Jodie Belyea (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

At first glance, this bill might appear to deal with matters best left to lawyers, administrators and policy experts. But for the people I represent in Dunkley, these changes have practical consequences. They are about whether a parent can get help when their car needs registering, whether a family can manage back-to-school costs, whether a person experiencing hardship can have their circumstances properly considered when a debt is being recovered and whether someone who needs urgent assistance can access access it without unnecessary barriers. Fundamentally, these amendments are about ensuring Australians can have confidence that the social security and family support systems they rely on are lawful, fair and fit for purpose. That is why I am pleased to support this bill.

Before entering this place, I spent more than 30 years working across the community, corporate and philanthropic sectors, including with organisations such as Anglicare, the MEGT Foundation, Family Life and the Women's Spirit Project. Through that work, I saw the difference a well-designed support system can make to a family under pressure. I also saw how quickly a bureaucratic problem can become a personal crisis for someone already doing it tough. That experience informs the way I approach legislation like this. Behind every payment, debt review and reconciliation is a person. There is a household budget, a family trying to make ends meet or a parent getting children to school. That is the real-world context in which we should consider these amendments.

This bill continues the Albanese Labor government's work to address legacy legal and compliance issues in Australia's social security, family assistance and child support systems. Over the last two years, the government has passed four pieces of legislation dealing with historical issues, many of which existed long before this government was elected. Our responsibility is not to ignore these issues because they are complicated. Our responsibility is to fix them.

Through Services Australia's Legal Compliance and Remediation Program, substantial work has been undertaken to identify issues, assess their impacts and determine whether legislative change is required. This bill continues this work. It is largely technical in nature, but technical does not mean unimportant. When we are talking about systems that deliver income support, family payments, childcare assistance and child support to millions of Australians, getting the legislative details right matters. The integrity of these systems depends on laws that reflect how services are actually delivered and on processes that are lawful, fair and transparent. That principle sits at the centre of this bill.

I want to speak particularly about advance payments because they are a good example of how a technical amendment can have a tangible, positive impact on people's lives. Advance payments will allow people receiving income support and family tax benefit to access part of their entitlement as a lump sum and repay it gradually through future payments. For many households, this provides vital flexibility when a large, unavoidable expense arrives. It could be car registration, school expenses or another essential cost that cannot easily be absorbed into an already stretched budget. This is not a small program. In 2024-25, around 2.7 million advance payments were granted.

The bill provides legal certainty for the way Services Australia is administered and ensures that existing service-delivery arrangements can continue. It also supports access through self-service channels and provides greater flexibility around repayment arrangements. Without these changes, some people could face additional requirements to contact Services Australia by phone or attend a service centre to have an advance payment assessed. Anyone who has worked in the community sector understands what that can mean. It can mean time on hold, arranging transport, taking time away from work or finding child care, all while trying to manage an urgent financial need. The people who most need flexibility from government are often those with the least flexibility in their lives. This is why maintaining accessible and efficient pathways is so very important. I also welcome the changes relating to mobility allowance advances and the removal of outdated provisions that no longer reflect modern service-delivery arrangements. The objective is simple: ensure people can access support when they need it through processes that are fair, practical and lawful.

The bill also addresses the review of family tax benefit decisions. Under current arrangements, there are circumstances where a decision already under review cannot be altered even when new or previously unconsidered information becomes available. The amendments will allow decisions to be updated so that the Administrative Review Tribunal or the Guidance and Appeals Panel can consider the most current information available. A review process should be about reaching the right outcome. If new information becomes available, the system should be capable of responding to it. People should not be disadvantaged because relevant information was not considered earlier. This is a basic principle of fairness.

Another important area relates to the use of income information for family tax benefit, childcare subsidy and child support arrangements. The Australian Taxation Office provides pre-issue income information based on a person's self-assessed taxable income before their assessment is finalised. Available evidence shows that this information matches the final tax-assessed amount in more than 99 per cent of cases. The amendment allows Services Australia to use this information for relevant reconciliations and assessments without having to wait unnecessarily for final tax assessments. This will help government systems to work together more efficiently and reduce unnecessary delays for families.

