Mr ALBANESE (5:42 PM) —I am pleased to resume my comments on these three social security bills. Before I was interrupted, I was speaking about the difficulties that are occurring with Centrelink. I remind the House in speaking about a specific issue—that is, the attempt by the government to reduce the time limits for notifying changes in circumstances—that this is not the first time the government has attempted to do this. Indeed, the government attempted to introduce a seven-day time limit in December last year in the Payment Processing Legislation Amendment (Social Security and Veterans' Entitlements) Bill 1998. On that occasion, the relevant provisions were withdrawn when it became clear that they would not be accepted by the Senate. For the sake of the many innocent Centrelink clients who will be tripped up by these changes, I hope that these draconian changes meet the same fate on this occasion. To this end, Labor will be seeking to amend these bills in the Senate.

I now wish to address the issue of the changes to the time limits for review. Another significant aspect of these bills is the imposition of time limits for the review of decisions. These bills will bar people from appealing against Centrelink decisions outside the limits of 52 weeks for internal review by an authorised review officer and 28 days for review by the Social Security Appeals Tribunal. The government has proceeded with these changes despite the advice of a number of agencies with expertise in this area. I would like to quote from a letter sent to my colleague the shadow minister for family and community services, Wayne Swan, from St Saviour's Neighbourhood Centre in Goulburn. It states:

There are many reasons which justify providing adequate time for social security recipients to appeal decisions including:

Many social security recipients have literacy, numeracy and language barriers resulting from little formal education, having a disability all being from a non-English speaking or Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander background. It takes time to arrange translations into community languages or plain English.

Not surprisingly, many low income people face situations of crisis—for example, homelessness, illness or domestic violence. Under these circumstances it is unreasonable to provide a short period within which to appeal.

There is no clear reason for the changes being proposed yet again by the government in these bills. There are already restrictions on the amount of arrears a person can receive if they do not appeal in time. Currently, if a person appeals later than 13 weeks after the original decision, they can receive arrears only from the date on which they lodged the appeal. In a submission to the Senate Standing Community Affairs References Committee inquiry into these bills, the Secretary to the Department of Family and Community Services argued that these changes were necessary because of the requirement of the Archives Act that records be destroyed 12 months after a person stops receiving payments.

It is important to note, however, that the Archives Act does not require records to be destroyed once they are 12 months old. They need only be destroyed 12 months after the person last receives social security payments. In the overwhelming majority of cases, people who are seeking review of decisions continue receiving social security payments of one kind or another. This means that the department would still have access to the relevant documentation. In situations where the department is recovering a debt from a person who is no longer receiving payments, the Archives Act allows for records to be retained until the debt is repaid. In most cases, debtors ask for decisions to be reviewed before the debt has been fully repaid; so, once again, the Archives Act in no way justifies a reduction in the time limits for review of decisions.

The government would have us believe that time limits of 52 weeks for review by an authorised review officer and 28 days for review by the Social Security Appeals Tribunal are quite reasonable, but this simply shows yet again how out of touch this government is—and this minister is—with ordinary people. There are many cases where these time limits would cause grave injustice. For example, where a person receives a sizeable lump sum compensation payment, they may be precluded from receiving social security payments for some years. At the time a person receives a lump sum compensation payment, they are less likely to challenge a decision about a preclusion period as they have little need for social security in the short term. Several years down the track, however, their circumstances may be very different, and they may need that financial assistance. Even where the preclusion period was incorrectly calculated by the original decision maker and even though the person would have no entitlement to arrears, they would have no right to review of the original decision once the 52-week time limit had expired. Once again, these changes will punish the most disadvantaged—the homeless, those from non-English-speaking backgrounds, indigenous people and people who have had limited access to education.

The Secretary to the Department of Family and Community Services noted that the changes in time limits for review of decisions were in line with the recommendations of the review conducted by Dame Margaret Guilfoyle. This is hardly a persuasive reason for such dramatic changes. It is in no way surprising that an inquiry conducted by a former Liberal Minister for Social Security came up with exactly the recommendations that the government was seeking—yet another example of the shoddy way that this government does business. And let us be very clear about what these changes mean in practice. These changes will mean that people who are entitled to social security payments will not be able to obtain them because of a legal trap set by this government. The opposition cannot in good conscience allow these changes to proceed without challenge and will, therefore, seek to amend these bills in the Senate to remove the time limits for review of decisions. Like the changes to notification periods, this is not the first time the government has attempted to impose time limits for review of decisions. The relevant provisions of the family allowance administration bill were rejected by the Senate, and I suspect that the similar provisions in these bills will meet the same fate.

