SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER
MINISTER FOR FINANCE
MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MINISTER FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE
MINISTER FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICES
The HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES
Topics: Child Support; Federal Budget; Domestic, family and sexual violence funding; Budget Reply
ALICIA PAYNE: Good morning everyone. I'm Alicia Payne, the member for Canberra, and it's great to be here in Kingston this morning with my colleagues, Senator Katy Gallagher, Tanya Plibersek, Ged Kearney, Terese Edwards and Rebecca and Elysia to talk about some really important changes in the budget that we've made to child support. Now currently in Australia around $2 billion of child support goes unpaid, and we know that children that live in a single parent family are three times more likely to grow up in poverty. These important changes that we've announced in the budget are about ensuring that that money goes where it needs to go, and it's about lifting children out of poverty, and it's also about making sure that government services are not used as a weapon in disputes between families. So these are really great changes. Our budget is all about meeting Australians where they are at the moment, dealing with costs of living and setting up a fairer economy in the longer term. And I'm really pleased now to hand over to Katy.
KATY GALLAGHER: Thanks very much. It's lovely to be here at the end of a busy week to talk about a really important part of the budget. These changes that we've brought in and the funding that we've brought in into the budget will constitute the biggest change to child support in about two decades, and it's come about with work that Tanya, Ged and I and others have done across government, learning and listening to the stories, primarily from women who use the child support system and the issues that they face, and it's about the structure and how we operate the system. And so the responsibility is on us to make sure that government systems can't be weaponised against women and children and actually deliver the outcome that they were built to create and in child support, as Alicia said, we see almost $2 billion in unpaid child support. We've all met with women, and I've met with young people as well over the course of my time in this role, who have been forced and kept in poverty as payback for a relationship breakdown, and the system hasn't helped them. And so what Tanya and I and others want to do with this, and we're backed by all these incredible women here, is change that and make sure that the system works for the people it was intended to protect. I'm going to hand over to Tanya now, who's done a huge amount of work on this.
TANYA PLIBERSEK: Thanks so much, Katy. When child support doesn't work, it's the children who suffer. We want to make sure that the child support system from beginning to end is better so that it works for Australian children. That means we want to improve assessment. We want to improve information given to parents when they making a decision about whether they use the child support agency to collect money or whether they make a private arrangement. It means that we want to better use the information that the tax office already collects about people's incomes. From beginning to end we want the child support system to work for Australian children. And so just a couple of the measures to put some detail into this, at the moment, people can go overseas owing thousands of dollars of child support debt. And there are departure prohibition orders available, but that relies on a parent knowing that their ex is going overseas or leaving the country, and that actually increases conflict, and it's a very haphazard way. We are going to automate this so that if you've got a child support debt of more than $10,000 you will get a letter telling you that you can't leave the country until you've made arrangement to pay off that child support debt. We think if you can afford an overseas holiday, then you can afford your child support, or if you're trying to leave the country and leave that debt behind and leave your child living in poverty you should pay your debt before you leave the country, that's one example. Another example is making sure that the information that the tax office has interacts seamlessly with information from the child support agency. We want to make it as easy for you to pay child support every week or every fortnight when you get your pay packet as it is to pay superannuation or pay as you go tax. So we'll be working with employers to substantially increase the number of people who are just having their child support automatically deducted from their pay packet. Not only does that ensure that children are getting the support they need regularly, whether it's weekly or fortnightly or monthly, with the parent's pay cycle, it also means that there'll be less debt accruing. It also means there'll be less conflict, because the parent who's receiving money won't have to be constantly ringing the child support agency saying, ‘I didn't get paid this week, I didn't get paid this month’. That's two specific examples.
I also wanted just to say a couple of words about Angus Taylor's announcements last night about social security, before I hand over to these amazing women to talk more about child support. Angus Taylor last night used a typical One Nation playbook to try and divide Australians because he's got no ideas about how to build a better future for this country. Angus Taylor is pretending that you walk off a plane at Sydney Airport and walk onto welfare. It's simply not true. It's a lie designed to deceive and divide Australians. Just taking a couple of examples of the larger payments. To be eligible for the Age Pension here in Australia, you have to have lived in Australia for 10 years. To be eligible for the Disability Support Pension, you have to have lived in Australia for 10 years. These are the two biggest payments in our system. To be eligible for unemployment benefits you have to have been here for four years, and you have to, of course, be a permanent resident. In most cases, these people are on a pathway to citizenship. They want to be Australian citizens. They've been working hard, they've been paying their taxes, they've been contributing, and they want to be Australian citizens. Angus Taylor is pretending that you walk off the plane and walk onto welfare. It's just not true.