For families in Dunkley, this matters. Dunkley is home to families with very diverse circumstances. We have parents raising children, older Australians, renters, mortgage holders, casual employees, students and people moving between work and income support. Many are feeling the cost-of-living pressures. Many know that one unexpected expense can place significant strain on a household budget. The systems that support these families need to reflect that reality.

The same principle applies to the childcare subsidy. For many families, access to child care is what makes participation in work, study and training possible. It is a critical part of Australia's social and economic infrastructure. Ensuring subsidy reconciliations can be completed efficiently using appropriate income information strengthens confidence in the system and helps families navigate it more easily. The child support amendments similarly provide a sound legislative basis for Services Australia to use pre-issue and provisional income information in child support assessments.

One of the most important parts of the bill, in my view, is schedule 6, which deals with family tax benefit debts. This schedule addresses concerns identified by the Administrative Review Tribunal about decisions to use tax refunds to offset family tax benefit debts. The issue was that automated decision-making, combined with the absence of merits review processes, could result in irreversible debt offset decisions even where people were experiencing hardship. That is something we should take seriously. Technology can make government services more efficient, but efficiency must never come at the expense of fairness. This bill introduces merits review arrangements and creates a mechanism to exclude certain cohorts from offsetting in hardship circumstances. That is an important improvement.

Schedule 7 deals with paid parental leave superannuation. Paid parental leave reflects an important principle—that taking time away from paid employment to care for a newborn child should not unnecessarily undermine a person's long-term financial security. The amendments ensure superannuation contributions are calculated correctly where employer payments are adjusted and ensure employer debt provisions operate as intended.

The bill also includes amendments relating to urgent payments. Anyone who has worked directly with people experiencing financial hardship knows that crisis rarely arrives at convenient times. A broken appliance, an unexpected bill or another urgent expense cannot always wait until the next payment cycle. The social security system must be capable of responding when people need immediate assistance. These amendments align legislation with existing service delivery arrangements and reduce the number of contacts people may need to make to access urgent repayments. That is good administration and a good community service. Every additional barrier in a system disproportionately affects people who are already under pressure. A system that is simpler, more accessible and more responsive is a fairer system.

I would like to end by acknowledging the employees of Services Australia, who work every day to deliver these services. They often assist Australians during some of the most challenging periods of their lives. The legislation we pass in this place directly affects their ability to perform that work effectively. We therefore have a responsibility to ensure the rules governing those systems are clear and workable. The changes contained in this bill provide greater certainty for those administering social security, family assistance and child support systems, benefiting both staff and recipients.

For me, there is a clear connection between this legislation and the community I represent. Dunkley is a community where people look after one another. It has a proud tradition of volunteering, community service and local organisations supporting those in need. This legislation supports those that are most in need.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Sharkie and the members for Dunkley, Sturt and Capricornia would be interested to know that at the moment I'm reading She Shapes History: Guided Walks and Untold Stories About Great Australian Women by Sita Sargeant, available at the parliamentary gift store and all good bookshops. It details the struggle and the achievements that women have had to be heard in this country. The member for Sturt might be interested to know that it includes a piece on the Mary Lee bust on North Terrace, not far from her electorate. On 23 August 1894, the South Australian parliament received its largest-ever petition. It was over 120 metres long and carried more than 11,600 signatures. That would have been a lot at the time. It called for women to be granted the right to vote. I see the member for Boothby here, too. It's not far from her electorate either. I know that Australia has a proud record when it comes to women gaining the vote, as, obviously, they should have.

This book is relevant to the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Technical Changes No. 2) Bill 2026 because, when you read schedule 1—I know this bill is very technical—it means that people can apply for payments online, over the phone or in person. Whilst women are achieving great things in corporate Australia, politics and everything else, they still, largely, run the household and run the household budgets. I know that, when the government and the parliament do anything they can to ease the burden of the compliance and the governance over payments for social security and for family benefits and all that, it does probably help women more than men.

