Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before turning to the provisions of the Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Legislation Amendment (Child Support Reform Consolidation and Other Measures) Bill 2007, I wish to delay the House for a moment to congratulate the member for Throsby on her very carefully considered observations. I find virtually no fault with anything she has just said. I could leave my remarks there, to the relief of everyone, and take my seat, but I shall not. I would like to contribute to the discussion. The member for Throsby has, to my mind, outlined some very real circumstances. I am optimistic that Minister Brough, because of his great capacity to listen, will look very closely at what the member for Throsby has just said about single parents, and particularly single mothers, who may feel a sense of vulnerability. We in our various electorate offices see that every day. I am optimistic that Minister Brough will look very closely at what the member for Throsby said. I am certain that over the next 12 months he will ensure that by 1 July next year we have some of those matters put to rest.

It is absolutely important in this debate that we drive out any sense of victimhood. The member for Throsby is right to say that the minimum $5, now $6,  contribution is not enough. That $5 contribution was not in place until the last decade—that minimum expectation of people, say, on a pension or benefit to make a contribution towards the raising of the child in the custody of the other parent. I do not think that $5 is anywhere near enough. I do not want to see $6. I want to see $25. That might be a mark in the sand that I do not mind putting on the table.

Nothing annoys me more as a local member than to hear the stories of a delinquent and absent parent who does not even bother, who does not even try, to contribute any money towards the upkeep of their child. Recently I had in my office the case of a young woman with an ex-partner who, because of the way the family law system works, has to have a phone number for access and who uses that phone number to ring her and abuse her. He screams at her over the phone.

In saying that, I do not want to typecast the blokes as always being at fault. That is often not the case. There are circumstances like those of another case I had, in which a man and a woman’s relationship broke down, which I am sure everyone would see as an absolute tragedy. They had a child between them. They had reached agreement on a sensible parenting plan, as they were encouraged to do, where essentially the wage structures of both were the same. Even though one cashed out part of their wage to receive a car from a state government department, basically their incomes were exactly the same. They had one child between them and they had reached agreement on a parenting plan of 50 per cent each looking after the child. The child had access to both parents. But the woman involved—and good luck to her—found another man and got married. She rang her former husband and said: ‘I have to change the arrangements now. I am pregnant with another child, so I am going to retire from work and you are going to pay for me to have the baby.’ This was because of the way the system used to operate. He was now culpable because he was going to be the income earner. Under the way the system had operated in the past, he was the person who basically paid for his former wife to have a baby with someone else.

That is one of the reasons why there are people in my electorate who are just hanging on for the changes, which the member for Throsby and others no doubt will outline, at the start of next year, where we will see the more equitable treatment of both parents’ incomes being taken into account. We will see a further decline in the situation where people use child support as a form of revenge on the previous partner. They use it as a means of financially beating up or controlling that person. So I applaud Minister Brough for the continuation of his efforts. I saw the Minister for Defence here a moment ago—he has other duties. As the supreme commander of the south-west Pacific he has many duties, no doubt. When we came to office in 1996 we inherited this system of child support, which was more fledgling than it is today and needed a lot of work. A number of us worked with then Minister Jocelyn Newman to effect some changes. It has taken a long time to drive them along. I remember that the member for Chifley in the previous Keating government chaired an inquiry into this, saying: ‘Mate, don’t let it slip. You’ve got to ensure that there is better treatment of this, that we see both parents’ incomes being counted.’

In hammering this point I am probably ruining your career, Member for Throsby, but I am saying that I think your contribution today was very good and I think it shows that there is some real concern and effort on both sides of the chamber on this matter. What we want to see, ideally, is families staying intact, but we accept that that is, unfortunately, not always the case. The children must come first in these circumstances. The welfare of the child must be paramount. I am also looking forward to work being done to remove this formula and to perhaps individualise better the circumstances and the costs of raising children. As the parent of two teenagers, I know that they are far more expensive than when they were young kids. So I am very pleased with, and enormously proud of, the work this government has been doing in this important area.

