Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

I move:

That these bills be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speeches read as follows—

ALBURY-WODONGA DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION (ABOLITION) BILL 2014

This Bill abolishes the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation by repealing the Albury-Wodonga Development Act 1973. The Bill also provides for a number of consequential amendments to other Acts and sets out transitional provisions relating to the transfer of assets and liabilities from the Corporation to the Commonwealth.

The Government announced as part of the 2014-15 Budget that it would be delivering smaller, more rational Government involving the abolition or merger of Government bodies where possible to reduce the cost of government administration for taxpayers. The reforms are expected to deliver net savings over the forward estimates period.

As part of the second phase of the smaller government agenda, the Government decided that the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation would be abolished with its remaining property management functions consolidated into the Commonwealth, as represented by the Department of Finance.

The Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation (Abolition) Bill 2014 provides for the transfer to the Commonwealth of the remaining assets and liabilities of the Corporation at the time of its abolition. These transferred assets and liabilities will be managed by the Department of Finance.

The date of the abolition of the Corporation will be set by proclamation but in the absence of this will occur six months following the date the Act receives Royal Assent, or by 1 July 2015, whichever date falls later. This transitional period allows for an orderly wind-up and transition of the Corporation's remaining activities before its abolition.

The Corporation ceased development activities in 2004 and in the interim has been preparing for its wind-up through the on-going sale of its remaining land interests. This Bill will bring to a close the operations of the Corporation.

I commend the Bill (to the House).

AUSTRALIAN EDUCATION AMENDMENT BILL 2014

The coalition government is committed to supporting the delivery of quality schooling and providing funding and regulatory certainty for all Australian schools.

The Australian Education Act 2013 is the principal legislation by which the Australian Government provides financial assistance to approved authorities for government and non-government schools. It enables expenditure of Australian Government funding for schools and related payments, and secures the reform and accountability objectives to improve the quality of education in Australia.

The Act commenced on 1 January 2014. Australian Government funding for schools is provided to state and territory governments that are then required to distribute these funds in line with the requirements of the Act. In 2014, around $14 billion will be paid to government and non-government school authorities under the Act.

This bill will create a mechanism to enable payments to be made under the Government's Indigenous Boarding Initiative, an initiative designed to provide additional recurrent funding in 2014 to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander boarding students at non-government schools. The additional recurrent funding will be used by schools to deliver improved services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander boarding students and provide additional support to boost school attendance and engagement.

The bill will also provide funding certainty for certain independent special schools and special assistance schools that would otherwise see their funding reduced to the schooling resource standard from 2015. Instead, these schools will now transition towards the standard consistent with other schools.

Since the Act was passed by the 43rd Parliament, a number of errors and oversights made during the original drafting have been identified which affect the proper administration of the legislation. This bill will correct these and provide greater certainty for schools about their funding entitlements for the current funding quadrennium.

Turning to the specifics of the bill:

Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 separate the measures that will come into effect at different times. Schedule 1 contains those amendments that will commence on Royal Assent, and Schedule 2 contains those amendments that need to be backdated to operate from the start of the Australian Education Acton 1 January 2014. The need for amendments in Schedule 2 to apply retrospectively from 1 January 2014 is to ensure that funding calculations and payments made for 2014 are correct, so that all schools are funded as intended.

The bill will create a new mechanism to make payments to schools in prescribed circumstances. The Regulations will contain the type of information the Minister must have regard to in exercising this new mechanism, both in terms of eligibility and calculation of funding, and be subject to review and disallowance by the Parliament.

In the first instance, this new mechanism will enable payment of the Australian Government's Indigenous Boarding Initiative. The initiative was announced in the 2014-15 Budget and will provide interim support for non-government schools with more than 50 Indigenous boarding students from remote or very remote areas, or where 50 per cent or more of their boarding students are Indigenous and from remote or very remote areas. This additional funding will assist non-government boarding schools to provide these students with a high quality education and support educational opportunities for Indigenous students.

