Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I indicate that Labor will support the amendment. The minister’s assurances are similar to those that were given to senators, including Labor Party members, in a briefing by the department organised by the minister’s office—for which I thank him—but, quite frankly, they are not reassuring enough. I am concerned that a lot of those reviews do not go to the heart of the matter, which is the impact on families from 1 July 2008, when—bang!—their conditions change. I think we do need to know, before that date, what the impact of the changes will be. I do not want to have a situation where the government tells us three years later, after all its reviews have occurred, that there were problems, people did suffer and, ‘We are going to implement some improvements some time down the track.’ That is the greatest fear.

Labor have supported the Parkinson review and its implementation package. We have given bipartisan support. We have tried not to politicise what are very major changes to the child support system, but on every occasion we have sought to stress our concern about the impact on families who may be disadvantaged under the new formula and the effect on people caring for kids who will have less income as a result of the changes. They are the issues that the Parkinson review identified, warning about those changes.

It seems to me we have an obligation as a parliament to be right on top of those issues and to make sure that we have the ability to make an appropriate response, and I am not convinced that the government is organised in such a way that it can do that. I would think that as a sign of good faith, given the support the government has had from the parliament on these issues, it should be able to commit to a process that is much more rigorous and allows far more speed in analysing what occurs. I take on board all the arguments about the 700,000 cases that will have to be reviewed and the complexity of that; in fact, I still have my doubts that you will get there by 1 July 2008. With no disrespect to the staff involved, the reality is that huge government system changes have not gone smoothly in the past. If this one goes smoothly, it will probably be the first, and it is a very complex system the government is seeking to implement.

So I do not underestimate the problems. I do not question that the government is not in a position to provide all the information we would like to see now in terms of the impact on people. Other than the modelling that was done for the Parkinson task force, we are unable to go further at this stage—and I accept, when I am assured that is the case, that that is accurate advice. But I know that in the first stage of the implementation of the reforms, when the high-income earner issue was addressed, a number of families got very little notice that their income was going to be reduced. I got a number of letters from people who were seen in the system generally as being better off because the main income earner, the non-resident income earner, was on a high salary and therefore the amount of child support paid was quite high. Nevertheless, there was a substantial cut in income to the resident carer, even though that came off a high base. We all live according to the means that we have at any one time and, for a number of those people, those changes did apply pressure. Most people, like me, live on the basis of spending 10 per cent more than they earn, it seems. But the reality for them was a sudden drop in income and a need to make adjustments to their lives with very little warning—and they were rightly concerned about that.

What I really want the government to focus on is that that is the threat that will come with these changes. That is the issue that the parliament and the government have got to be right on top of, and the assurances the government have provided to me are not sufficient to ease my concern. They are not sufficient to ease the concerns of Labor senators and members more generally, and we attempted in our second reading amendment to raise the same sorts of issues that Senator Siewert has—the same sorts of issues that members from both sides have been concerned about. The government response is not adequate. I do not impute bad motives to them, but, come the day that the changes hit, there will be problems for people, and I think the parliament ought to know as much about those as we can beforehand and the government ought to have considered what they can do to help. So I will be supporting the amendment moved by Senator Siewert, but I will also be letting the government know that this is not going to go away and we are going to be constantly focusing on this issue until we get a more adequate response.

Question negatived.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

Bill reported with amendments; report adopted.