But this bill is not just about child support reform. It contains a number of other measures. We have spent a bit of time this morning talking about child support matters because they are important, but the other measures are equally important. The bill deals with social security and veterans matters. It amends the veterans’ entitlements legislation in regard to the sale of a principal home. These homes have been asset tax exempt if the person is likely to use the proceeds to buy another home. The previous provisions have applied within 12 months. We have listened, and we have recognised what is going on in the real world. It takes a bit longer for many people to build a home than maybe that 12-month period. They have to find another place to put that money and they do not see it as an unspent asset sitting in the bank. To give people 24 months, not 12 months, is one of the measures in this bill. Equally, the bill makes amendments relating to income streams. A number of minor amendments are aimed at enhancing and improving the efficacy and the efficiency of various income-stream rules.

The bill also makes changes to the payment of the baby bonus. A few older people in my electorate have made their complaints obvious to me about the way in which the government has been making payments of the baby bonus, the $4,000—‘One for you, one for your wife and one for the country,’ said the Treasurer. Many people have been taking up the baby bonus. It does not meet the full cost of a child coming into the world. It is about encouraging people on the margins in their decision to have a baby. If it is a financial reason that is stopping them—that is, if you can make these decisions and get the timing right—this $4,000 baby bonus helps people through that.

There has been genuine concern about many single parents, and I know that the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs has made it plain that in some Indigenous communities there have been real ramifications for young women in this regard. For under 18-year-olds we are now going to put in place a formal system of instalments. We are going to pay the baby bonus in 13 fortnightly instalments, require the registration of the birth by the relevant state or territory authority as a condition of eligibility and rename the maternity payment the ‘baby bonus’. The concept is very plain. It is about not allowing any sets of circumstances whereby people see a profit out of pregnancy but realising that it is about assisting the creation of a nurturing environment for the child.

I know there will be a lot of older people in my electorate who will say: ‘In our day we never received this assistance from government. Why are you doing it now?’ Fertility rates have declined, our population is going to decline and our standard of living is going to decline over the next 20 or 30 years if we do not keep our population growing in a positive way so that we have productive members of our community able to earn a wage and pay the taxes and create the industries and all of the things that people of past generations have done. We are the only country, as I understand it, in the Western world that has turned around its birth rate and, in fact, has increased its birth rate. That may be due to the fact that we have identified ways to assist people on the margins look at the financial aspect when making the decision to have a family. The situation is very positive in that regard.

Looking at the portability of family tax benefit, changes have been made to allow a portability period of 13 weeks for full payment. That is now being extended to members of the Australian Defence Force and certain Australian Federal Police personnel of the International Deployment Group. When they are deployed overseas as part of their duty and, in fact, remain overseas for longer than 13 weeks, we do not want to see them losing that family payment. We are tidying up in that respect. With Australia now involved in 10 deployments—we have never had a greater number of deployments overseas in our entire history—there are many thousands of great Australians serving our country in uniform in all sorts of places who do not deserve the impost of a system denying them access to family tax benefits. Therefore, I am pleased to support this measure. When I was in the Middle East a couple of weeks ago with the men and women of the HMAS Toowoomba and the men and women of the RAAF who were on flying missions in various parts in support of our effort to ensure Iraq remains free and gains the strength in its economy which will underpin its democracy, there were many people there who have families in Australia who will be advantaged by the efforts the government is introducing in this legislation.

We are also amending the maintenance income test provisions in the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999 and clarifying the meaning of the words ‘amount received’ and ‘amount payable’. These technical amendments clarify that maintenance income received by a payee for one or more children would reduce the payee’s amount of family tax benefit A above the base rate for those children only. Such technical amendments may seem to delay the parliament from time to time but they have a critical public face and a highly personal reach each and every time we deal with these matters.

