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From 1 January 2002 the social security means test treatment of private trusts and private companies will change. The assets and income of these structures will be attributed to the person who controls, or has contributed significant assets to, the structures. A special concession was developed to address farmers' concerns about succession planning. Wherever possible, other means test concessions will also be extended to controllers to ensure they receive similar treatment to people holding assets directly or in partnerships.
Centrelink is the Commonwealth's primary service delivery agency, with responsibility for administering an extensive range of payments and services including social security payments, childcare assistance, the Retirement Assistance for Farmers Scheme, Farm Family Restart Scheme and Exceptional Circumstances Relief payments.
Expenditure under the National Rural and Regional Servicing Strategy for the years 1998-99 to 2002-03 is expected to be between $8 million and $9 million. Since the implementation of the National Rural and Regional Servicing Strategy in July 1998, Centrelink has been tailoring its services to the particular needs of small rural and regional communities, and has expanded its presence into many more communities with more than 189 new servicing arrangements. Funding for these services was made available from within existing resources.
Centrelink has established productive relationships with Federal Government, State and local governments and the private sector to improve access to Centrelink services for rural customers. Some examples of successful collaborative efforts include the partnerships with the WA Telecentre Network, Service Tasmania and the Commonwealth Department of Transport and Regional Services Rural Transaction Centre Programme.
Centrelink has trialed and implemented a range of technological solutions to improve services to rural and regional customers. These include:
Centrelink currently has:
It has also established arrangements for the delivery of services with State agencies in Western Australia and Tasmania and is progressing relationships with the State Governments in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.
The National Rural and Regional Servicing Strategy has recently been reviewed to consolidate existing servicing arrangements and to provide consistency in service delivery. As a result, a further 93 locations have been identified for the establishment of a Centrelink agent or access point.
The Family Assistance Office (FAO) was established in existing Centrelink offices, Medicare offices and ATOaccess and enquiry sites in July 2000 and has more than 560 locations Australia wide. More than half are located in regional and rural areas. Families no longer have to deal with a number of different agencies to access family payments - they can do all of their family business in one place. This means that many regional and rural families now have access to family services where they previously may not have had.
The Government will provide additional funding of $86 million over four years from 2001-02, to the National Native Title Tribunal, the Federal Court, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the Attorney-General's Department to improve delivery of Native Title services. This additional funding will enable the speedier resolution of Native Title matters through the Federal Court and the National Native Title Tribunal, and provide additional resources to support participants in those processes. This will benefit all members of the community, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, including those living in rural and regional areas.
On 10 March 2000, the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory announced that $20 million in Commonwealth funding would be provided to the Northern Territory for a juvenile pre-court diversion scheme and a jointly funded Aboriginal interpreter service.
An agreement between the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory came into effect on 1 September 2000. Its aim is to divert juveniles from the criminal justice system and to alleviate the language barriers faced by Aboriginal people. The Commonwealth funding is for:
Coordinated through the Juvenile Diversion Unit, Northern Territory police are diverting juveniles who have been apprehended for offences, at the pre-court stage, through warnings, cautions or referrals to diversionary programmes and conferencing.
The Aboriginal Interpreter Service (based in the Territory's Office of Aboriginal Development) maintains a register of Aboriginal language interpreters and offers a central booking service for government and non-government agencies across the Territory that require on-site Aboriginal language interpreters. Under the agreement, government health and legal services, as well as Aboriginal legal services, also receive funding to purchase interpreter services.
Regional and rural areas in the Northern Territory will directly benefit from both the juvenile diversion scheme and the Aboriginal interpreter service.
The Government will contribute funding of more than $1.3 million in 2001-02 to the Law by Telecommunications (LBT) Initiative. This initiative continues the work of the Rural and Remote Legal Advice Telephone Service and the Family Law Advice Telecommunications Service, two services that have been combined and integrated into the LBT Initiative, and which will become operational in June 2001.
The LBT initiative provides a national online gateway to information and assistance primarily for people dealing with the family law system. It comprises:
The call centre will directly assist all callers seeking information on family law, primary dispute resolution services or child support matters. Rural and remote callers requiring legal advice or general legal information who do not currently have access to these services will be directly transferred to an appropriate service provider. Other callers requiring this type of assistance will be referred rather than directly transferred.
In the 1999-2000 Budget new funding of $15.6 million over four years was announced to establish 25 new children's contact services to help separated families better manage difficult child contact arrangements. Some 80 per cent of these services are in regional and rural Australia.
