Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I sincerely thank all senators for their contributions to this debate. With the passage of this legislation, the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Technical Changes No. 2) Bill 2025, our social security system will be stronger, it will be fairer and it will be more responsive to the needs of the Australian community.

I want to touch on some of the very important measures this bill contains. The bill expands access to the special circumstances waiver to protect victims-survivors of financial abuse and coercion. These debt reforms will make a big difference to many women who have suffered financial coercion and abuse. In doing so, I want to recognise the important work of many people in this chamber and in the House on really highlighting the importance of this issue and the measures that can be taken to respond.

The bill also increases the small debt waiver threshold to $250, to be indexed annually in line with the consumer price index. This change will wipe $1.2 million in under-determined debts from the backlog in 2025-26 alone. In doing so, the government is sparing many thousands of low-income Australian families the stress of being pursued for those small debts.

The bill also takes a fair and reasonable approach to tackling the longstanding error known as income apportionment. By validating the past use of income apportionment, we spare taxpayers the cost of having government recalculate millions of debts going back decades. This validation recognises that a debt was likely still owed, but it was often miscalculated at the edges. The bill provides, as senators have recognised, the important Income Apportionment Resolution Scheme, which has been carefully designed to remedy this issue. The scheme provides a clear pathway for those affected to receive resolution payments. However, no-one is obliged to participate in this scheme or is prevented from exercising any legal rights to pursue a claim relating to their debt.

Finally, I want to address the nature of the measures that we are taking to restrict social security payments to people who have outstanding arrest warrants for serious violent or sexual offences, because I want to put it on the record what this measure does and the types of people that we are talking about. It is very clear in the bill that we are looking to provide for the use of benefit restriction notices so that people who are subject to an outstanding arrest warrant for a serious violent or sexual offence can have their social security and family payments cancelled. This is a power only for the most serious of circumstances. I want to repeat that just so it is clear. It is only to be used in the most serious of circumstances. This change will help uphold the integrity of our social security system, and it means, to be clear, that those who are accused of serious violent and sexual crimes and are evading police cannot benefit from the social security system. We as a government believe that is an important measure to take.

I want to again thank all senators for their contributions. I want to thank all of the people who contributed to this bill. I want to thank the minister for bringing these measures forward. In summing up, I want to thank again the many women in this place for their very hard work that has resulted in the financial coercion and abuse measures, because I know that an enormous amount of work has gone on on both sides of the chamber and in the House to make sure that we can provide, in our social security system, these protections for victims-survivors of financial abuse and coercion—an incredibly important step for this parliament to take. Thank you.