The bill allows for the correction of errors and oversights that have become apparent since the Act became operative on 1 January 2014. The bill will ensure that certain special schools or special assistance schools will not have their funding reduced in 2015. Currently, the safety net in place will disappear and these schools will have their funding immediately reduced to the schooling resource standard from 1 January 2015 because the current work with the states and territories to develop nationally consistent data has not yet been completed. The amendment will provide funding certainty by providing $2.4 million in funding for next year and ensuring these schools transition to the schooling resource standard in a manner consistent with other schools until the revised student with disability loadings are available.

The bill will address a gap in the current Act dealing with the transitional arrangements to ensure that schools moving between approved authorities will be neither financially advantaged nor disadvantaged. A school moving to another approved authority will have, as a starting point for its Commonwealth funding entitlement under that approved authority, the amount that would have applied had the school not moved authorities.

The bill will correct the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA) index values for locations of schools, so that schools in inner regional locations are properly identified as such.

The bill will correct a significant error that would see, for some school authorities, the Commonwealth liable to pay the entire amount (both Commonwealth and notional state share) calculated for an authority, rather than the Commonwealth's share of that calculated amount.

The bill will insert the final 2014 amount for capital funding paid to Block Grant Authorities. This amount will be the basis for future capital funding amounts for Block Grant Authorities.

The bill will address a minor technical error and correct a cross-reference regarding the pro-rating of recurrent funding.

The bill will provide greater flexibility and options for managing any non-compliance that occurred under the previous legislation, the Schools Assistance Act 2008, should compliance action be taken.

The bill clarifies the operation of reviewable decisions and will correct errors relating to who can apply for a review of a decision under the Act.

Finally, the bill will amend the Australian Education (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Act 2013 to extend to 1 January 2016, or a later date determined by the Minister, the commencement of school improvement planning requirements under the Act to provide regulatory certainty to schools while consultations with stakeholders occur in relation to possible adjustments to this requirement.

This bill supports all Australian schools by correcting errors and omissions in the existing Act to ensure effective and efficient administration. Taking action to fix these problems will strengthen the legislative framework that underpins the Australian Government's significant investment in schools and contribute to improving the quality of school education in Australia.

DENTAL BENEFITS LEGISLATION AMENDMENT BILL 2014

I am pleased today to introduce the Dental Benefits Legislation Amendment Bill 2014.

This Bill amends the Health Insurance Act 1973 and the Dental Benefits Act 2008 to allow for a better process for waiving debts for dentists under the former Medicare Chronic Disease Dental Scheme—dentists who did nothing more than make minor paperwork errors and who have been waiting too long for adequate resolution.

The Chronic Disease Dental Scheme was set up by the current Prime Minister in 2007, when he was health Minister, and provided access to benefits of up to $4,250 over two calendar years for patients with chronic health conditions. 80 per cent of people who accessed this scheme were concession card holders. It was our country's biggest ever investment into dental care.

This scheme provided much needed dental treatment – in fact more than 20 million services to more than one million patients—before the previous Labor government closed it down for political ends in 2012.

In opposition I offered to compromise on design changes to the scheme which were never entertained by the then Government. Their desire was simply to destroy a scheme helping Australians solely because its architect was Tony Abbott.

The Chronic Disease Dental Scheme included a technical reporting requirement; a requirement that necessitated dentists provide treatment plans to general practitioners, along with a quote and treatment plan to patients, prior to commencing treatment.

The then Government sought to use the dentists technical oversight as a means of discrediting the scheme, and it was a shameful act.

Dentists who did not meet these reporting requirements have been pursued for repayment of the full amount of the Medicare benefits paid under the scheme although, in most cases, these dentists met all the other requirements of the scheme and provided much needed services to patients. They were simply used by Labor as political pawns.

I made it clear previously in this House that recovery of the full benefit was an excessively severe punishment given that the only error these hard working professionals made was overlooking a paperwork requirement.

The Department of Human Services sought to redress this issue by applying to the Minister for Finance to waive these debts under section 34 of the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997.

However, this process has so far been extremely time consuming and resource intensive for the Departments of Finance and Human Services. It has also created anxiety and uncertainty for dentists who have been waiting for long periods of time to find out if their debts have been waived.

