Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member interjects. It is the nature of government, and if you guys ever get back into government you will find it yourselves. When a previous government does something—it gets elected, it comes to the parliament, it passes bills and it is able to do that and it does it—changes flow through the community. When you become a government again, you have to start with what you are left from the previously democratically elected government. We all do it. We all take things that we had from the previous government that are woven into the budgets of the government and the budgets of state departments and contracts that you have with people and agreements that people have made and decisions that people have made, and you live with them. That is what you do when you move from opposition to government. That is what we have done here, and it is quite right that we do. It is quite right in a country like Australia where governments are democratically elected that one government, to the extent that it can, respects the decisions and the laws that are made by the previous governments, and most governments have done that in Australia's history. I take the interjection from the member just to make that point. This is one of those cases.

Back in 2006 the government of the day decided that when a parent's youngest child turned six, if they were a couple, or eight if they were a single parent, they would move from parenting payment into the employment system. They would move from Centrelink onto what we used to call back in those days 'the dole'. But when Howard introduced that bill, he grandfathered any parent that had a child prior to 2006. I would have said at the time—and I would probably say it now—that that decision was for political reasons. If he had made the change for everyone, there would have been hundreds of thousands of parents on a single day that moved from parenting payment to Welfare to Work. By grandfathering anyone who was already a parent, he made sure that parents would go to the new system literally one by one. There would not be an avalanche of parents so the change would not be seen in quite the negative way that it would have been had it suddenly applied to every parent. So it only applied to new parents where a child was born after 1 July 2006.

That means that now there are two sets of parents in Australia. There are parents whose children are born after 1 July 2006, who move from parenting payment to Newstart when their youngest child turns six, if they are in couples, or eight, if they are a single parent, and parents whose children were born prior to that period who keep their parenting payment under the Howard regime, which was up until the youngest child turns 16 years of age. That is quite a difference in the way that parents are treated.

This amendment brings all those grandfathered parents into line with parents whose children were born after 1 July 2006. It is very much an equity issue. We have heard a lot from the other side of politics about how terribly unfair it is that a parent would have to go from parenting payment to Newstart when their youngest child turns eight, if they are a single parent, and how difficult this would be. For a lot of parents it is difficult. It is difficult for the parents for whom this change was made in 2006. So again, I would ask the opposition to just be a little bit honest about this and recognise that this is a change that they made, a change that they expected of parents in 2006. They have not come into this place and argued that it be changed back, and I would ask them to seriously explain to me why now in 2012 parents should be treated differently depending on when their child was born. I am not sure that it was a sensible thing in 2006, although I could understand the politics of it. It did delay the issue of large numbers of parents suddenly having to move off parenting payment onto Newstart—and I can understand the politics of it—but in terms of policy and government and equity and fairness, it was a strange one then and this bill actually removes that inequity.

The member for Solomon also said that we have not made any attempts to assist parents back into work. She has made quite a lengthy statement about the changes that the Howard government made at the time, trying to help parents get back into work, and she said that there is nothing in this bill that does that. She is wrong about that and I am assuming that she has not read it. If she had made any effort at all, she would know that that is not the case. We have done a number of things in this bill that make a difference.

We have already made amendments to the Social Security Act to reform the income test that applies to single carer parents on Newstart allowance and we are allowing a much more generous income test. Again, the member for Solomon talked about one of the changes that the Howard government made, which concerned a $50 change. That was a good thing at the time. This change allows parents to earn over $400 more per fortnight before they lose eligibility for a payment. That is a significant improvement. It is an improvement that applies to all parents, not just the ones that will come off the Howard government grandfathering because of this amendment. It applies across the board to all parents. A parent can earn $400 more per fortnight before they lose eligibility for payments. That provides a much stronger incentive for parents to undertake paid work by allowing them to retain more of their income as the work that they are doing rises.

We are aware that parents who are moving off parenting payment and onto New Start allowance may have spent significant periods out of the workforce. A lot of parents return to the workforce part-time or full-time quite a few years before their youngest child turns six or eight, but some of them will have been out of the workforce for quite some time. So we have made additional support for them, as well as the hundreds of thousands of additional training places that we have made for the community generally. There are also training places for single parents announced under the Building Australia's Future Workforce package. The government has provided additional funding in the 2012-13 budget for professional career advisory services for single parents through the employment service providers. So there is assistance for parents who have been out of the workforce for some time to get career advice and move back into training. Single parents who are studying an approved course already and receiving the pensioner education supplement will keep that supplement when they transfer from parenting payment to Newstart allowance.

We are providing additional funding to support increased demand and better targeting in the Jobs, Education and Training Child Care Fee Assistance program, a program that I am very proud of. I know that a number of single parents in my electorate who are going back to training use that. It is quite an effective program. So there is considerable support in this bill and in other actions taken by this government for parents who are returning to work.

The member for Solomon was quite scathing about the cash splashes, as she called them, that this government is handing out. But I want to draw the attention of the member for Solomon to where the assistance is being given because it is being given very much to people in most need. The schoolkids bonus that has reached the pockets of parents in the last week or so is specifically targeted to families at the lower end of the income scale. The tripling of the threshold which comes into play on 1 July is also something that will greatly benefit parents as they return to work. The people who are most likely to be on the lower incomes working part-time will benefit significantly from that reform. The household package assistance that has been rolling out over the last month and will continue to roll out over the next couple of weeks is also highly targeted towards households where there is likely to be one person working or a second parent working part-time or returning to the workforce. That is significant assistance for people who find themselves in this kind of position.

We have also made some changes that I am very pleased about in the liquid assets waiting period amendment. Back in the global financial crisis, we made some quite significant changes to the liquid assets waiting period because we recognised that people who suddenly found themselves unemployed needed some rather generous treatment at that time. Essentially, we doubled the liquid assets waiting period threshold in 2009 and we are now in a position where we can afford to reinstate those thresholds permanently. Importantly, from 1 July 2013 the maximum reserve amount for a person who is single will be doubled from $2,500 to $5,000 and, for a person who is partnered or has a dependent child, from $5,000 to $10,000. These new reserves reduce the waiting time by up to five weeks for an unemployed Australian and student with modest savings or liquid assets before they are eligible for Centrelink assistance. It was something we did in 2009—we thought for a short period of time—and which we are now able to extend on a permanent basis.

This is a pretty good bill. It deals with equity; it quite substantially improves the circumstances of people who find themselves unemployed. I commend the bill to the House. (Time expired)

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