Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take a few minutes today to present a petition found to be in order by the Standing Committee on Petitions. The petition was instigated by Lyla O'Hara, a Mornington resident, and supported by 221 signatories, seeking support of the government to amend the guidelines and provide financial assistance for the management of special disability trusts.

The petition draws the attention of this House to the restrictive guidelines and the onerous costs involved in establishing and administering special disability trusts that are designed to provide for the care of a citizen with a disability into the future, particularly when a family has one or more disabled members. This petition urges the House to connect with the experience of people with a loved one who has profound disabilities and urges the government to amend the guidelines for special disability trusts to make this vehicle for the provision of funding for the future care of a citizen who has a disability more accessible, more practical and more financially viable and ask the government to consider making financial assistance available for the establishment and recurrent costs of special disability trusts.

These trusts are a terrific idea and an important mechanism for families to provide for the future care of a disabled family member. They were initiated by former coalition minister and dear friend of mine, the honourable Kay Patterson. The legislation providing for these trusts was passed in September 2006. Earlier in this sitting, on 10 May, the government introduced a bill to the Senate, and the Senate passed some amendments that sought to relax the purpose and work capacity tests for these special disability trusts in order to make them more flexible to trustees. These changes are welcome. They were in response to a report of inquiry from the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs titled Building trust: supporting families through disability trusts.

The committee made a number of recommendations to increase the appeal of these special disability trusts. These trusts are a vehicle whereby families can put resources into trust for the future cost of care of a loved one, something we should be encouraging and something that needs the support and the more favourable tax treatments that these trusts offer. But they are found to be incredibly complex and demanding to establish, and they come with some expense to maintain their operations. The bill on Tuesday dealt with only a small number of the recommendations from the inquiry. I encourage the government to turn its mind to the balance of those recommendations.

When these special disability trusts were first implemented it was expected that over four years there would be around 5,000 trusts established. Unfortunately, the uptake of the trusts has not been as strong as expected. As of 30 September last year, only 119 had been set up. I acknowledge that the provisions of the bill passed should assist some of the concerns and address them in part, but more still needs to be done to make these trusts viable and to increase the number of people making use of them. They involve the creation and support of the trusts. This petition aims to say, 'We've had some practical experiences with these trusts, and they are sharing with the government the observation about the difficulties in setting them up and the recurrent costs involved in maintaining them.' I am hopeful the government will listen to these very practical ideas. We see families doing all they can, all we could hope for, in providing for the care and ongoing support of a loved one. Surely that is something we should be encouraging. The trusts are designed to give a tax-effective vehicle to achieve that goal, but if they are administratively too complex to establish and quite expensive to maintain, then that purpose and that very virtuous objective is undermined.

It relates to another area of concern which is one of special accommodation for people with disabilities. It is a big challenge particularly for ageing parents who have dedicated so much of their life to the care of a loved one and may no longer be able to care for them. For many of those ageing carers their biggest concern is, 'What will happen to my loved one when I'm not here?' This is an enormous concern. As a worried parent said to me, 'What will happen to my child when I am no longer able to look after them?'

In the work that the Productivity Commission has done on looking at the national disability insurance scheme, it quotes some examples. Garry Burge said:

I find myself dealing with anxiety and loneliness and the possibility of when my parents grow older, that I will have no support and services available.

Thankfully, in our community Community Lifestyle Accommodation has stepped up to instigate the building of residential accommodation for people with disabilities. The Mornington Peninsula Shire Council has a terrific block of land in Baxter, well suited for a facility to accommodate 25 people. My dear friend and former colleague, Joe Cauchi, instigated a lot of work under Habitat for Humanity whereby land was made available for these kinds of projects. Perhaps the shire could carry forward that good work and make this land available for Community Lifestyle Accommodation's proposal. I hereby present the petition.

The petition read as follows—

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives

This petition of Carers and Friends of citizens with a disability draws to the attention of the House: the restrictive guidelines and onerous costs involved in establishing and administering Special Disability Trusts to provide for the care of citizens with a disability into the future, particularly where a family has more than one disabled member.

We therefore ask the House to encourage more families to plan for the future care of their relatives with a disability, by urging the Government to:

(1) amend the guidelines for Special Disability Trusts to make this vehicle for the provision of funding for the future care of a person with a disability more accessible, practical and financially viable; and

(2) to consider making financial assistance available for the establishment and recurrent costs of Special Disability Trusts

from 455 citizens

Petition received.