Now I just want to say a few words about some of the people I met who would be impacted by Angus Taylor's proposals. A couple of years ago, I was in Western Australia with my colleague, Tracey Roberts in her seat of Pearce, I met a woman there who's been in Australia about 40 years. She's a UK citizen who's a permanent resident of Australia. Her daughter was born here. Her grandchildren were born here. This woman has worked all her life in Australia, all her adult life in Australia. She's raised an Australian citizen, and she's actually caring for her Australian citizen grandchildren now that she's retired, Angus Taylor says she doesn't deserve an Age Pension. I met a couple when I was campaigning with my colleague Andrew Charlton in Parramatta. She's a doctor. He's a small business owner. They've been here six years. They're permanent residents. They're on their way to citizenship. They're paying taxes, they're contributing to the Australian economy. If they have a baby, Angus Taylor doesn't think they deserve Paid Parental Leave. I met another lovely old gentleman in Townsville a few years ago, when I was up there and he was telling me very happily that he had met the love of his life, he met her online, married her after she moved from overseas to come to Australia. He's on an Age Pension. She's a bit younger. She's caring for him as he ages and his health deteriorates. Angus Taylor thinks that she shouldn't be eligible for the support that a carer would normally receive in those circumstances. She's a Permanent Resident., she's married to an Australian citizen, she wants to be an Australian citizen, but Angus Taylor says that she doesn't deserve the support that a permanent resident or citizen would normally be entitled to. This is a complete ignorance of how the Australian social security system already works. The idea that there are large savings here are fanciful, because, you know the example I gave first, that UK citizen, Australian Permanent Resident who's been here 40 years, well, yeah, she will probably take up Australian citizenship. So any savings that and that Angus Taylor thinks are here are pretty illusory.
Just one last thing about the, Angus Taylor's speech last night, this measure, he won't tell us how much he thinks this measure raises. Fits in with the fact he wouldn't tell us how much his tax measures were going to cost. Or when he says that he wants to cut migration, how many people that means, how can you actually have a budget reply so absent of any firm numbers or detail, and expect to be taken seriously as an alternative Prime Minister. It's a nasty joke designed to divide Australians.
TERESE EDWARDS: Good morning. Terese Edwards, CEO of Single Mother Families Australia. I stand here today knowing that this is a watershed moment. So single mothers in in Australia are thin on resources, time, often safety is elusive, and we've made this amazing job that women do, the double care work so difficult. Yet today, for the first time in 20 years, the government has said there's one system that we will completely unravel and make it work for you. So we've got a million children in Australia who use this system, and if it was safe and effective, we would have more. So today is exciting. We've had an invitation to work with the government. I'm really proud to have done that, and I particularly want to acknowledge all the single mums for years and years and years who have been brave, they've spoken up, they've shared their story. And so these changes represent many, many, many women. But today, I'm particularly excited that Rebecca and Elysia, who have joined Single Mother Families Australia, very much the same as most women, wanting something better for other women and better for their children. So I go to bed regularly thinking what that $2 billion would do in those households where they're just hanging on by their fingernails. So I see this as such an exciting, changing of a game policy announcement, and it's exciting to share it with some fabulous women. So, Rebecca, would you like to join us? And so I thank the government for stepping in where others have stepped away. Thank you.
REBECCA: Yep, my name is Rebecca, and what I would like to say is what this announcement represents. It represents hope and it also represents a quality of life for children, it is their childhood, and it's an investment in our future, which I think is incredibly worthwhile, thank you so much.
ELYSIA: Hi. My name is Elysia, and as someone who's navigated the child support scheme, we are so grateful for a government that's willing to step up and see the beast that child support is and tackle that. As Terese mentioned, there's 1.1 million children in the child support scheme that's meant to help and benefit them, and often it's weaponised against the very children that it's meant to support. So we welcome this announcement, and thank you.
JOURNALIST: Minister Plibersek how many of those, 1.1 million children, do you believe that these changes will support and how many parents, mainly fathers, will be have to pay that are currently paying?
