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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1524 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

Mr Speaker, how often do we hear stories told about how we have to tighten up eligibility for unemployment benefit, supporting parent pension, disability pension or sickness allowance because John Laws or somebody else has thought of a story or heard a story which suggests that somebody somewhere might be rorting the system? I do not believe that we should be basing our laws, which are designed to assist disadvantaged people, on anecdotal stories about somebody somewhere who is allegedly rorting the system. We have to make laws for the majority of law-abiding citizens who are going to do the right thing. Sure, we have to do everything we can to ensure that our laws are not abused, that people do not obtain benefits they are not entitled to; but we should not go berserk. We should not be turning around and saying, "We are not going to provide a benefit to a group of people who are in need, who have some legitimate claim to a benefit", simply because of anecdotes which suggest that somebody somewhere was desperate enough to abuse the system.

Mr Speaker, I believe that the amendments we have proposed will achieve some significant improvements to the Government's scheme. They will provide the benefits up front, rather than in arrears. They will provide an administratively simple way for the clients to access these benefits, which means that, once they have applied for and got the benefit, their only further obligation will be to reapply if they are still eligible when the certificate expires, if they have a term-limited certificate.

The third benefit, and perhaps the most important in my mind, is that it will be extended to the full range of disadvantaged people and not restricted to pensioners. Mr Speaker, I know that other disadvantaged people will create additional administrative problems which do not exist for age pensioners, whose entitlement tends not to change. I know that that is a problem. But I do not think we should be abrogating our responsibilities to other disadvantaged people in the community just because their circumstances are not as neat and tidy as those of age pensioners or service pensioners. So, Mr Speaker, the appropriateness of providing this concession to pensioners is clear, but I think it is equally appropriate that it be provided to other disadvantaged people. I commend my amendments to the house.

MR MOORE (4.37): Mr Speaker, I must say that, on reading these amendments, I was considerably attracted to them. In fact, I went to the Chief Minister and said, "It seems to me that the issues raised by Mr Whitecross are very good, and they are matters that you should seriously take into account. The amendments that he proposes will be a much fairer way of dealing with a range of people than that which you have proposed". I hope that she will allow me to give an indication of her response. Her response was something like, "Yes, we originally pursued this sort of line; but, in the end, on advice from our public servants, we determined that basically it could not be done and still get a reasonable return from the tax". Mrs Carnell may disagree with me, but I think that is a fair representation of what took her about 10 minutes to say.

I pursued the matter further. I and my staff had quite a number of discussions with Mr Whitecross and also a series of briefings with officers from Mrs Carnell's department. I certainly appreciated those. They were very frank briefings, and the officers concerned were particularly helpful in all the matters that I asked about.

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