Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 1) Bill 2014 and related bill

The majority voted in favour of a motion to agree to the bills.(Read more about the stages that a bill must pass through to become law here. ) This means that the majority agree with the bills as they stand during the consideration in detail stage and will now decide whether to read them for a third time and therefore pass them in the House of Representatives.

Background to the bills

The Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 1) Bill 2014 and the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 2) Bill 2014 were introduced to implement a number of budget measures. These measures include pausing indexation on certain government payments, ceasing certain payments and changing the requirements for certain payments.(Read about these changes in more detail in the explanatory memorandum for the former bill (2014 Budget Measures No. 1) here and latter bill (2014 Budget Measures No. 2) here. )

Although several of these welfare measure were to become effective from 1 July 2014, Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews has said that it is unlikely that they will pass through Parliament by then.(See ABC News for more information.) In the meantime, the government payments will continue unchanged.