Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017

The majority voted in favour of passing the bill in the House of Representatives. In parliamentary jargon, they voted to read the bill for a third time. The bill will now go to the Senate for their consideration. It won't become law unless the Senate agrees to vote to pass it.

What does the bill do?

The bill does a lot!

The main two focuses for the bill are to make savings for the Government (that is, to let them spend less money on social services) and to amend the current childcare arrangements. For example, the child care benefit and child care rebate will be cancelled and a new child care subsidy (CCS) will be introduced that will be subject to both income and activity tests.

The bill's homepage gives a brief introduction to just how wide the changes are that the bill is making:

The bill will -

• increase the family tax benefit (FTB) Part A fortnightly rates by $20.02 for each FTB child in the family up to 19 years of age;
• remove the entitlement to FTB Part B for single parent families who are not single parents aged 60 or more or grandparents or great-grandparents from the start of the calendar year their youngest child turns 17 years of age;
• phase out the FTB Part A and Part B end-of-year supplements;
• increase certain youth allowance and disability support pension fortnightly rates by approximately $19.37 for recipients under 18 years of age;
• reduce from 26 to six weeks the period during which age pension and other payments with unlimited portability can be paid outside Australia at the means-tested rate;
• pause for three years the indexation of various income thresholds that apply to certain social security benefits and allowances and the income test free area for parenting payment single;
• extend and simplifies the ordinary waiting period for all working age payments;
• extend youth allowance (other) to 22 to 24 year olds in lieu of newstart allowance and sickness allowance;
• provide for a four-week waiting period for certain persons aged under 25 years applying for youth allowance (other) or special benefit and require these job seekers to complete certain pre-benefit activities;
• cease the child care benefit (CCB) and child care rebate;
• introduce a child care subsidy (CCS) which is subject to both an income and activity test;
• introduce various rates of additional child care subsidy (ACCS) that are available in certain circumstances;
• make amendments in relation to CCS and ACCS claims, reviews of decisions, provider approvals, and compliance obligations of approved providers of child care services;
• abolish the pensioner education supplement;
• abolish the education entry payment;
• prevent new recipients of welfare payments or concession cards from being paid the energy supplement from 20 September 2017;
• cease the payment of pension supplement after six weeks temporary absence overseas and immediately for permanent departures;
• enable automation of the regular income stream review process;
• trial a social security income test incentive aimed at increasing the number of job seekers who undertake specified seasonal horticultural work, such as fruit picking;
• provide that parental leave pay under the Paid Parental Leave scheme will only be provided to parents who have no employer-provided paid primary carer leave, or whose employer-provided paid primary carer leave is for a period less than 20 weeks or is paid at a rate below the full-time national minimum wage; and
• remove the requirement for employers to provide paid parental leave to eligible employees, unless an employer chooses to manage the payment to employees and the employees agree for the employer to pay them.

The Explanatory Memorandum gives a more detailed explanation of these changes.