TANYA PLIBERSEK: Well, just to be clear, this is, treats men and women equally. About 83% of the people that are owed money are women, so it's predominantly women that will be better off, but there's that 17% of fathers who need the support of the child support system to raise their children as well. Look, right across the board, we'll see improvements here. When we talk about a million children. That's a million children that we know about in the child support system, but remember that only about half of children who need support are formally in the system. There's another half who have private arrangements made between parents. So, we believe that right across the board, we'll see improvements. There will be new families coming into the child support system for the first time, who will get better advice about whether they should use the formal child support, Agency Collect, or whether they can continue in private arrangements if that suits them better. There's the children who are currently owed that almost $2 billion, they will have better support and a greater likelihood that that money will be collected. When we talk about automatic deductions from employer withholding, we believe another $500 million or so will be covered by that employer deduction system, the number of children who’ll get paid because parents will want to be traveling overseas and won't be able to travel until they've paid their child support debt, that's another group of children, because there's always new families coming into the system. I think we'll see this impact will be hundreds of thousands of children.
JOURNALIST: Should we expect to see dads stopped at the border on sort of a weekly basis? Or how common are you expecting that to be?
TANYA PLIBERSEK: Well, no one will be stopped at the border if they pay their child support. And we want this to be a strong message that if you can afford an overseas holiday, you can afford to look after your kids. And we want it to be a strong message too, that you can't sneak out of the country and leave thousands of dollars of unpaid child support debt behind you. Fathers and mothers who owe money will get a letter from the child support agency putting them on notice that if they're planning overseas travel, that they won't be able to undertake that travel until they've made arrangements to repay their debt.
JOURNALIST: [inaudible] the integrity in the system to pinpoint genuine cases, especially when there's automation, as you say, both with the emails the automatic deductions. Could you detail the integrity in the system?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, absolutely. So what will happen is we'll have a situation where, if you've travelled overseas twice in the in the last couple of years, and you've got a $10,000 child support debt, you'll receive a letter saying, putting you on notice, saying, if you have any plans to travel, you won't be able to do that until the debt is paid. That will give people an opportunity to contest any debt. If they believe the debt is inappropriately raised, they'll have the opportunity to contest that. And there'll be, of course, human oversight of that system. They'll be able to make their case that the child support debt is inappropriately raised. They'll also be exceptions. If someone, for example, has a family member seriously ill or dying overseas and they need to travel at short notice, they'll be able to have that Departure Prohibition Order set aside in order for them to make that make that urgent travel. But this is a system that is designed in general to say that the thousands of people that have thousands of dollars of debt, we're talking about average debt of more than $8,000 need to make arrangement to pay that debt. Contributing to the raising of your children financially is not optional.
JOURNALIST: So the changes that you've announced are going to target people that have been assessed to pay child support and they haven't paid, that are not filing tax returns. Do you foresee any future work on those parents who are sort of minimising their income through self employment?
TANYA PLIBERSEK: Yes, so the part of this package, package has many elements. Part of this package is greater resourcing for the Australian Tax Office to pursue people that persistently refuse to lodge their tax return. We know that a lot of people are not lodging tax returns because they want to hide income. That's not acceptable. And so there's extra resources for the tax office to pursue those people who continue to deliberately refuse to lodge tax returns. The issues around people who hide and minimise their income by using complex trust structures or company structures, yes, of course, we'll continue to look at that situation. We hear a lot of stories of people who are leading very, you know, easy lifestyles, let's put it that way, who are driving around in expensive cars and living in big houses, who seem to have zero income when it comes to paying for their child support. Those situations are ones that we'll continue to work on. In fact, I had a story of a dad yesterday who's been paying, who's been raising children for 17 years. His former partners, re-partnered. She continues not to put in tax returns. She's running her own business. She's re-established a relationship. She's living in easy circumstances. He doesn't mind paying child support. He loves his kids, but he finds it difficult to stomach that his ex has not put in her tax returns for so many years. Situations like that work both ways.
JOURNALIST: Financial abuse doesn't just involve children. There's financial abuse that can take place over super benefits, joint debts, inheritance in patients. There's many forms. How do you see what you're doing with government systems being advanced? What are you going to be doing to really tackle not just the child abuse situation, but the entire financial abuse situation?
