A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Amendment (No Jab No Pay Repeal) Bill 2025

Senator BABET (Victoria—United Australia Party Whip) (09:11): As a crossbench senator, I only have one opportunity each year to bring a bill up for debate—just one. This year, I chose to bring forward A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Amendment (No Jab No Pay Repeal) Bill 2025. Thank you to Senator Antic for originally introducing that bill in 2025.

This bill restores the conscientious objection pathway, which was removed in 2015, allowing parents who object to childhood vaccination on conscientious grounds to formally declare that objection and remain eligible for family tax benefit part A and the child care subsidy. In a free country, which is what this is supposed to be, parents should not be punished because they make lawful and informed medical decisions for their child—not the government's child and not Canberra's child but their child.

Importantly, this bill is not about banning vaccines, not at all. It does not stop Australians vaccinating their children if they want to. It doesn't stop doctors from recommending vaccines.

It doesn't stop governments from providing information. It just restores the right of a parent to parent and to object to a medical procedure without the government going ahead and punishing them financially for that decision. When the Social Services Legislation Amendment (No Jab, No Pay) Bill was passed in 2015, non-medical exemptions, such as conscientious, philosophical or religious objections, were removed as valid reasons for remaining eligible for family assistance payments.

Today, the parents who do not comply can have their family tax benefit part A reduced and their child care subsidy stopped altogether. What does the Commonwealth do? It uses family assistance as leverage to secure compliance with a medical decision.

The bill is so simple. It just restores the previously implemented conscientious objection pathway, where the parent can go ahead and talk about their immunisation with their doctor or whoever else—their recognised provider. They can formally declare their objection and that's it.

It's a very simple principle. The government should provide information—fair enough—but, at the end of the day, parents have got to make the final decision. This is a very simple thing.

This is something that the Liberal Party should be jumping all over, but I don't know if they will. We'll see later on, because I'm going to call this to a vote today. The government may go ahead and say, 'This is an incentive,' or whatever they might like to say.

Do you know what I call it? It's just coercion. That's what it is.

Even the Australian Immunisation Handbook recognises that valid consent must be voluntary and free from undue pressure, coercion or manipulation. How voluntary is a decision when a parent is told, 'You better do this or we're going to cut the financial support that your family relies upon'? It's crazy.

Every decent mum and dad—every single one—puts the health of their kids first. Parents who object to vaccinating their children are not acting hastily or irresponsibly, not at all. They've researched.

They've spoken to doctors. They've lost sleep. They agonise over what they believe is best for guess who?

Their child. Not your child—their child. Some may even have children who have experienced adverse events in the past and they are understandably cautious.

That's fair enough. At the end of the day, we don't have to agree with their decision. We don't have to agree with it, but we have to respect their right to make that decision.

Freedom is not allowing people to only make the choices that the government approves of. That's not freedom. Who bears the greatest burden under no jab, no pay?

It's not the wealthy families that can absorb the financial penalties. It's the low-income families that need the childcare subsidy, that need the family tax benefit part A. They need it to pay the bills.

They need it to put food on the table. They need that subsidy to help them do that. A wealthy parent—what can they do?

They can exercise their conscience. They can absorb the cost. But a struggling parent is told: 'You know what?

Your conscience has a price tag.' Family assistance is supposed to support children. It shouldn't be used as a weapon to force compliance from parents, not at all. A 2004 Australian study found that no jab, no pay was linked to about 49,500 more children becoming fully vaccinated.

Some will say that this proves that the policy worked. However, more than 95 per cent of those children came from families who had never registered as conscientious objectors. In other words, simply put, the policy encouraged families who were already willing to vaccinate their children to catch up on missed vaccinations.

It did very little—almost nothing—to change the minds of parents who had a genuine objection. If a parent has an objection, it's very clear that threatening to take away family payments is not going to change their mind. It just punishes that family.

Even if the financial pressure does convince some parents to comply, we should still ask this question: should the government be using financial pressure or financial hardship to force parents into a medical decision which they would otherwise refuse? For a family that earns under $88,520 a year, the childcare subsidy covers about 90 per cent of eligible childcare costs.

If they lose that subsidy because their child is not vaccinated, they can lose around 25 grand a year per child. In some cases, it's more than 35 grand a year. On top of that, family tax benefit part A can be cut by around $950 a year for each unvaccinated child—each one.

I heard from a constituent recently who told me what this can mean in real life. She had separated from her husband. She was struggling financially.

She had to go back to work, and, because of her objection, she could not receive the childcare subsidy and thus could not afford child care. She told me that the financial pressure forced her to get her children injected as quickly as possible, and, sadly, one of her children suffered an adverse reaction, a severe one. Is that really a free choice, or did the government make it impossible for her to do anything else?

That's exactly what is wrong with this law. My home state of Victoria goes even further. Under Victoria's no jab, no play laws, children must be up to date with immunisations to confirm enrolment in kindergarten, long day care, family day care and occasional care, subject to some very limited exemptions.

Before a child has even reached primary school, access to early childhood education and care can be conditional upon vaccination status. I think it's wrong, and I think it's inconsistent with the spirit of a free country and the rights of parents to make decisions for their own children. This Commonwealth bill, obviously, is not going to repeal those Victorian laws.

That's pretty clear. They're separate state laws. We all know that.

But I hope that Victoria is going to reconsider these laws, because the same principle applies. I keep harping on about it every single day in this place. Parents, not politicians—and certainly not unelected bureaucrats—carry the primary responsibility for their kids.

That's it. We should also recall what happened when governments confused coercion with persuasion during the COVID years. Mandates, fines, employment consequences and exclusion have created deep resentment and damaged trust between ordinary people and government, and the institutions as well.

Whatever senators might think of the measures that were taken during that period, surely we learned that trust, once destroyed, is very difficult to rebuild. How do you rebuild trust? You do it by treating adults like adults.

You give people information. You allow questions, and you respect informed consent. You definitely don't build trust by threatening the family budget, that's for sure.

This bill is modest. It doesn't abolish the immunisation program. It doesn't stop somebody vaccinating their kids if they choose to.

All it says is that, if a parent has a genuine objection, they can formally declare that objection and not lose vital family assistance because of it. That's it. We're not going to ask senators in this place whether they personally support vaccination.

That's up to you. We're asking a more fundamental question, a more simple question and a very important question: should the government use financial hardship and threats as leverage to secure compliance with a medical decision? Obviously, the answer is no, and your answer should also be no.

The government is not the parent—I keep saying it's not the parent. The bureaucracy is not the parent. Canberra doesn't know a child better than that child's mum and dad does, and it certainly does not love that child more.

In short, it's this—and I keep saying it and I'm going to say it again: less government, more freedom and more responsibility returned to Australian families. Obviously, I urge the Senate to support this bill, but let's see.