Copeland Gordon: Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
Copeland Gordon: Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:13506] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I want to speak to clause 39 which is about in-work payments. I think Deborah Coddington made quite a valid point in respect of subsections (6) and (7) of section KD 2AAA when she said they are somewhat economical with full stops. At least they are symmetrical because there is one full stop every 10 lines exactly. So some thought and care obviously have been given to where full stops should go. It is a bit of a pity when we have just rewritten the tax legislation at great expense and in a process that took some years to put in those two provisions without any full stops in them. 
However let me come to the main point that I want to talk to in this Committee stage and that is the in-work payment. In the explanatory note of the bill we are told that the in-work payment will be available to superannuitants. I want to relay to the Committee exactly what happened at the Finance and Expenditure Committee. We had a visit from a grandmother who wanted to draw our attention—in relation to the Budget Policy Statement which we were considering then—to the problems of grandparents raising grandchildren. She was already a superannuitant. She was about 66 years of age. She had taken on two of her grandchildren in what can only be described as undesirable circumstances. She told the committee that in order to make ends meet and to support those children which she was committed to doing she had to take out a $20000 mortgage on her house. She went on to tell us that by living off that mortgage very very carefully and being very careful about her funding she hoped to have it paid off within 20 years—namely at the age of 86 years. 
I think that all of us on the Finance and Expenditure Committee—in fact we actually put it in our report back to the House in a rather oblique manner—expressed the hope that superannuitants would continue to receive in spite of that status assistance with childcare costs. It is true that grandparents raising grandchildren do under this bill get the unsupported child’s benefit and would get the in-work payment in clause 39 if they were in the workforce. But when we think about it a 66-year-old woman who is looking after two of her grandchildren is most unlikely to be in the workforce and therefore she does not qualify for the in-work payment. She is left simply with the unsupported child’s benefit. 
In that regard the principal point she was making to us is that although that benefit will be increased by $15 a week from 1 April 2005 it still remains $30 below the foster-care allowance. I would like the Government to think very very carefully about why there should be that $30 gap between the two benefits. If members were to listen to this woman and to hear the circumstances in which she was bringing up her grandchildren it would be clear to them that there was no less work and no less expense—including psychiatric counselling and things of that sort—in bringing up those grandchildren than there would be in bringing up foster-children. I think that for the sake of another 30 bucks a week and perhaps too for the sake of simplification the Government should give thought to whether there are valid policy reasons for superannuitants raising grandchildren to be on the unsupported child’s benefit rather than on the foster-care benefit which would give them another $30 a week. 
That is my central point and I would like the Government to think about that. If the Minister felt inclined to take a call that would be great.