TANYA PLIBERSEK: I think that's such an excellent question, Karen and I'll let Katy add to this in a moment, but I'll give you a couple of examples of things that we're already doing. In the social security system we know that sometimes people are coerced into social security debts. They've got a partner who makes them claim a benefit that they're not entitled to. I've had a situation where the partner was registered as women's carer and was falsely reporting on his hours of work to social security. We've had situations right across the board in social security where debts have been raised that were not the responsibility of the person in a violent or coercive relationship, and yet they have ended up with those debts. Well, we've given social security, the opportunity to waive debts in cases where there's been violence or coercion, that's a really important change. My colleague, Daniel Mulino right now is undertaking a public consultation on superannuation and how superannuation death benefits should not be paid to the perpetrators of domestic violence after a victim of domestic violence has died. That consultation is going on right now. Just this week, we passed through the parliament a law to stop perpetrators of child sexual abuse hiding their assets in superannuation so that victims of child sexual abuse who have been found to be owed compensation by perpetrators of abuse can't collect on that compensation because the assets have been hidden. So right across government, we're doing this work, and I think Katy has been doing an incredible job on weaponisation of government systems. So you might want to say-
KATY GALLAGHER: Yeah, so with Tanya in the DSS portfolio, and to me Finance, Women and Government Services, I think between the two of us, we have a huge amount of work ahead. I mean the big areas that, in a sense, we're tranching some of this work, because the first and most important bit was the child support system. The overwhelming evidence was that is the system that's really been weaponised. There are elements in Tanya's patch in DSS, so getting, you know, working the system, so you accrue debts, or you impose debts are imposed on a partner, that's another big chunk of work. And then the super work that Dan Mulino is doing. I think, more broadly, what we're also trying to build is government services that talk to each other. So, you know, the work that's going to be done here in this initiative is aligning the tax system with Services Australia in a much stronger way. So we're getting, you know, the information that you know, the way people have been manipulating the system by ensuring that those two bits of government aren't necessarily talking to each other, we're trying to break that down as well. So the tell us, once approach is going to be really important to making sure that we're reducing government systems and their ability to be manipulated. I mean, it's a big job. And you know, from Tanya and my point of view, like we're out trying to make sure that other system, you know that we're trying to reduce violence against women and children everywhere. and if government systems aren't leading the way on that, that's a problem. So that's why we're doing so much in this space.
JOURNALIST: Just on the interaction of child support and social security, there are mothers, single mothers, that are missing out on the Family Tax Benefit, either because of not being able to collect, not being able to collect child support because of the reasons already canvased. But there's also other some women choosing to forgo child support because it's not safe to pursue it. In some cases, the interaction with the family court system means that they don't want to provoke their ex to take them to court for custody. Is it fair that women are missing out on this support in those circumstances?
TANYA PLIBERSEK: No, it's not fair that any child should miss out on support from either parent because the system doesn't work for them, and that's why we are making these changes.
JOURNALIST: [inaudible]
TANYA PLIBERSEK: If you let me finish, I'll tell you the answer to your question. So there's a few other elements of this package that are really important, and one of those is we're getting rid of the mandatory exchange of information. One of the, one of the things that happens is women don't ask for the entitlement that they need if there's been domestic violence, because they don't want to give their ex information about where they're living now, what their movements are, where they're shopping, where they you know, where, where the kids are regularly. And so by reducing the need for mandatory exchange of information that's not relevant for the other person to know, we're keeping women safer who've been victims of domestic violence, making the system fairer for children. The other example that's in this package is giving much better information as people are entering the system, the child support system about whether formal Agency Collect is better and safer for them, or whether private arrangements are better and safer for them. There are plenty of families where both parents are happy to support their kids. They've got a civil relationship that's working just fine. They don't need the government involved. Good luck to them. But one of the reasons that people sometimes choose private collect is because they're so worried that their partner will be, former partner will be enraged by being taken through the child support scheme that they just kind of get, get bullied into accepting private collect and we know that in that system, the debts are likely to be even larger than that $1.9 billion we're talking about in the in the formal child support system. So by giving people more information on the way in and helping them choose the Agency Collect and showing how that can be a safer option for them, that's a really important change to make. One of the areas you just mentioned, Family Tax Benefit, there's a, this is getting a little bit too technical for most people so I apologise about this, but the maintenance action test, which is saying to a parent who's receiving child support, you need to make a claim within a certain period of time otherwise, we're just going to assume that you're being paid, your Family Tax Benefit will be reduced. This maintenance action test has exceptions where there is domestic violence or coercion in this in the system. But a lot of people don't know about that exception. They don't know that if there is domestic violence or coercion that they can apply for exemptions to the maintenance action test. So making sure that people have that information is a really important change, but I feel like I'm getting into a bit too much detail now.
JOURNALIST: [inaudible] comes to sexual, domestic and family violence, the support services have been really clear that they wanted certainty and a serious boost to baseline funding. They just want to know why that didn't happen in Tuesday's budget.