It can be an essential lifeline for people who find themselves in a difficult situation with urgent bills to pay—in particular, women who may well be faced with a situation where they're a single parent running a single-parent family. They have difficulty juggling, in a cost-of-living crisis, as we lurch towards $1 trillion of national debt—and there is a cost-of-living crisis, let's face it—getting across the family assistance benefits and allowing for the automation of those applications for advance payments. That is why the coalition is supporting this bill—because, if the technical aspects of this bill can help those women and the population generally, then it has to be seen to be a good thing.

These advance payments can cover emergencies which, as we all know, come up when they're least expected in our daily lives: home repairs that sometimes cause an urgent need, and you haven't budgeted for them; a washing machine, say, or a fridge or some other device needs replacing; unexpected medical costs; purchasing supplies, such as those things needed for a new job; or just getting the children off to school at the start of each school year.

These proposed changes will now allow—with 'now' being the important word in this sentence—requests for advance payments to be made online, so people can apply for them when they need them and in a way that best suits their needs. And that is important.

When I refer to a new job, it's sad to see that, today, the jobless rate has jumped to 4.5 per cent, as 15,800 Australians have lost work. The Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show a fall in employment of nearly an additional 16,000 in the month of July. When you double that with a cost-of-living crisis and with national debt soaring, it is no wonder that people are very anxious out there. So any support that we can give them through technical changes to the Social Security Act, the family assistance act or anything such as that, is to be supported.

These changes in the first schedule will also support people by introducing more flexibility around their social security repayment amounts. If people find that they are in a position to make their repayments faster, they will be able to do so. That has to be seen to be a good thing. If they need more time to repay the debt, that can be approved, too.

Schedule 2 of the bill is going to amend the Administrative Review Tribunal Act and the family assistance act so that decisions undergoing a review of the Administrative Review Tribunal can be changed to reflect the most up-to-date information as it becomes available. That's important, because, as this book shows, Australian life has evolved a long way, and we've never seen a faster change than the change we've seen just in recent years, with computers becoming faster, with technology changing at an ever quicker pace and with AI coming on board at a rate quicker than, probably, most of us would like. There are so many hardships in just being able to keep up, and so many compliance measures, and legislation always is far more tardy than the technology changes that society endures.

Schedule 2 should expedite decisions that end up at the ART by ensuring that both that tribunal and Services Australia have the most detailed, up-to-date and accurate information on hand when considering appeals. Again, I say that is going to help households; again, that is going to help the general populace.

Schedule 3 is amending the family assistance acts to ensure the agency can use pre-issue income data from the Australian tax office to complete reconciliations of a person's entitlement to family tax benefit.

Here's a shout-out to—would you believe—Assistant Treasurer Mulino. I've had a couple of issues lately. I'm not going to go into them, because they are personal for the people concerned, but one involved a large establishment in my hometown which had an employee who allegedly stole a large sum of money—and that is before the courts, but it caused tax hardships for the owner. In another instance, the owner of a large tourism firm, for one of the great destinations locally, also got into some tax hardship when the person who was doing his tax, in another town, just wasn't up to date with what needed to be done, and there were some anomalies there that just weren't quite what they should have been. I sought the assistance of the Assistant Treasurer. In both instances, the business owners were given the grace and given the permission to be able to right their matters. The tax office was happy. They were satisfied, and everybody came out on top. That is what I call good work from a minister. I want to make that point because sometimes it's difficult, when you are a minister, to get everything balanced and everybody happy. But, when you've got a minister who's prepared to listen and prepared to ensure that things are done properly, you get good outcomes. It really isn't that difficult, quite frankly.

The ATO, according to schedule 3, uses what has been reported by the employer as the income to date to determine what a particular income is. This is updating and fixing this in a good and proper way. Schedule 4 of the bill will amend the family assistance act to allow the pre-issue income data to be used for Child Care Subsidy reconciliations. I heard the member for Dunkley talking about this particular provision, the Child Care Subsidy reconciliations.

Labor will tell you that child care is much better now than it was when the coalition was in government. I appreciate that childcare workers need to be paid at a good and fair rate. I also understand that that Labor talks about the availability of or the number of childcare options, but there is a childcare desert in regional Australia. The access and availability of child care is simply not what it should be. It simply doesn't equate with what is available in metropolitan Australia. When a farming group has availability and access to child care as its No. 1 priority—and this is one of the national farming groups—you know how important an issue this is.

