Ms HALL (11:55 AM) —This family assistance legislation has been designed to streamline family assistance payments by reducing the number of family payments from 12 to three. In addition, the Howard government is seeking to compensate families for the hurt its GST will cause when it is introduced; a tax that will impact on families in every way and every day. The government's compensation package will be quickly eroded, and in the long term families will be considerably worse off than they were. It is not a family friendly tax, despite what the members on the other side of this House may say. The GST will attack every aspect of family life and a half-baked compensation package delivered by changes to family allowance will not be adequate compensation for Australian families. A GST will increase the cost of a family's food, and the smaller a family's income the greater the proportion of its income is spent on food and the necessities of life. They will all be taxed by this government and families will have to pay that tax.

There will be a tax on the education of their children. Every book and every pencil that the children buy, their school clothes, school shoes and school lunches will all be taxed by this government, and they seek to compensate families by introducing this legislation. That is part of this legislation. It will have such a negative impact on sporting groups within our community. Children and families who want to participate in sport will find when they go along to play football, basketball, netball or soccer at the weekends that they will have to pay a tax. Every transaction will be taxed.

A family with three children who need to have their hair cut will pay an extra $2 on each haircut, and this really impacts on families. I do not believe that the compensation being offered by this government will assist families enough. I mentioned school clothes, but it does not stop there, because children need clothes to wear in their everyday lives. All those clothes will attract a GST. The GST will impact on entertainment, movies and football. At the moment the Knights football team in Newcastle has a family ticket. It costs $32 for a family of four—that is, two adults and two children—to go along and watch the Knights play. If you add an extra $3.20 to that, it will be the difference between families being able to afford to support their local football team or having to stay at home.

Yet this government are trying to convince families that they care about them. Instead, they are taxing them in every way, every day. They do not understand the problems facing Australian families. They do not know what it is like to struggle to put food on the table or make a choice between going to the movies or being able to buy their children new clothes, because they do not understand the decisions that ordinary families have to make.

As well as this, the government believe that if families experience hardship it is their fault because they are not working hard enough. Their answer to this—the government's vision—is that they should work longer and, for those longer hours, they should receive less money. Their draconian policies are forcing them to compensate families. They have been forced to compensate families because their initiatives are hurting families. Their taxes are impacting very negatively on Australian families. Their decision to tax families every day and in every way is for cing them to introduce compensation legislation.

This legislation is an attempt to rationalise and simplify the delivery of family assistance payments by reducing the number of payments from 12 to three, as I have already mentioned. Family assistance has developed since it was introduced in 1941 as child endowment to its current level. In the mid-1980s our society became very aware of child poverty, and there was an enhancement of family assistance, particularly to families on low incomes.

At the forefront of this enhancement was the Labor government, because Labor governments have a commitment to Australian families. They are aware of the struggle that families have, quite often, as I mentioned earlier, to put food on the table, to ensure that their children can have a good education and, with that good education, be able to have the opportunities in life that those on the other side take for granted. It is very, very important for families to have the income to be able to survive, to give their children opportunities for the future.

It was also in the mid-1980s that child-care payments were introduced. Once again, Labor recognised that for women to enter the work force they had to know that their children could receive good, quality child care, to know that their children were well cared for, and to do this they needed financial assistance. Labor supports families; this government attacks families, workers, child care and women. Under this government, child-care benefits have been reduced and women have been marginalised. And still they continue with their new legislation to tax families more and, with the GST, they will be taxing families every day in every way.

The three family assistance packages that are introduced in this bill are: the family tax benefits part A, which is to assist families raise their children; the family tax benefit part B, which is going to give additional assistance to single income families; and the child-care benefits, which will assist with the cost of child care. Under the family tax benefit part A, the standard rate is being increased, as the previous speaker mentioned, from $23,350 to $28,200. Regardless of the number of children in a family, that is the bottom line. If you earn less than $28,200, you receive no more. This disadvantages large families. This disadvantages the families that are really struggling—large families with small incomes that have to make those decisions on a daily basis as to where they will spend their money. The top level cut-off has been increased, and that will be adjusted according to the number of children that that family has. There will be extra payments.

As I mentioned, this is an attack on larger families—the families that will be paying more with GST and the families that are in greatest need. The government has sought to assist families with increases at the upper level, as I mentioned, and the tapering off of the rate. Instead of 50 cents in the dollar it will be 30 cents in the dollar—once again, to compensate for the GST. We must never forget that what this government is seeking to do with the GST is to tax Australian families, to tax them to a greater level than they have ever been taxed before. It is the tax that taxes families every day in every way.