This bill will relieve the uncertainty for dentists by allowing faster processing of the waivers. It does so by allowing the Chief Executive of Medicare to waive the debts of those dentists who did not meet the paperwork requirements without the need to go through the current lengthy process.

Let me be clear—this amendment will not excuse those dentists who did not comply with other legal requirements of the scheme or who committed fraud. Only those dentists who provided services in good faith will be eligible to have their debt waived. And we know that these dentists are in the majority.

Dentists who, in good faith, did the right thing by their patients and provided them with much needed services.

I turn now to the Child Dental Benefits Schedule. The programme commenced on 1 January 2014 and provides access to benefits for basic dental services to children aged 2-17 years. The total benefit entitlement is capped at $1,000 per child over a two calendar year period.

The CDBS has a means test, which requires receipt of Family Tax Benefit Part A or a relevant Australian Government payment.

This bill amends the Health Insurance Act 1973 and the Dental Benefits Act 2008 to introduce critical changes for the efficient operation of the Child Dental Benefits.

To ensure that compliance audits of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule are more efficient and effective, this bill introduces amendments which will bring the compliance framework for the Child Dental Benefits Schedule into greater alignment with Medicare's compliance framework.

It does so by including the power to compel a provider to comply with a request to produce documents to substantiate the payment of benefits.

These powers in this bill will enable the Chief Executive of Medicare or a relevant officer of the Department of Human Services to give a notice to a practitioner, requiring them to produce documents to a practitioner, or another relevant person, to confirm appropriate Medicare claiming is occurring.

Penalties will apply to individuals who fail to comply with a notice.

The bill also amends the Health Insurance Act 1973 and the Dental Benefits Act 2008 so that the provisions of the Professional Services Review scheme can be applied to any dental services provided under the Child Dental Benefits Schedule.

The Professional Services Review is an independent authority which examines suspected cases of inappropriate practice referred to it by the Department of Human Services.

The Professional Services Review can currently investigate cases of inappropriate practice under the Medicare programme and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Together, these critical amendments to the Child Dental Benefits Schedule will make the Schedule more efficient, ensure that Commonwealth funding is being used appropriately, and promote a more consistent compliance structure for both Medicare and dental programmes.

Lastly, the Bill makes a number of technical amendments to ensure the efficient and effective operation of both the Dental Benefits Act and the Child Dental Benefits Schedule.

This Government is committed to improving health outcomes for Australians, as well as ensuring efficient and effective delivery of services. This Bill does just that.

SOCIAL SERVICES AND OTHER LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (2014 BUDGET MEASURES NO. 4) BILL 2014

This Bill reintroduces several measures previously introduced in the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 1) Bill 2014 and the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 2) Bill 2014.

The first reintroduced measure will implement some changes to Australian Government payments. Firstly, from 1 July 2015, indexation of the income free areas for all working age allowances (other than student payments), and the income test free area for Parenting Payment Single, will be paused for three years.

From Royal Assent, Parenting Payment Single will be indexed to the Consumer Price Index only, by removing benchmarking to Male Total Average Weekly Earnings.

From 1 July 2015, indexation of several Family Tax Benefit free areas will be paused for three years.

Lastly, from 1 January 2015, indexation of the income free areas and other means-test thresholds for student payments, including the student income bank limits, will be paused for three years.

The Bill will introduce four family payment reforms from 1 July 2015. The first is to maintain the standard FTB child rates for two years in the maximum and base rate of Family Tax Benefit Part A and the maximum rate of Family Tax Benefit Part B.

The second measure will revise the Family Tax Benefit end-of-year supplements to their original values and cease indexation.

Family Tax Benefit Part B will be limited to families with children under six years of age, with transitional arrangements applying to current recipients with children above the new age limit for two years.

A new allowance will be introduced for single parents on the maximum rate of Family Tax Benefit Part A for each child aged six to 12 years inclusive, and not receiving Family Tax Benefit Part B.

The Bill will extend and simplify the ordinary waiting period for all working age payments from 1 January 2015.