I look at a town such as Lockhart in my electorate. It's not a small town. Last year, it had a real problem when a childcare provider closed and the town looked as though it wasn't going to have access to child care. This is an important issue for families, particularly for women who are either working or trying to get back into the workforce. It has to be available. I know my daughter, Georgina, has just returned to the workforce, and she has a daughter. It is difficult to juggle family responsibilities and work responsibilities, get your child to child care, and afford the same. We hear all the time about how wages are going up.

I'm sure the member for Lyne will agree with me, having spoken to her constituents and done any number—and I commend her—of stops and listening posts in her electorate. A number of people will no doubt have told her, as people tell me in my electorate, that real wages are in fact falling. And they are. This is a real issue, particularly in those single-parent families, where they're balancing and trying to make ends meet. Anything that can be done—certainly, in the childcare space—would be advisable and would be of great assistance.

In schedule 4, stakeholders support the use of pre-issue income data at a general level. Economic Justice Australia and Single Mother Families Australia have raised some concerns about the long-term use of pre-issue income data where it differs from a person's final assessment amount, and that is an issue. I mentioned single mothers before. That is a big issue. I'd strongly encourage the Minister for Social Services and her department to very carefully look at this particular point, because it is absolutely essential and vital that we have correct assessments. A person's final assessment amount should be used as soon as possible to make a determination on their payment entitlement. I know those opposite have gone on about using financial data to retrieve recoveries of amounts—big time. This is a little area in this that does need looking at, and the minister and her department should be doing just that.

Schedule 5 of the bill amends the Child Support (Assessment) Act to allow a person's pre-issue income data to be used for child support assessments. This change is particularly important. Single Mother Families Australia, Relationships Australia and even the Commonwealth Ombudsman are supportive of these changes, because getting child support payments right matters. It does matter. Relationships Australia has said that the use of pre-issue income data is helping to address the 'weaponisation of the child support system' by, they said, 'thwarting a payer's attempts to delay assessment of their tax obligations' by ensuring that we have more current and accurate child support assessments.

We know that, under the Labor government, unfortunately, child support debt has skyrocketed. That's $2 billion that should be in the pockets of parents and carers to raise children. And we are in a cost-of-living crisis. I'm not being partisan about that; I'm just being truthful. Australian families are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table. We know that there are parents out there who sometimes, unfortunately—it's just the way of the world; it's human nature—don't do the right thing, and that has an impact on everything and everyone.

Schedule 6 is amending the family assistance act to enable reviews of decisions to use tax refunds to offset family assistance debts such as the family tax benefit.

This is good legislation. The coalition are supporting it, and we commend the bill to the House.

Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Social security in Australia is underpinned by a simple idea—that, if you fall on hard times, we will be there for you. As Australians, we look after each other, because no Australian should feel like help isn't there when they need it.

We want Australians who are unemployed to be able to concentrate on looking for secure work. We want single parents to be able to put food on the table for their family. We want students to be able to focus on their studies and complete their qualifications, so they can build their careers and contribute to the country. We want new parents to be able to spend precious time with their new baby, but also to be able to continue their career, if and when they want, without what used to be called the 'motherhood penalty'. While superannuation has enabled many Australians to enjoy the retirement they want, those retirees with inadequate superannuation, or no super at all, also need to be supported, financially and in terms of the services they need—often, increasingly.

We are a compassionate country where we look after each other. While there are those that seek to divide us for their own political gain, it is in our compassion and support for each other that Australia finds its strength—a strength that sets us apart from so many countries around the world.

Before coming to this place, I worked in the not-for-profit sector at Vinnies and at Catherine House. Catherine House works for women experiencing homelessness, and the one thing that people who are homeless have in common is poverty. We always said that, for women, this was the perfect storm of gender disadvantage. Many of them were leaving domestic violence relationships or had grown up in a domestic violence household. Older women were often the generation who had had to leave work when they got married or got pregnant. They had little to no superannuation and no savings. After a relationship breakdown, there were often child support issues. Even for younger women, their employment was often affected by gaps in their employment—and, therefore, gaps in their superannuation and career progression—as they had children.

