Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise here today in support of the Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation (2006 Budget and Other Measures) Bill 2006. This bill delivers much needed and much welcomed support to many Australian families in a variety of ways. There are several inclusions in this legislation which will certainly bring great benefits to the communities in the Riverina that I represent.

There is the extension of the utilities allowance to people under the pension age who are receiving a mature age allowance, widow allowance or partner allowance. This will be of considerable benefit to people needing assistance in meeting the ever-increasing costs of regular bills for gas, electricity, water and other essentials. Some of these costs are extremely difficult for people to pay, particularly people on low benefits and fixed incomes with no additional assistance. These people will now qualify for the utilities allowance without that age barrier.

Another part of this legislation that I want to make mention of is the introduction of the Australian government disaster recovery payment. This year, in fact on New Year’s Day, many residents within my electorate of Riverina faced a devastating blow when fierce bushfires destroyed thousands of hectares of property. Houses and livestock were lost. Around 17,000 to 20,000 head of sheep were lost. This came on top of a devastating five-year drought, when farmers were using all of their available resources and borrowings from the bank to handfeed their stock so that they had their stock and their breeding stock when the drought broke. Then, of course, they experienced a double blow by having a bushfire go through there that saw the destruction of their entire livelihoods.

In the following months, the community of Junee and all the surrounding districts rallied to raise money for those affected. But in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, it would have been of even greater relief to have been able to determine whether an immediate payment could be made available on a decision by the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. Having been involved in the bushfires earlier this year, I welcome this piece of legislation, which will enable adult Australian residents who are affected by an eligible natural or non-natural disaster, whether within Australia or offshore, to claim the government disaster recovery payment and receive financial assistance for themselves and their children to aid with their much needed recovery.

The disaster recovery payment will rightly be exempt from all Australian government means-testing arrangements and will be tax exempt. I am very impressed and very pleased to see that this will take place. It will be of great assistance in disasters such as tropical Cyclone Larry, which caused such devastation earlier this year and, as I said, the bushfires in my Riverina town of Junee and around the Illabo, Cootamundra and Gundagai areas. It will complement the existing arrangements and provide choice in the way in which government may wish to respond when these things take place.

We heard the member for Banks talking at considerable length on another area that is absolutely close to my heart. I commend the member for Banks for his views and his commitment to the families of disabled children and the carers of disabled children. I want to specifically speak on the bill that amends the social security means-testing and gifting rules from 20 September 2006 to enable parents and immediate family members to establish and contribute to a specific trust up to the value of $500,000 for the current and future care of their severely disabled children.

As I said, I commend the member for Banks, because he has always been a supporter and a defender of the rights of the disability sector. Sitting here listening to him, I thought it must have been so frustrating for him to be sitting within the Labor opposition and the Labor Party during its time in government and know that his passion and commitment were not being addressed in any way whatsoever. It must have been frustrating for him to know of the need for so long to have a long-term plan for the families of disabled children and to know that there was no policy and no future thought about how that was going to be delivered by a Labor government. It must be very disheartening for him now to know that Labor in opposition has no policy on this particular issue. I feel for him because he is obviously very committed—and I say that with absolute respect.

It is a pleasure to listen to anybody in this House who supports the families of disabled children, because for far too long—forever—their needs have been overlooked, because we just expect that they will care for their disabled children, and it has become increasingly difficult for these families to do so. I have raised this issue in the House time and time again and I have put forward a private member’s bill. I am committed to ensuring that we put up alternative proposals on this issue in the House, and hopefully I will be able to achieve that whilst I am still a member of this House, which will be at the discretion of my electorate. I commend the former Minister for Family and Community Services, Kay Patterson, and the Prime Minister for hearing the pleas last year, understanding the pressures and putting in place this package that will enable people to save and not be affected tax-wise and not lose benefits. I applaud the previous minister.

I also applaud the current minister, the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mr Brough. He is a fabulous minister, doing an enormously good job on a whole host of issues, particularly in the area that he is undertaking at the moment—the most difficult area, as the member for Banks alluded to—requiring a whole suite of packages and issues to be dealt with. The minister, Mal Brough, has had the fortitude and the stamina to stand up and say, ‘Yes, there is a whole host of issues that need to be addressed but the No. 1 issue to start with is law and order and we must not back off on that issue.’

I also commend the minister for the time he and his staff have taken to listen to me and some colleagues of mine out in the private sector. These people are very good friends of mine who have equally as strong a passion for and commitment to the disabilities area—perhaps brought on by my incessant discussion of this during our friendship—and have decided to come on board and assist me in trying to deliver something. These are people out in the private sector who have generously donated their corporate time, energy and vision to come together to assist in putting together a proposal for research funding.