I also wish to address the way that the Social Security Appeals Tribunal hears appeals, which will be impacted by this bill. Along with seeking to restrict access to the Social Security Appeals Tribunal by imposing a 28-day time limit, the government seeks, through these bills, to make significant changes to the way the SSAT deals with appeals. Firstly, the government wants to allow the SSAT to determine appeals without hearing oral evidence from the parties. This will cause significant inequalities for it favours people who are able to express themselves clearly in writing. Once again, the victims will be the disadvantaged—people from non-English-speaking backgrounds and people with limited literacy. This hypocrisy comes from a government from which you hear a lot about the importance of literacy skills. You also hear acknowledgments by the government that there are many people in our society who unfortunately do not have those skills through no fault of their own.

Allowing the SSAT to determine appeals without hearing oral evidence is an extraordinarily discriminatory provision. Even for those with good literacy skills, the idea of determining appeals on the basis of purely written evidence presumes that Centrelink clearly communicates the reasons for decisions and that people are able to understand the law well enough to respond appropriately. These assumptions once again demonstrate the government's ignorance of the circumstances of many people who require the assistance of Centrelink. The Social Security Appeals Tribunal is designed to operate in an informal manner—that is the whole beauty of it—with expert members from legal, welfare and administrative backgrounds so as to draw out the relevant information without expecting an applicant to present cogent, well-argued legal submissions. Applicants are clearly disadvantaged in any dispute with Centrelink officers who apply the Social Security Act on a daily basis. The only way to correct this disadvantage is to allow applicants to appear before the tribunal and present evidence in an informal setting. Any change to the current system of face-to-face hearings will clearly prevent some applicants from gaining their legal rights. Once again, Labor will seek to amend these provisions of the bills in the Senate.

The second change to the way the SSAT operates is a reduction in the number of members required to hear each appeal. Normally, the tribunal for any given appeal consists of three members—one with legal expertise, one with a welfare background and one with a background in the Department of Family and Community Services. The current act requires that a minimum of three members hear each appeal, except in very limited circumstances. It also provides for a maximum of four members, originally intended to allow a medically qualified member to join the tribunal for appeals involving medical issues. In practice, however, a medical member normally takes the place of either a welfare or a legal member.

The bills before this House propose to remove the requirement for a minimum of three members and a maximum of four and replace it with a limit of three members. There is no provision for the minimum number of tribunal members for appeals. The bill will effectively mean that most appeals will be heard by only one tribunal member. No longer will applicants have the benefit of a mix of legal, welfare and administrative expertise. Instead, they will have to put up with potluck determining what sort of member hears their appeal. We will see tribunal members with a background in social work determining appeals involving complex issues of law. We will also see members with a legal background dealing with issues of psychological trauma. This is just not appropriate be cause it is just not fair. These changes are bound to have a negative effect on the quality of the decisions made by the Social Security Appeals Tribunal. Once again, the people most affected by these changes will be directly proportional to their level of disadvantage in society. And many people who are Centrelink clients come from those groups that are the most disadvantaged.

I want to raise a further issue of concern that the Labor Party has with these bills—that is, the requirement of the SSAT to refer back to Centrelink any new evidence presented to the tribunal unless it is satisfied that the applicant had reasonable grounds for not providing the information to Centrelink. It is difficult to understand the rationale for this clause. The then Department of Social Security suggested to the Guilfoyle review that:

. . . this would encourage applicants to disclose all evidence as early as possible in the process.

But it is not clear how applicants are expected to know about this rule. Most applicants are new to the tribunal and therefore have no understanding of the legislation that determines the tribunal's role. Most people will find out about this rule only when they find their appeal being referred back to Centrelink, which is too late in the process. The only thing this change will achieve is more delays in finalising decisions, many of which involve people in dire financial circumstances who are after speedy, efficient and fair decisions. Making the process more complicated, bureaucratic and legalistic will only undermine access to justice and discourage people from exercising their right to appeal to an independent tribunal.