Australia is there for these people, and Australia is there for those who are down on their luck and doing it tough. Our social security system is about giving a helping hand to vulnerable Australians who aren't able to support themselves at this point. It is about guaranteeing a minimum standard of living—a safety net to catch you when you fall—because you should be able to work hard to get ahead, secure in the knowledge that, when life takes a turn, the government will help you; Australia will help you. We're here for each other. Australia's social security is about making sure that Australians are not left behind, because our individual welfare translates to our collective welfare.

The Albanese Labor government understands this and so is absolutely committed to strengthening Australia's social security system. We've increased social security payments through indexation, meaning more than five million Australians will see more money in their bank accounts to support the cost of living. This is on top of the government's $40-a-fortnight increase to working age and student payments.

From the beginning of this year, around one million Australians on the age pension or the disability support pension or receiving the carer pension will also have seen an increase in their fortnightly payment, as will those receiving Commonwealth rent assistance, JobSeeker, Abstudy and the parenting payment. And Australians receiving the age pension, disability support pension and carer payment are set to see asset thresholds lifted, meaning your support payments will not be affected even if you have more assets.

The Albanese Labor government increased Commonwealth rent assistance by over 50 per cent in 2023 and 2024, the first back-to-back increase in Commonwealth rent assistance for more than 30 years. This supports over 1.4 million renters. We've also expanded the eligibility requirements for parenting payment single, raising the cut-off age from eight to 14, and this has benefited 200,000 single parents since 2023. We've increased the family tax benefit through indexation, benefiting 1.2 million families with children.

We've increased the small debt waiver threshold for the first time in 30 years. With indexation, the threshold has increased to $260 and will increase year on year with indexation. This means that Services Australia will no longer spend precious time and government money pursuing Australians already under financial stress for small debts that they may have accidentally incurred, which is also economically inefficient and unviable. The agency is often investing more money recouping funds than it's getting from the debt collection process itself. In 2025-26, 1.2 million debts will have been waived.

The Albanese Labor government has made it easier to access the special circumstances debt waiver for victims-survivors of family, domestic and sexual violence. If victims-survivors' debts are the result of coercion or financial abuse, they may be entitled to a debt waiver. This is on top of the government having made the leaving violence payment permanent—that's over $5,000 in financial assistance for people escaping violence—and legislated 10 days of paid domestic and family violence leave.

From 1 July this year, the government has extended paid parental leave to 26 weeks, and that means parents can access up to $30,000 during their paid leave, or over $1,000 a week. That's six months the parents can spend with their new baby during one of the most important periods of their life and six months during which parents can create long-lasting memories and important attachment. As all parents know, as difficult, stressful and exhausting as this time can be, it's also incredibly rewarding, remarkably fleeting and short lived. It's six months during which parents can plan for their financial futures and their future in work.

Changes to paid parental leave will also mean that the government will now pay a 12 per cent contribution to your superannuation, which will significantly help to close the gender gap in retirement savings for people like those who, as I said earlier, turn up at Catherine House with so little in their superannuation. Women are disproportionately affected when there's a new baby in the family. We often are the primary caregivers, and women are often forced to give up their careers, hold back their careers or take big gaps in order to care for the new baby. The changes will mean that women can be more financially secure now and into the future. It's about supporting women who want to be mothers, not penalising them.

The Albanese Labor government has invested $183 million in the recent budget into strengthening our child support system, because parents and their children should be paid the child support that they're owed. No parent and no child's financial security should be dependent on the whims of an ex-partner deciding whether or not they want to pay their obligated child support.

In December 2024, it was reported that the child support debt was around $1.9 billion. That's $1.9 billion that many parents, usually single parents, are struggling without, and their children are going without. This is unfair to the parent and it's unfair to the children. It's practically criminal when an ex-partner is able to maliciously weaponise the child support system in order to get one over on the other parent irrespective of the impact this has on their own children.

