Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Technical Changes No. 2) Bill 2026

Mr McCORMACK (Riverina) (12:16): The members for Dunkley, Sturt and Capricornia would be interested to know I'm reading at the moment She Shapes History: Guided Walks and Untold Stories About Great Australian Women by Sita Sargeant, available at the parliamentary gift store and all good bookshops. It details the struggle and the achievements that women have had to be heard in this country.

The member for Sturt might be interested to know that it includes a piece on the Mary Lee bust on North Terrace, not far from her electorate. On 23 August 1894, the South Australian parliament received its largest-ever petition. It was over 120 metres long and carried more than 11,600 signatures.

That would have been a lot at the time. It called for women to be granted the right to vote. I see the member for Boothby here, too.

It's not far from her electorate either. I know that Australia has a proud record when it comes to women gaining the vote, as, obviously, they should have. This book is relevant to the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Technical Changes No. 2) Bill 2026 because, when you read schedule 1—I know this bill is very technical—it means that people can apply for payments online, over the phone or in person.

Whilst women are achieving great things in corporate Australia, politics and everything else, they still, largely, run the household and run the household budgets. I know that, when the government and the parliament do anything they can to ease the burden of the compliance and the governance over payments for social security and for family benefits and all that, it does probably help women more than men.

It can be an essential lifeline for people who find themselves in a difficult situation with urgent bills to pay—in particular, women who may well be faced with a situation where they're a single parent running a single-parent family. They have difficulty juggling, in a cost-of-living crisis, as we lurch towards $1 trillion of national debt—and there is a cost-of-living crisis, let's face it—getting across the family assistance benefits and allowing for the automation of those applications for advance payments.

That is why the coalition is supporting this bill—because, if the technical aspects of this bill can help those women and the population generally, then it has to be seen to be a good thing. These advance payments can cover emergencies which, as we all know, come up when they're least expected in our daily lives: home repairs that sometimes cause an urgent need, and you haven't budgeted for them; a washing machine, say, or a fridge or some other device needs replacing; unexpected medical costs; purchasing supplies, such as those things needed for a new job; or just getting the children off to school at the start of each school year.

These proposed changes will now allow—with 'now' being the important word in this sentence—requests for advance payments to be made online, so people can apply for them when they need them and in a way that best suits their needs. And that is important. When I refer to a new job, it's sad to see that, today, the jobless rate has jumped to 4.5 per cent, as 15,800 Australians have lost work.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show a fall in employment of nearly an additional 16,000 in the month of July. When you double that with a cost-of-living crisis and with national debt soaring, it is no wonder that people are very anxious out there. So any support that we can give them through technical changes to the Social Security Act, the family assistance act or anything such as that, is to be supported.

These changes in the first schedule will also support people by introducing more flexibility around their social security repayment amounts. If people find that they are in a position to make their repayments faster, they will be able to do so. That has to be seen to be a good thing.

If they need more time to repay the debt, that can be approved, too. Schedule 2 of the bill is going to amend the Administrative Review Tribunal Act and the family assistance act so that decisions undergoing a review of the Administrative Review Tribunal can be changed to reflect the most up-to-date information as it becomes available. That's important, because, as this book shows, Australian life has evolved a long way, and we've never seen a faster change than the change we've seen just in recent years, with computers becoming faster, with technology changing at an ever quicker pace and with AI coming on board at a rate quicker than, probably, most of us would like.

There are so many hardships in just being able to keep up, and so many compliance measures, and legislation always is far more tardy than the technology changes that society endures. Schedule 2 should expedite decisions that end up at the ART by ensuring that both that tribunal and Services Australia have the most detailed, up-to-date and accurate information on hand when considering appeals.

Again, I say that is going to help households; again, that is going to help the general populace. Schedule 3 is amending the family assistance acts to ensure the agency can use pre-issue income data from the Australian tax office to complete reconciliations of a person's entitlement to family tax benefit. Here's a shout-out to—would you believe—Assistant Treasurer Mulino.