I thank the minister for the time he has spent with my colleagues and me. I look forward to further discussions on our proposal for research funding. Our proposal involves a targeted investigation. I am particularly keen to call it ‘collaborative care’. It is a collaborative care model that recognises what was achieved last year in the form of a savings vehicle for some people to be able to take advantage of, but there is a need to go further. We want to build upon the very good platform put in place by this legislation that we are considering today. As I said, it involves a targeted investigation into the constraints on current arrangements and structures faced by individuals, organisations and governments in providing funds to care for disabled people from birth to old age.

We also want to investigate possible new collaborative models and to reallocate and leverage available resources within extended families and interest groups to enable people to better plan for their future care needs. We want to investigate the types of financial products and other structures that may address this problem. We see superannuation and insurance products for a whole host of things. Surely out there in the realm of financial institutions there has to be a product that can be developed and put in place—dare I say it, a particular future-proofing plan for our disabled children—for the peace of mind of parents and carers of disabled people such that they can start to plan for the future and the future needs of their children when they may no longer be around or able to cope for a variety of reasons. We also want to investigate current obstacles preventing the implementation of any new model, such as the type of model that we would like to research, and the obstacles preventing the implementation of funding vehicles.

I am not saying that this is what is required; I am saying that we need to investigate it. Nobody has actually put the effort into doing so. That may be because the plight of the disabled is not a sexy industry. A more predominant and overpowering area, such as heart or cancer research, gets a lot of attention. The plight of the disabled has brought about some but never enough attention for the actual crisis that exists. What may be required could be similar to our government’s approach—and I applaud our government again for helping to better provide for the costs of retirement through superannuation copayment arrangements. For our low-income earners, we have a copayment and an incentive to save for the future. I say: let us investigate it.

There is now a clear incentive for people to channel their own funds into superannuation as a future-proofing mechanism, and there is a need for the carers and families of disabled children to be able to do the same from the point of birth. A point of difference with our superannuation model is that this would be a collaborative care approach that extends the principle beyond just the personal individual level. It goes to a joint model that would look after the interests of the needy members of the community in collaboration with families and carers and with financial and other service provider sectors, with the entire community and with all levels of government—local, state and federal. The collaborative care approach may have widespread application in our Australian society not only by encouraging people to work cooperatively to meet agreed community needs from their own resources but by dramatically changing the demand for and the shape of recurrent direct public funding for welfare services.

We propose that we research these goals and that this research have a specific focus on financing care for our young disabled people, particularly for the peace of mind of their families and their carers. I put up a private members’ business motion. It was bipartisan—everybody acknowledged the need to do more and to do something like this. There is an acknowledged and urgent need to find sustainable and affordable ways for local communities to care for those of their number who are disabled, particularly disabled young people whose care requirements—we often forget this—will continue beyond the care of the families. They will still be requiring care when their parents have died. They will need care beyond their families’ life for decades into the future. We have highlighted the growing problem, but we do not have the answers. I am trying to develop the answers, in order to better represent not just the great organisation that I am patron of, along with Sir William Deane, which is Kurrajong Waratah in the Riverina—it does a fantastic job—but people right across Australia. Not all Australians have the assistance and help of Kurrajong Waratah type organisations. Even Kurrajong Waratah cannot meet the rising demand of care for ageing disabled children.

I would like to applaud this legislation, but I urge and encourage the government to go further and assist us in funding our research model because this can be a benefit for not only all the current carers and families of disabled people but also those in the future. I have said in this House time and time again that our technology is such that we can save our babies at 22 weeks and 23 weeks, and so we should, but then many of those children require a lifetime of intense care. We have the technology in place to save our babies and to save people involved in car accidents and from a whole host of things, such as brain acquired injury or cancer. People are living very long lives due to technology but, unfortunately, our level of care and support structures have not kept up with our technological advances. We are now finding families being left out, not knowing where to turn. We have lots of assistance available but not the amount of assistance required and not the ability for families to plan for themselves, be in control of their planning and know that where they are going is in the best interests of their children or siblings. To die without peace of mind, to know that your ageing disabled child has nowhere to go other than an old people’s home that is absolutely not acceptable, must be the worst of all possible deaths. I ask the House to consider that any single person may be in this predicament at any time. Nobody wishes this on anyone, but the fact of the matter is it can happen.

We have an increasing incidence of cerebral palsy. Why do we have that? I have this fantastic DVD from the spastic council that shows the beautiful little faces of disabled children who are just starting to walk. Their little faces bring tears to your eyes. They are trying to overcome and combat it and develop ways in which they can manage their disability. We sit there and ooh and aah and say, ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ I could show you a DVD of that child when it is 30 and it no longer looks as cute as it did when it was a child or a little baby and we wanted to pick it up and cuddle it. I could show you a DVD of those same children in their adult years. Would we say that we wanted to hug and cuddle them? It is a difficult feeling. It is confronting, but these beautiful little children with many disabilities that we wanted to nurture and protect grow into adults. It is our role and obligation to plan for these children. It is our obligation to investigate and put in place pathways that can assist the planning for these children. We all recognise there will be a reduced workforce in all of Australia in the future. Who is going to be there to give these children the care they need as they age unless we put in place a model or proposal to achieve this?

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