This government's changes—the biggest changes in the child support system in nearly 20 years—will crack down on this type of financial abuse. It will mean parents have more choice and flexibility in how funds are collected from the other parent. For parents who have private collection arrangements, better protections will be afforded to them. It will mean expanding the use of employer withholding or wage garnishment as the default payment method. It will mean increasing the use of departure prohibition orders so that parents with large debts will be compelled to agree to a payment arrangement before being allowed to travel abroad. It will mean prosecuting individuals who refuse to lodge their tax returns to avoid paying child support. It will mean stronger powers for Services Australia to collect unpaid child support from private collection arrangements when parents decide to change to the agency collect system. These are measures about protecting vulnerable parents and, importantly, children from financial coercion and manipulation. Parents and children deserve the certainty that they will be paid the funds that they are owed when they are owed.

The amendments before us today are largely technical, but they speak further to the government's commitment to strengthening Australia's social safety net. They speak to the government's commitment to making social security more accessible and better able to help Australians in need. Our social security system needs to be robust and fit for purpose. We must protect its integrity as it seeks to protect Australians.

The amendments resolve some legacy legal compliance issues found in, for example, advance payments. Advanced payments are granted to recipients of income support payments for necessarily larger expenses—for example, an unexpected medical costs or school expenses. Lump sum payments are issued, and the advance payment is recouped in the recipient's future payments. In 2024-25, 2.7 million advance payments were granted, and these amendments will provide legal certainty to Services Australia administering these advanced payments. It will remove outdated requirements that, for example, Services Australia must be satisfied that the repayments for an advance payment won't cause or contribute to the recipient's financial hardship. These amendments will also provide legal certainty for advance payments obtained through self-service channels and give recipients more options to be able to repay their advance payment later. They will ensure that recipients will no longer have to go to a Services Australia office in order to have their application for advance payment assessed and approved. This will reduce long wait times and delays when advance payments are most urgently needed.

The amendments will also allow Services Australia to come to their own decision on a support payment, even if there is a case before the Australian Review Tribunal or the Guidance and Appeals Panel. This will save individuals time and money where a positive determination on an appeal can be made outside of an ART review process.

These amendments build on the Albanese government's commitment to strengthening Australia's social security system, a social security system with improved access and better support; a fairer, more transparent and more efficient system; a robust system with integrity; a social security system that works for Australians and not against them; and a system that reinforces Australia's social guarantee: when you fall on hard times, we will be there to help you get back on your feet. We're there for each other and we back each other. I commend the bill to the House.

Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

The Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Technical Changes No. 2) Bill 2026 is described as technical, and in many respects it is. Across nine schedules, it amends social security, family assistance, paid parental leave, administrative review and child support laws, and I welcome the practical reforms that will make the system easier to access, more accurate and more accountable.

Whilst this bill presents a positive step forward when it comes to child support, it doesn't, unfortunately, achieve the systemic reform that is urgently required. Child support is money owed to children. Having been a family law barrister, I have too often seen firsthand the impact of a dispute between parents and how that overflows and impacts the lives of children. It is often weaponised and used by either or both parties, and that is simply wrong.

We must remember what the purpose of child support is. It's to ensure children are financially supported for all of their essential needs. It pays for rent, for groceries, for school costs, for clothes and for the everyday costs of raising a child.

As a former family law barrister, I've seen firsthand how financial disputes after separation can be used to maintain control. Separation does not always end abuse. Sometimes the abuse simply changes form. A payment becomes a bargaining tool, a tax return is delayed, income is minimised, a parent is pressured into private collect because they fear conflict, and the parent caring for the children is left trying to fill the gap—the financial gap, the real reality of meeting those needs of children. This is why I have repeatedly raised child support reform with the government.

The child support system is broken if money owed to children can be used as a threat, a bargaining tool or a way to maintain control. There are systemic issues and they require significant reform. Schedule 1 in this bill amends the Family Assistance Act. It allows greater automation of social security and family tax benefit advances, including online applications and more flexibility around repayments for people experiencing financial hardship. That's a welcome step, although automation must never remove a human oversight pathway where a decision is complex or risks causing harm.

Schedule 2 changes the review process for some social services decisions. This allows certain decisions to be altered while a second review is before the Administrative Review Tribunal so new information can be reflected sooner. Schedules 3 and 4 clarify the use of pre-issued income data from the ATO for family tax benefit and child care subsidy reconciliations. This would allow Services Australia to use more up-to-date income information before a final tax assessment is issued. That should mean earlier, more accurate calculations and potentially fewer large debts later. But it's really important that provisional information must remain provisional. Final information should replace it promptly with clear review rights.

