Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Siewert, we believe this isn't the appropriate place to describe that discretion. Therefore we think the amendment is not necessary. I can confirm that, when we determine payments that are paid in respect of a particular period, consideration can be given to a number of factors, including the recipient's employment, the payment frequency, individual circumstances, hardship, et cetera. In drafting the legislation we quite purposefully avoided defining some terms in order to give the flexibility to enable us to deal with unique circumstances. As we all know, whilst the majority of people are paid in a reasonably uniform way there are a number of people who aren't. Employment often changes; we've seen significant changes in the nature of work over recent times. So we wanted to make sure we had the maximum flexibility built into that discretion. For that reason we thought it best to make sure that the issues and the details were set out in the guide as opposed to the primary legislation. So we don't support this amendment, because we believe that it will have a negative impact on our ability to have greater flexibility in what we do.