The family income test is currently determined on the previous tax year. In this legislation, it is changed to the current year. At the moment, if a person is underpaid they are not able to be reimbursed for that underpayment. Under the new legislation, if they are underpaid they will be reimbursed. Currently, if a person is overpaid, they must pay that money back. This hardly seems fair.

Mentioning overpayments, I see that at the moment this is a real problem, and a problem that a number of constituents have come to see me about, because if a person is overpaid and the mistake is made by the Centrelink office they must still repay that overpayment. I had one woman come to see me two weeks ago who had supplied Centrelink with all the information and all the financial statements that they needed to correctly assess her income for the previous year and to determine whether or not she would be entitled to any sort of assistance. They decided that she was and paid her at the highest rate. Eighteen months later, they had discovered an error, and now she has to repay it.

There is no plan to change this in the legislation or the way it is enforced. It will not help the family that provided Centrelink's family payment office with the information about the father's superannuation payment that he received. Twelve months later, Centrelink discovered that they had not taken that into account when they were working out what the family's payment should be, and they are now asked to repay it. This same family had another problem with their family allowance where they were overpaid considerably. They contacted the Centrelink office and arranged for the money to be repaid, but when the mother went down to withdraw the money from her account to return it to Centrelink she found it had been taken out. Centrelink had removed the money from her account without her permission. They would not have noticed the overpayment if she had not advised them of it nor would they have done anything about it, but the moment she advised them they removed the money from her account.

I think there are a lot of other things that need to be looked at other than just changing the reimbursibility of underpayments. I feel that Centrelink staff should be accountable for mistakes that they make and that Australian families should not be penalised. This legislation also abolishes the assets test. This will benefit wealthy Australians. Once again, these are the people who are able to hide their income and write their income off against assets. They are not the struggling Australian family that brings home their pay cheque which may be a couple of dollars over the limit. They are not the people that the GST will impact on most negatively.

The family tax benefit part B generally benefits families and will result in them gaining increased assistance. This increased assistance, we must not forget, is to compensate for the GST. I reiterate that any compensation is not being given to the Australian families because this government believes that Australian families deserve more money and deserve a good quality of life; it is to compensate for the tax that taxes families every day in every way. This family tax benefit part B does not benefit sole parents who have an income between $10,000 and $30,000. These people will actually receive less. These are also the families that are most disadvantaged. They are stretched in every way—emotionally, financially, physically. They are constantly balancing every little part of their lives. They are going to be disadvantaged by this package.

Also disadvantaged are those people needing short-term assistance, those families who currently gain assistance through the basic parenting benefit. Currently, they are assessed on their fortnightly income, and now there will be a move to assess them on their annual income. So, when they may need a little bit of help in the short term that can get them through a rather sticky patch, now they will not be able to get that assistance.

The child-care benefit replaces the child-care cash rebate and the child-care assistance benefits. I have some concerns about that. This legislation leaves it open for people to be paid their benefit on the hours that they actually use child care rather than the hours that are booked. This will disadvantage child-care centres greatly, because when they book a child in they know that they will receive money for it. But, if a family rings in to say their child is ill and cannot go to the child-care centre that day, the centre will lose money. This will create a real dilemma for child-care centres. They will need to decide whether they are going to overbook and be in a situation where they will have to cancel children at the last moment. At the moment, I understand the government has said that the status quo will remain, but because of the open-ended nature of the legislation and because of this government's past record we cannot assume that this will not happen in the future. This will make so many more child-care centres marginal and will also impact on families. Now it is going to be paid on an hourly rate and this will disadvantage some families who were previously attending part time as the percentage of their fee entitled them to receive the full amount. The government's record on child care is appalling and their attempt to tax families with the GST is equally as appalling.

This brings me to youth allowance. The changes by this government in relation to youth allowance and its attack on young Australians between the age of 18 and 21 is unprecedented. The government's decision to reduce the amount of youth allowance payable to young Australians when their parents earn over $23,500 is appalling. It will be judged by that and it has been judged by that. Many people have spoken to me about this. The government is treating young adults as dependants—they are old enough to vote—and Senator Harradine has not been at all impressed with this government's record there.

They have done nothing in any way to compensate families forced to support their young adults: 18- to 20-year-olds do not qualify for family assistance. Young people who have had their youth allowance snatched from them by this government do not qualify for any compensation whatsoever. The only thing that they qualify for is a tax, and this government is continuing to tax them every day, in every way. This legislation has some good points, but any good points it has are well and truly outweighed by the negative impact the GST will have on families as it taxes them every day and in every way.