Schedule 5 is my key focus when I look at this bill because it expands the use of pre-issued income data in child support assessments. It allows the child support registrar to use more current information to determine or vary a parent's adjusted taxable income where a tax return has not yet been formally assessed. One way the child support system can be manipulated quite frequently is a party will delay lodging tax returns. By delaying tax returns or withholding accurate income information, it essentially distorts what the assessment for child support payable is.

We need to address that issue because at the moment, if the system is waiting for a final tax assessment while a paying parent delays, the reality is children are waiting too. But it also creates irregularity and ultimately unfairness to the payee parent. Further delay in lodging tax returns and minimisation of income leads much too often to mothers being found to be liable to the ATO and then the Commonwealth for family support overpayment. This is wrong, and the government really needs to pursue the monies owed for any overpayment in relation to the Commonwealth family support payment against the parent owing child support. It should not be pursuing those payments against the payee parent. It's simply wrong. It is an extension of financial abuse. It is essentially systems abuse perpetrated by, ironically, the ATO and the Commonwealth.

We know the scale of the problem. Around $2 billion in child support is unpaid across Australia, owed by around 229,000 parents. Around 83 per cent of recipient parents are women, so unpaid child support overwhelmingly affects women and, ultimately, it's the children who go without. The government's own survey of separated parents should be a wake-up call. Around half of the families in the child support system, including a approximately 500,000 children, rely on private collect, and almost one in five recipients using private collect agreed to that arrangement to avoid conflict with or violence from a former partner. For people to understand, the alternative is automatic garnishee of the wage of the parent that's assessed as owing child support. So before they get their payslip, the amount has been taken off for child support payments automatically. Parents sometimes get angry and abusive as a result of that process, so private collect is essentially a good faith arrangement of assuming that's going to be done directly. What happens? Child support is not paid.

More than half of those that responded to the government survey were underpaid by an average of around $2,000 a year. One in four received no child support in a year, and one in three reported never, sometimes or rarely receiving the child support they were owed. It's a significant structural failure, and the consequences are largely felt by women and children. Nearly 300,000 families lose around $810 million each year in family payments because the system will then treat child support as though it has been received, even though it has not. Again, it's coming back to understanding.

The Commonwealth family support payments are done after taking into account what the system assumes has been received in child support payments on the basis of either lodged tax returns—reported incomes—or assessments. What happens when a party withholds an assessment, say, for a couple of years? A preliminary assessment has been done. The income is then lodged at a later date and is different, and it will often result in there being an overpayment in that Commonwealth family support payment. What it means is that often the mother is then found to be in debt to the Commonwealth for overpayment of that family support payment. It means it impacts their credit ratings and it impacts their ability to get rental accommodations. It has really significant impacts. It puts additional stress on parents that are already struggling to make ends meet.

The system is wrong. The recovery of that Commonwealth family support payment should absolutely be pursued against the parent who owes the child support payment, not the other way around. What happens is the mother is left without the child support owed to her by the former partner but then also has her family tax benefit reduced or faces that Commonwealth debt based on money she's never received. And the government knows this; the system knows this, but nonetheless has, I believe, an internal assessment that it's easier to recover that debt against those single parents, usually the mothers, than it is to do it against the parent owing the child support. It's deeply unfair. In the context of family and domestic violence, this is just a continuation of financial abuse.

It could be changed. It is within the government's power to change. I've raised it with the minister, but, of course, it has a budgetary bottom line, because it's easier to recover from the parent to who it is owed. Schedule 6 is therefore particularly important. It allows a merit review for decisions to offset tax refunds or family assistance to top up amounts against family tax benefit debts. I welcome those review rights, but the government should go further.

Victims-survivors of family and domestic violence and people whose family tax benefit debts arise specifically because child support was not actually paid or because a change of a provisional income assessment has resulted in an overpayment of that family tax benefit should be explicitly protected. If a parent is owed child support, they should not then be pursued by the Commonwealth for a debt created on the assumption that it has been received. Where a debt arises because the liable parent failed to pay child support or has delayed their disclosure or manipulated the system, the government should focus their recovery on the person responsible. It should not compound the harm to the parent already carrying the burden of care without the owed child support for them to then carry the burden of a debt to the Commonwealth.