I also wish to speak about the changes in these bills to eligibility for special benefit because they propose restrictions on the eligibility for this benefit. Currently, people who hold temporary visas in subclasses 820 and 826 are eligible to claim special benefit. These subclasses of visas are for partners and spouses of Australian residents who have been allowed entry to Australia and merely need to spend a period living in Australia with their partner before being granted permanent residence. These bills will remove the statutory right of such people to claim special benefit. Instead, only people who hold a visa of a type approved by the minister will be able to claim special benefit. In other words, we are moving from a statutory right to a right determined by the whim of the Minister for Family and Community Services, and there is not much faith out there in the community in the compassion of this minister. The Department of Family and Community Services claimed, in one of its submissions to the Senate Standing Community Affairs References Committee inquiry, that no person who currently receives special benefit would be disadvantaged by these changes. But that requires us to place our trust in the minister. That is more than the Australian Labor Party is prepared to do.

I would remind the House that this is a minister who has doggedly pursued an agenda of preventing newly arrived migrants from having any access to income support. In March 1997, she introduced guidelines for payment of special benefit that sought to make it virtually impossible for any newly arrived permanent resident to receive special benefit in their first two years in Australia. Those guidelines caused enormous hardship to many new Australians. People who had been issued visas and welcomed to Australia on the basis that they had skills we needed suddenly found that there was no government safety net if they had trouble finding work upon arrival. Even if they needed only a few months of support in order to brush up their English skills—made more difficult by the government's cutbacks in areas such as the Australian Migrant English Service—this government's answer was, `Too bad.'

Thankfully, the Senate disallowed the minister's special benefit guidelines in June 1997 and put an end to this inhumane treatment of people who had chosen Australia as their home. But this defeat only spurred the government on to find new ways of attacking assistance for new migrants. The next step was to prevent newly arrived migrants from obtaining health care cards, regardless of any financial difficulties they may be facing. This government has a history of attacking the entitlements of newly arrived migrants at every turn. Now we are being told that we can trust the minister to ensure that the changes in this bill do not restrict access to special benefit. The National Welfare Rights Network did not believe the minister, and I do not either. I hold grave fears for the enormous social and economic problems that will be generated by any further holes in the safety net for new migrants.

In summary, these bills do nothing to simplify the social security system. They will create extra complexity, more confusion and greater injustice. In November 1998, ACOSS released a survey of the community services sector entitled `Living on the edge'. The survey produced startling findings about rising levels of poverty and need amongst low income and disadvantaged Australians. Findings released this month by the Australian Bureau of Statistics demonstrate graphically how the gap between rich and poor in Australia has widened.

That survey was based on statistics for the financial year 1997-98. Its findings revealed that, of all income generated in Australia, the bottom 20 per cent of households account for just 3.8 per cent, the top 20 per cent of households account for 48.3 per cent and the bottom 60 per cent of households account for a measly 27.8 per cent. In real dollar figures, this means that the bottom 20 per cent of households are on gross incomes of less than $204 a week, the bottom 40 per cent are on less than $389 a week and the bottom 60 per cent are on less than $613 a week.

It is definitely true to say that Australia's rich are getting richer and our poor are getting poorer. The ACOSS survey concurs with the ABS and adds that 65 per cent of community welfare agencies experienced an increased demand for their services over the last six months. Services were disturbed by the increasing poverty level of clients and the fact that an escalating number of people were unable to make ends meet on social security. When asked why the system is not coping with these increased levels of poverty and need in our community, 42 per cent of community sector organisations blamed this government's policies. In particular, they blamed the impact of economic rationalism and competitive tendering, especially in relation to home and community care, the new employment services market and child care.

Australia is becoming more and more a nation divided between the haves and the have-nots. More than ever before, Australians need their government to guarantee the delivery of certain basic rights. All Australian families deserve the assurance that, if times are hard, they will never be homeless or hungry; that, as a civilised society, we are able to provide shelter, food, clothing, health care and education to all—and not because those in need must be given the Prime Minister's patronising philanthropy but because access to fundamentals, such as food, clothing and shelter, is a basic and inalienable human right.

That is why it is fundamental for government to get social security legislation right—something these bills fail to do and something that this government has consistently failed to do. These bills will continue the trend, under this government, of targeting the disadvantaged in our society. I hope that one day even my colleagues on the other side of the House will come to realise that persecuting the disadvantaged does not save money or solve problems; it simply increases the financial and societal costs in the long term.