I've had a couple of issues lately. I'm not going to go into them, because they are personal for the people concerned, but one involved a large establishment in my hometown which had an employee who allegedly stole a large sum of money—and that is before the courts, but it caused tax hardships for the owner. In another instance, the owner of a large tourism firm, for one of the great destinations locally, also got into some tax hardship when the person who was doing his tax, in another town, just wasn't up to date with what needed to be done, and there were some anomalies there that just weren't quite what they should have been.

I sought the assistance of the Assistant Treasurer. In both instances, the business owners were given the grace and given the permission to be able to right their matters. The tax office was happy.

They were satisfied, and everybody came out on top. That is what I call good work from a minister. I want to make that point because sometimes it's difficult, when you are a minister, to get everything balanced and everybody happy.

But, when you've got a minister who's prepared to listen and prepared to ensure that things are done properly, you get good outcomes. It really isn't that difficult, quite frankly. The ATO, according to schedule 3, uses what has been reported by the employer as the income to date to determine what a particular income is.

This is updating and fixing this in a good and proper way. Schedule 4 of the bill will amend the Family Assistance Act to allow the pre-issue income data to be used for Child Care Subsidy reconciliations. I heard the member for Dunkley talking about this particular provision, the Child Care Subsidy reconciliations.

Labor will tell you that child care is much better now than it was when the coalition was in government. I appreciate that childcare workers need to be paid at a good and fair rate. I also understand that that Labor talks about the availability of or the number of childcare options, but there is a childcare desert in regional Australia.

The access and availability of child care is simply not what it should be. It simply doesn't equate with what is available in metropolitan Australia. When a farming group has availability and access to child care as its No. 1 priority—and this is one of the national farming groups—you know how important an issue this is.

I look at a town such as Lockhart in my electorate. It's not a small town. Last year, it had a real problem when a childcare provider closed and the town looked as though it wasn't going to have access to child care.

This is an important issue for families, particularly for women who are either working or trying to get back into the workforce. It has to be available. I know my daughter, Georgina, has just returned to the workforce, and she has a daughter.

It is difficult to juggle family responsibilities and work responsibilities, get your child to child care, and afford the same. We hear all the time about how wages are going up. I'm sure the member for Lyne will agree with me, having spoken to her constituents and done any number—and I commend her—of stops and listening posts in her electorate.

A number of people will no doubt have told her, as people tell me in my electorate, that real wages are in fact falling. And they are. This is a real issue, particularly in those single-parent families, where they're balancing and trying to make ends meet.

Anything that can be done—certainly, in the childcare space—would be advisable and would be of great assistance. In schedule 4, stakeholders support the use of pre-issue income data at a general level. Economic Justice Australia and Single Mother Families Australia have raised some concerns about the long-term use of pre-issue income data where it differs from a person's final assessment amount, and that is an issue.

I mentioned single mothers before. That is a big issue. I'd strongly encourage the Minister for Social Services and her department to very carefully look at this particular point, because it is absolutely essential and vital that we have correct assessments.

A person's final assessment amount should be used as soon as possible to make a determination on their payment entitlement. I know those opposite have gone on about using financial data to retrieve recoveries of amounts—big time. This is a little area in this that does need looking at, and the minister and her department should be doing just that.

Schedule 5 of the bill amends the Child Support (Assessment) Act to allow a person's pre-issue income data to be used for child support assessments. This change is particularly important. Single Mother Families Australia, Relationships Australia and even the Commonwealth Ombudsman are supportive of these changes, because getting child support payments right matters.

It does matter. Relationships Australia has said that the use of pre-issue income data is helping to address the 'weaponisation of the child support system' by, they said, 'thwarting a payer's attempts to delay assessment of their tax obligations' by ensuring that we have more current and accurate child support assessments. We know that, under the Labor government, unfortunately, child support debt has skyrocketed.

That's $2 billion that should be in the pockets of parents and carers to raise children. And we are in a cost-of-living crisis. I'm not being partisan about that; I'm just being truthful.

Australian families are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table. We know that there are parents out there who sometimes, unfortunately—it's just the way of the world; it's human nature—don't do the right thing, and that has an impact on everything and everyone. Schedule 6 is amending the family assistance act to enable reviews of decisions to use tax refunds to offset family assistance debts such as the family tax benefit.

This is good legislation. The coalition are supporting it, and we commend the bill to the House.