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Tuesday, 14 June 2011
Page: 5877

Mr PERRETT (Moreton) (17:08): On behalf of the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, I present the committee's report entitled Advisory report: Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2011, incorporating a dissenting report.

In accordance with standing order 39(f) the report was made a parliamentary paper.

Mr PERRETT: by leave—On Thursday, 2 June 2011 the Selection Committee determined that the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 be referred to the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs for inquiry and report. As you know, 2 June was not that long ago, so the committee did not have a lot of time. Obviously, being a humble servant of the parliament, the committee made our best endeavours to have a look at the information. The Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment Bill is an omnibus bill with five schedules. With the help of the committee, we were able to have a close look at some of the requirements which the legislation will bring in. While most of those endeavours are reasonably straightforward—the age of child for family tax benefit, indexation, assessing qualification for disability support pension, the extending Cape York welfare reform trial and the Public Works Act exemption—they certainly will benefit the Australian community, particularly extending the Cape York welfare reform trial. Unfortunately, in that short time we did not have a chance to go to Cape York, partly because I was on Christmas Island for part of the time and the committee did not have much of a chance to engage with this particular topic. We did discuss this in detail and unfortunately, while we could not come up with an agreement as a committee, the process will hopefully result in the appropriate scrutiny being given to the Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2011.

I commend the report to the House.