all recipients of the baby bonus, not just a subgroup chosen purely because of their age. This is why we recommended in our minority report on the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs inquiry that the provisions relating to periodic payment be extended to all recipients of the baby bonus and not be limited to mothers under the age of 18.

Let us consider for a moment the list of reasons that the government has given for dishing out the baby bonus in fortnightly payments to those under the age of 18. The list I am about to talk about is from the Family Assistance Office website. It came out on 11 January. It actually referred at that time to the changes to process that were made from 1 January 2007 to 1 July 2007 for young people under the age of 17 who applied for maternity payment and to the decision that it would be made in 13 fortnightly instalments.

The reasons that people who are under 17 who apply at the moment have to receive fortnightly payments instead of one lump sum payment include inexperience in handling large sums of money; situations where an applicant may be subject to pressure to use the payment unwisely; a history of experience of domestic or family violence; a history of difficulties in managing finances; situations where an applicant may be vulnerable to exploitation; situations where applicants have gambling problems or substance addiction; situations where applicants are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless; situations where applicants previously had or currently have a child which is subject to child protection; and where applicants have intellectual disability or mental illness. It could be one or all of those reasons.

I ask you to consider this list of reasons. Consider how many of them apply exclusively or particularly to teenage parents and how many we might in fact expect to apply, as much or even more, to an older group of expectant parents. Let us look at inexperience in handling large sums of money. Yes, you would expect that younger people would be more likely to have less experience with large sums of money but by far not exclusively so. Many people over the age of 18 have great difficulty in managing large sums of money. Let us look at situations where applicants may be subject to pressure to use the payment unwisely. There is no reason to expect that a person over 18 may not be pressured to use the money unwisely. It is the same with a history of experience of domestic or family violence. Please, no-one try to tell me that domestic or family violence is restricted to those under the age of 18! Unfortunately, the statistics prove otherwise. It is the same with inexperience in handling large sums of money and a history of difficulties in managing finances. I expect that there are going to be a lot more people with a history of difficulties in managing finances in the over-18 age group. The arguments that are given as reasons that people under 18 should not receive a lump sum apply equally to those over 18.

Whether it is called a baby bonus or a maternity payment or an allowance and whether we are discussing child endowment or paid maternity leave, the tone of these debates, unfortunately, has changed little in nearly 100 years. From the introduction of the maternity allowance in 1912 to the royal commission on the child endowment scheme in 1929 and on to the series of ongoing debates concerning paid maternity leave, we have consistently seen governments questioning the ability of young women, particularly young single mothers, to manage their finances. It is back to the future for the new paternalism. What was paternalistic in the 1920s is equally paternalistic now.

The government, we believe, has failed to make a convincing argument as to why these problems apply to young people but not to older people or to give a rationale for the cut-off age. If we are concerned that handing over large sums of money is a bad idea then we should apply the same reasoning to all. If this is an admission from the government that the baby bonus was not good policy as a lump sum payment for those under 18 years of age, we maintain that it is not good policy for those over 18 years of age. To achieve the objective of the baby bonus—or, as it used to be known, the maternity payment—it would be better to give fortnightly payments to all, not just to those under 18.

The Greens appreciate that there are some circumstances where a large lump sum payment may be appropriate for the one-off purchase of a large item relating to the needs of a new family. Perhaps it would be to help expectant parents to purchase baby furniture and equipment to set themselves up to care for the new child. If you think about it, it is highly likely that it will be the under-18-year-olds that will particularly need help to buy that sort of equipment. Therefore, while we support the intention of moving to periodic payments rather than one lump sum, we think there should be some discretion given to Centrelink to make part of the payment or all of it as a lump sum if the rationale is provided. To this end, the Greens minority report also recommends that the format of the periodic payments should be able to be varied where there is a strong case for a lump sum payment or on the recommendation of a qualified social worker. The Greens will be moving amendments to this effect in the committee stage of the bill.

I come now to the issue of principal carers. I have raised this issue in this place before. As I said, I promise I will keep raising it until this inequity is dealt with. The Australian Greens remain concerned about the potential impact of changes to child support on low-income households, particularly when they are considered in combination with the financial impacts of the changes introduced through Welfare to Work. I will raise some of those issues again shortly.

We raised our concerns first in our additional comments to the report on the child support legislation amendment. In fact, we raised them before that. We raised them again in the minority report on this legislation. We are seeing radical changes to the Family Law Act and to the child support act, and these changes are happening at the same time.