TANYA PLIBERSEK: Well, we have increased funding for family, domestic and sexual violence by $4.4 billion since coming to government. $1 billion just as an example, is the Leaving Violence Payment. That is a payment of up to $5,000 for someone leaving a violent relationship that didn't exist before. We have doubled funding for family violence legal services. We've invested $700 million with the states and territories on frontline services. We've increased funding by 40% for 1800RESPECT, and we've increased funding by 70% for our 500 Workers initiative. We continue to invest. My colleague, Clare O'Neill has invested $1.2 billion in crisis and transitional housing for people fleeing violence. In fact, I was with Clare O'Neill just recently when we opened a new 35 bed facility in my electorate that supports people with mental illness, drug and alcohol difficulties, and people who are fleeing violence. This money is flowing, it's hitting the ground now. We're also investing more in changing the trajectory of family and domestic violence. We've got $81 million for child specific counselling that didn't exist before. We've got new investments working with young men who are exhibiting early signs of using violence in their relationships, those trials, 12 of them happening right around the country now. We've invested money in men's behaviour change, including a phone line where people can get multiple counselling sessions online if they're concerned about their use of violence and want to change their behaviour. We will continue to invest. I'm never going to say job done on family, domestic and sexual violence while there is one person in Australia who is subject to violence. I'm never going to say job done, but I think it's very important to recognise that no government in Australian history has taken this issue more seriously or invested more money to change the trajectory.
JOURNALIST: But the waiting lines are very long. They have been. You know, can be up to years, as my reporting has been, what do you say to people who are waiting out there to get into into shelters? They're waiting months and years?
TANYA PLIBERSEK: I say that this government will continue to work to change that. Now you've just mentioned waiting for accommodation. As I said a moment ago, Clare O'Neill has set aside $1.2 billion specifically for this. Those places are being built. Imagine how different the situation would be today on housing, if the Liberals had just kept the Labor policies from the last election. Now, Tony Abbott, the minute he came into government, abandoned our homelessness target. Tony Abbott, when he came into government, stopped the National Rental Affordability Scheme. We had a target of building 100,000 new homes. We got to 35,000 then Tony Abbott killed that program. When I was Housing Minister we built 21,600 new public housing dwellings. Tony Abbott stopped that program. There was no housing minister for most of the time under the Liberals, and now they're wandering around the Liberals and Nationals, pretending that they've discovered homelessness and that it started in Australia four years ago. If they had kept up the effort that we were making $512 million for the housing affordability fund. You know, Angus Taylor's crowing last night about his infrastructure program, if only the Liberals had kept what we started last time we're in government, this country would be better off when it comes to crisis and emergency accommodation and public housing and affordable rental and home ownership. To now pretend that they care about housing when they never did when they're in government. I mean, it honestly is transparent.
JOURNALIST: Just on the, the budget reply you were saying that it's illusory. What Angus Taylor was proposing about taking permanent residents and non citizens out of the welfare system. You're the minister. How many billions or how much would that cost?
TANYA PLIBERSEK: Well, I'm not going to do Angus Taylor's costings for him. He really ought to cost his policies before he announces them. But I can tell you this, the programs that he's talking about, like 99% citizens or permanent residents, the idea that people walk off the boat and get onto welfare is just such nonsense. And anyway, if we're talking about that, that lady that I was, you know, met in Western Australia, who's been here 40 years. She's a UK citizen still, but she's a permanent resident here, who's worked here all her life, and her kids are Australian citizens, and her grandkids are Australian citizens, and Angus Taylor says, if you're not a citizen, you're not going to get the Age Pension. Well, yeah, maybe she will become a citizen because she's had 40 years of permanent residency, she'll be eligible for it. So what will the saving be in that case? Zero.
JOURNALIST: Just on Angus Taylor's budget, budget, reply speech, sorry, so he said he wants to get rid of big government, but he's avoided putting a number on how many public servants he had cut. He actually didn't mention public servants at all. Do you think that the Coalition should come say how many tens of thousands of public servants they would cut?
KATY GALLAGHER: Well, I think we know what they're what they're saying when they're not saying something, when they say that they're going to abolish, essentially entire departments. We know that they're coming after public servants again. This is their classic, you know, rule book. They go back and you see it whether it's about dividing the country, whether it's attacking people who rely on payments, it's about whether you're attacking people coming to the country, and they're doing the same on the public service. I mean, last night's speech was ticking off the usual attack fronts from a, you know, a conservative, Liberal, slash National slash One Nation, opposition. You know, it was very clear there would be thousands, tens of thousands of jobs cut from the public service and I imagine the other bit they didn't say was that most of them would come from Canberra. That's what they've done every single election in in my lifetime in politics, they've come after Canberra, they've come after public servants, and they made no secret of that last night. Thank you.
TANYA PLIBERSEK: Thanks everyone.
ENDS