The government’s announcement in yesterday’s budget to deliver more for Australian families—an additional $4.5 billion committed over five years—will support families and children, people with disabilities, volunteers, Indigenous and older Australians. We are seeing the expenditure of $50.6 billion a year across the portfolio administered by Minister Brough and Minister Scullion. The enormous $2.1 billion childcare investment that was announced will see some very positive changes to the payment of the childcare tax rebate, which can now be brought forward and paid soon after the end of the financial year in which costs are incurred, at a cost of some $1.4 billion over four years. This measure provides a very real dividend for people in my electorate where we have great childcare services and many people paying lots of money to them. We are now in a position to ensure that my constituents, and yours as well, Mr Deputy Speaker, are able to access more money—in fact, up to $8,000—over the next few months, depending on their circumstances, to assist them in meeting the costs of child care. All of these massive amounts that are being expended by the government on behalf of the people of Australia require the careful administration that this government has brought to the task. The legislation before us has an even greater reach today than it would have had a week ago because of this major amount of additional assistance that the government is giving child care, child support and family assistance—growing the cake, growing the circumstances, growing the sense of support that can be offered.

The contrast will become very evident when we start to see the semblance of an address-in-reply and a contribution by those opposite. The challenge to those opposite in the course of this debate—to follow the example of the member for Throsby, for one—is to not send to vulnerable people in the community the signal of victimisation being their way of life. In the whole area of  family support, child care and indeed child support it is absolutely important that we encourage those people with a capacity to do for themselves to do so. The more we liberate people with the ability to do something for themselves first and foremost, and back those people, the more we can concentrate our efforts on those with no capacity to assist themselves. That is the simple difference between this side of the House and those opposite, who pretend they want to be in government later in the year and have no manifesto, no policies, no certainty—we would simply see a return to the way it used to be. One of the things that are very clear in any discussion about child support, as the member for Throsby suggested, is the fact that many families now have the challenge of balancing welfare to work, where many people on the margins are being encouraged—some might say ‘coerced’—to do for themselves first and foremost and not to wait for others to do it for them.

People are making decisions on the margins, putting their children through professional child care and giving them nurturing and an educative environment in formative years, using child care while they go off to earn a living. People are under a certain amount of pressure and expectation that they are going to help pay their way first and foremost. That is a big difference from those opposite who had a view which said to people: ‘You’re never going to achieve anything, you’re never going to get anywhere. Park yourself in welfare. Not only that, we’ll find new ways to park you in various aspects of welfare. We’ll increase the ability of people to access disability pensions and we’ll hide unemployment by making more people technically disabled for the purposes of welfare but not disabled in reality.’ They were more consumed with ensuring there were more victims in society, the theory being that, if there are more victims, more people are going to vote Labor.

On this side, we have challenged people to get off their tail and go and do for themselves. We have backed those who want to back themselves. The work we are doing through this legislation continues that journey and last night’s budget announcements enhance that very much so. People who are prepared to do for themselves are going to get great support from this government.

Whether it is child support—where the journey continues, with the efforts of the past decade now producing fruit and the promise of what will come over the years ahead—income streams or asset test exemption periods, we are saying to people, ‘If you want to work hard, to achieve something for yourselves, to make a difference in our society and grow our economy along the way, we want to back you all the way.’ I congratulate Minister Brough on the success he managed to achieve for the people of Australia who rely on him, with $50 billion plus annual expenditure through his portfolio secured by last night’s budget announcements. I congratulate him and officers of his department on the close work they do to deliver the kinds of technical amendments we have before us today.

Finally, I will end on a very special vote of thanks to members of the Child Support Agency—we have spent a bit of time talking about them. Today they are dealing with a set of circumstances which are different from a decade ago. I think they are now a lot more responsive than a decade ago to the ambitions of blokes when they get on the phone. When first elected in 1996, I heard complaints time and time again about officers of the Child Support Agency assuming that the blokes were at fault—no offence to officers but this is what people were saying to me. Now with more men involved in the process, that kind of discussion is defeated because there is an opportunity for greater action across genders and a greater sense of respect all round. We have moved things along enormously over the last decade but there is much more work to do, which is certainly part of the reason we cannot go back to what we had pre 1996, to a government that is philosophically underpinned by the creation of more victims, telling people why they cannot do something instead of encouraging them to do things for themselves. That is the philosophical difference between the Labor Party and the government, between the coalition and those who start from the position that people are going to fail. I commend this bill to the House and encourage others to follow the example of the member for Throsby in her very good contribution earlier today.

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