The previous changes to Welfare to Work introduced the concept of a principal carer. What has happened under the Family Law Act, as I have articulated before, is that it is now moving to the concept of equal shared care. We are moving to a model of fifty-fifty shared care as the preferred social model. On the other hand, for the purposes of income support, the government says that there is only one principal carer and that person is responsible for the care of the child. So far as Centrelink is concerned, if you have fifty-fifty shared care, it would essentially be a case of first in, best dressed. If you happen to be nominated as the parent with principal care of the child, you get the benefits under the Welfare to Work legislation. We now have a number of mothers coming forward who nominally have fifty-fifty shared care but are in reality shouldering an unequal part of the parental care burden because they have not been recognised as a shared carer or their shared care has not been recognised through the principal carer provisions of the Welfare to Work provisions. They are suffering and their children are suffering as a result of the inability of the government to make up its mind about which parental care model it advocates: either it is fifty-fifty through the family law process—the legislation for which has now gone through—or it is a matter of favouring one parent and giving that one parent control and giving the benefits of that; but you do not give any benefits to the other parent. If you have fifty-fifty shared care, you cannot possibly expect to choose one parent in the income support system, and not the other, to be the parent that gets the benefit. That leads to inequality in the child’s life.

The central focus needs to be the best care for our children and, also, what is best for the future of our nation. Surely the best would be for a child to grow up with a basic level of income support. This is not what is being provided through the current system of a principal carer. In evidence to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs on this particular bill, the National Council of Single Mothers and their Children Inc again pointed out the inequity of the principal care process. Ms Taylor said:

On the one hand we have family law and child support law encouraging shared parenting and acknowledging where there is 35 per cent or more of care—between 35 to 65 per cent care is considered shared—but, on the other, on income support policy under social security law, only one parent can be given principal carer status leaving the other parent and the children exceptionally vulnerable.

They said in their submission:

This means that the half-time children in the household of the person who is not deemed under Social Security law to be the Principal Carer will not attract the protections available to Principal Carers in the income support system. The impact of this disjuncture in definitions is most acute for young children whose parents are both dependent on income support and are thus likely to be highly disadvantaged.

This is not just a matter of income but also a matter of the additional benefits and entitlements such as concession cards and access to pharmaceutical benefits and child care.

The Greens believe that urgent reform is needed to address this disparity and inequity. This is an unfair system. That is why we have recommended in our minority report that the income support definition of ‘principal carer’ be aligned with the intent of the family law changes to reflect the concept of shared parenting such that, where parents sharing the care of children each receive income support and the difference in percentage responsibility is 12 per cent or less, both are deemed to be principal carers. It is not too hard to understand the inequity and to fix it. It is not rocket science.

I now move on to the financial impact of this legislation and its intersection with the Welfare to Work system. Senator Moore touched on this. The Greens are concerned that there is no publicly available modelling to estimate the impact of the new system on existing child support recipients and payers. While we are pleased that FaCSIA will be monitoring the impact of the changes following their implementation, we believe that modelling should occur before this implementation in order to assess potential impact. Monitoring after the fact means that many families may have already been adversely affected before we, the community, become aware of the extent of the problem. As there will inevitably be a sufficient time delay before the monitoring data will be available and can be acted upon, families with young children may be suffering for some time before measures can be put in place to rectify these adverse impacts. It is hard enough raising kids at the best of times. I do not know if there are many in this place who truly understand and readily appreciate the additional stress and suffering brought about by the severe financial pressures when you are trying to care for a young family in extremely trying circumstances and on an extremely low income. We should never forget that single parents—and it is largely single mothers—are more often than not very highly overrepresented in the lower income areas. This is why we need to model what these impacts are before implementation. The Greens believe that modelling of the potential impact should be done immediately and that provisions should be put in place to protect low income families, who may lose income and be put under unconscionable financial stress as a result of these changes.

We acknowledge that these changes to child support are important and that the system needs fixing. We are deeply concerned about the unintended consequences for families that are already on low incomes. They may stretch their budgets beyond breaking point. Such protections are critical given the risk of poverty already confronted by many of these families. That is why the Greens recommended in our minority report that an appropriate system be developed to model and investigate the impact of the child support income changes when they are combined with the Welfare to Work changes. Both of these changes will potentially lower the income of some families. We know it will not be all of them, but some families are going to have their incomes lowered.

We need a system that is fair and equitable and that puts the welfare of our kids first. It makes no sense for the government to simultaneously advocate two radically different models of parental care. The contradictions between the notion of equal shared care in child support law and the notion that there is only one principal carer under welfare law must be resolved.

To decide arbitrarily that those under the age of 18 are not capable of handling a lump sum and list the reasons why this is so, which equally apply to those aged 18, is to me also inequitable. The Greens believe that a far better way of delivering, as it is changed in the law, what is now called the baby bonus would be to do so in periodic fortnightly payments.

We take the risk that these changes, particularly those brought by Welfare to Work, the child support changes and the family law changes, may adversely impact on some families and children who are already living in or very near poverty. We should be modelling and looking at these impacts now so that we do not wait until the crisis occurs before taking action.

As I have outlined, the Greens will be moving amendments to this legislation in the committee stage, both amending the principal carers provision and requiring the baby bonus payments to be made in periodic payments with the possibility of variation at the discretion of the secretary of the department.

John Watson (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Following a motion passed earlier this morning, which was that the business of the Senate be interrupted at approximately five o’clock today and tomorrow, but not so as to interrupt a senator from speaking, to enable Senators Boyce and Birmingham, respectively, to make their first speeches without any question before the chair. (Quorum formed)

Debate interrupted.