Scheduled 7, 8 and 9 make further technical changes. Schedule 7 ensures paid parental leave and superannuation contributions which reflect a person's actual entitlement. Schedule 8 creates a limit of 10 payments on urgent social security payments is triggered, and schedule 9 corrects cross-referencing errors and clarifies review arrangements. So there are a lot of technicalities in this legislation, but it is not grappling with the fundamental unfairness and wrongness of this system.

The government has committed $182.6 million over four years, with ongoing funding to improve compliance in the Child Support Scheme. I welcome that investment because it's long overdue, but let's get real: it's like a drop in the bucket of what's really needed. Better compliance requires much more than better data. We need to change the laws. We need stronger enforcement of unpaid child support. We need safer pathways out of Private Collect where coercion or violence is present. The Family Tax Benefit system needs to be fixed. It needs to be decoupled from child support, or the government has to pursue debts against the parent owing the child support debt, so parents are not penalised for child support they have never received. And we need Services Australia to be properly resourced to identify abuse and support parents without pushing them back into an unsafe contact.

The bill can make assessments faster, some decisions more accurate and review rights clearer. They're all worthwhile reforms, but the child support system is decades old. It was not designed for the modern environment, in particular with the recognition of coercive control and financial abuse. When that is front of mind, this system is antiquated and dangerous.

So the reform challenge for the government is that it really needs to overhaul the child support system. Child support can't be treated as a leverage in a dispute. I acknowledge I've been a member of inquiries where many parents owing child support, often fathers, feel that it is used as leverage against time for care of children. It is a really complex calculation, as to how we arrive at that child support, the cost owed to children. In many circumstances, you have parents going on to have additional families, and that results in a complete distortion of how child support is then owed for parents from an earlier relationship. Yet we shouldn't have a situation where the adequate amount to sustain and support a child through their upbringing and schooling is somehow reduced or mitigated by parents' decisions to have further children. The needs of those first children remain the same. They have not changed. So child support really does need an overall review and assessment.

The government must not mistake technical repair for systemic reform. It now has its own evidence showing where the system is failing. The next step must be a child support system that prevents coercion, enforces payment and ensures children receive the support that they are entitled to. I really urge the government and the minister to address this area of financial control, which is put overwhelmingly on women. Often the Commonwealth is culprit in this situation, in a system that pursues single parents for a debt that they have not created.

Ash Ambihaipahar (Barton, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Technical Changes No. 2) Bill 2026. Before I was elected into this place, I spent over a good 10 years as an employment industrial relations lawyer. I also spent a couple of years working at the St Vincent de Paul Society, in New South Wales specifically, as a regional director. In that capacity, I was looking after Vinnies support centres, van services and membership across a large pocket of New South Wales. In those two capacities, I did see first-hand what happens when the system that people rely on to keep a roof over their head and food on the table doesn't quite work out in the way that it was meant to. I recall seeing the anxiety in particular in the people that I was assisting with my team when a payment didn't arrive when it should have or when a debt notice landed with no clear way to have it looked at properly. That experience shapes how I think about this bill in particular. It is, yes, a technical bill. But 'technical' does not mean 'trivial.' 'Technical' means the difference between a family in Kogarah getting their family tax benefit reconciled in time and, if it's done wrong, having to claw back a debt from people who can least afford it.

The bill resolves a series of legacy legal and compliance issues that have built up over time in our social security family payment and child support systems, many of them stretching back well before this government came to office. It is the fifth piece of legislation in about two years addressing these historical issues. This is exactly the kind of work that really restores trust in the foundation upon which the whole safety net rests. Without it, people will stop believing the system is there for them and they will stop reaching out for help when they actually need it the most.

Let me start with schedule 1, on advance payments. For people in my electorate of Barton, from Hurstville to Kingsgrove, Rockdale, Kogarah, Bexley and Carlton, advance payments are often the difference between meeting a large, unavoidable cost—

Debate adjourned.