Both the Pensioner Education Supplement and the Education Entry Payment will be ceased from 1 January 2015.

From 1 January 2015, the Bill will extend Youth Allowance (other) to 22 to 24 year olds in lieu of Newstart Allowance and Sickness Allowance. Young people with full capacity will be required to learn, earn or Work for the Dole from 1 January 2015.

Lastly, from 1 January 2015, the Bill will remove the three months' backdating of disability pension under the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986.

This Bill forms part of a package of Bills support the sustainability of the social security system and the nation's Budget.

SOCIAL SERVICES AND OTHER LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (SENIORS SUPPLEMENT CESSATION) BILL 2014 – 2RS

This Bill will reintroduce one measure from the 2014 Budget, which was originally introduced as Schedule 1 to the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 1) Bill 2014.

The measure will, from 20 September 2014, cease payment of the Seniors Supplement for holders of the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card or the Veterans' Affairs Gold Card.

The measure will help ensure that payments to senior Australians remain targeted to those who need them the most.

However, other benefits will continue to be available to cardholders, including discounts on medicines under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, health safety net thresholds, and lower fees on medical services.

Recognising the Government's commitment to abolish the carbon tax, while keeping in place the associated payment increases, this Bill will rename the former Clean Energy Supplement as the Energy Supplement, and maintain it at current levels by permanently removing indexation of the supplement.

The new Energy Supplement will be available to people who formerly received the Clean Energy Supplement in association with their main income support payment, family payment or Veterans' Affairs payment, or through being a holder of the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card or an eligible holder of the Gold Card.

SOCIAL SERVICES AND OTHER LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (STUDENT MEASURES) BILL 2014

This Bill will reintroduce, with certain modifications, two measures relating to student entitlements that were originally announced by the previous government in the 2012 13 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook and the 2013-14 Budget.

The two measures were removed from the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2014 during its passage through the Senate in March 2014.

Interest charge

The Bill will allow for an interest charge to be applied to certain debts incurred by recipients of Austudy Payment, Fares Allowance, Youth Allowance for full-time students and apprentices, and ABSTUDY Living Allowance.

The interest charge will only be applied, from 1 January 2015, where the debtor does not have or is not honouring an acceptable repayment arrangement.

At present, current recipients of income support with debts have their payments reduced until their debts are repaid. For former recipients of income support, on the other hand, there is no incentive to repay their debts.

Debtors who are already making repayments, or who come to a repayment agreement with the Department of Human Services following implementation of the measure, will not be charged interest.

The key purpose of the interest charge is to encourage debtors to repay their debt, in a timely fashion, where they have the financial capacity to do so.

Once the interest charge is in place, debtors who have not been making repayments will have an incentive to engage with the Department of Human Services to make a repayment arrangement in order to avoid the interest charge.

The rate of the interest charge will be based upon on the 90-day Bank Accepted Bill rate, plus an additional seven per cent, as is currently applied by the Australian Taxation Office for tax debts under the Taxation Administration Act 1953. Over the last four years, this rate has averaged approximately 10.9 per cent, and currently stands at 9.69 per cent for the quarter July to September 2014.

Student Start-up Loans

From 1 January 2015, the Bill replaces the current Student Start-up Scholarship with an income-contingent loan, the Student Start-up Loan.

The Student Start-up Loan aims to help students with the costs of study, including the purchase of text books, computers and internet access.

Under the new arrangements, there will be a limit of two Student Start-up Loans per year, of equivalent value to the Student Start-up Scholarship (currently $1,025 each and to be indexed from 2017).

The loans will be available on a voluntary basis, and will be repayable under similar arrangements to Higher Education Loan Programme debts.

Students will only be required to begin repaying their Student Start-up Loan after their Higher Education Loan Programme debt has been repaid.

In a departure from the measure introduced in the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2013 (a departure arising from the 2014-15 Budget), there will be no grandfathering arrangements for students who had previously received a Student Start-up Scholarship prior to commencement of the new provisions.

Debate adjourned.

Ordered that the bills be listed on the Notice Paper as separate orders of the day.