In the 1999-2000 Budget, new funding of $16.3 million over three years was announced for increased dispute resolution in family law matters. This funding will be used for many projects, including a national development strategy to create an environment that is in the child's best interests by promoting best practice dispute management services for separating parents. This strategy includes the design and conduct of professional development programmes targeted at legal practitioners, counsellors, mediators and other family dispute resolution practitioners, and proposals for partnership projects to increase cooperation and coordination in providing post-separation services to families.
The Family Relationships Services Programme will receive $3 million of this funding to increase the delivery of family relationship counselling services.
The Federal Government committed a further $21 million over four years in the 1999-2000 Budget to the National Crime Prevention Programme. The programme's objective is to identify and promote innovative ways of reducing and preventing crime and fear of crime. It includes both research and practical initiatives, such as national research projects, pilot projects and local prevention activities.
Priority areas have included: fear of crime, domestic violence, residential burglary, young people and crime, and violence in Indigenous communities. Projects located in regional and rural Australia with funding commitments until 2002 include: developing community responses to crime in the regional centre of Kalgoorlie, a project in Derby involving working with Indigenous young people to prevent family violence, and an early intervention project with young people and their families in Bunbury, Western Australia.
This Budget measure increases the maximum low income aged persons rebate and pensioner rebate for age and service (age) pensioners to $2,230 for individuals and $1,602 for each member of a couple, with effect from the 2000-01 income year. This will provide an effective tax-free threshold of $20,000 for individuals and up to $32,612 for couples.
The Medicare levy threshold increase for senior Australians, also announced in this Budget, will ensure that individual senior Australians with incomes up to $20,000 are completely free from the Medicare levy as well, and therefore pay no income tax up to that level.
This measure will increase the Medicare levy thresholds so that senior Australians do not pay the Medicare levy until they start to incur a tax liability. This will be achieved by increasing the Medicare levy threshold to $20,000 for senior Australians who are entitled to the low income aged persons rebate or pensioner rebate. These regulations take effect from the 2000-01 income year.
A one-off supplement of $300 will be paid to all income support recipients of age pension age, including service pensioners, at a cost of $663 million. This will provide help with the cost of living for individuals as well as providing a stimulus to consumer spending. People of pension age with low incomes who are not in the tax or social security systems can claim a one-off $300 seniors payment at a cost of $10 million. This will include groups such as farmers whose assets exclude them from the pension but whose incomes are too low to pay tax.
The Government will extend the telephone allowance, currently available to pensioners, to self-funded retirees who qualify for a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. Self-funded retirees of age pension age who hold this card will now be able to claim $17.20 per quarter. To allow a greater number of older Australians to benefit from this measure, the Government will extend access to the health card by increasing the income limits for the card to $50,000 per annum for singles, $80,000 per annum for couples and $45,000 each for couples separated by illness.
The Commonwealth will also negotiate with the State and Territory Governments to extend some or all of the concessions that are available to pensioners and certain allowees to Commonwealth Seniors Health Card holders
The Government will restore the war widow's pension to approximately 3,000 widows who remarried before May 1984, and as a consequence became ineligible for their war widow's pension. This addresses a long-standing anomaly and ensures that all war widows are treated in a fair and consistent manner.
Four initiatives specifically for women will be funded in 2001-02.
Building on its considerable record in domestic violence and crime prevention initiatives, the Government will provide funding of $16.5 million over four years to facilitate a national approach to combating sexual assault against women.
The measure will be administered through the Office of the Status of Women. It will establish partnerships with other governments, key organisations and service providers to develop, test and implement strategies to address the increasing incidence of sexual assault in the community. These will include campaigns to promote community awareness, ensuring the sharing of approaches to combating sexual assault and promoting best practice across jurisdictions and agencies.
The Government will provide an additional $2.4 million over four years to extend Government activities that are increasing the participation of women in leadership positions and to promote leadership by women in non-elite roles, particularly women who are Indigenous, marginalised or disadvantaged, or who live in rural areas.
The Government will provide an additional $5.5 million over four years to develop a women's information strategy to improve access to government information for and about women. A key objective of this initiative will be to establish web-based access to integrated information for women and about women's circumstances and needs. In this phase, a comprehensive data warehouse, integrating statistical information about women's needs and circumstances will be established; government information relevant to women will be made accessible through a single web-site; a national conference for women in August 2001, Australian Women Speak, will consider contemporary issues and concerns; and a research and policy issues publications series relevant to women will be established.
The Government will provide an additional $5.6 million over four years to expand and enhance government support for women's organisations through the establishment of the Women's Development Programme. It will fund targeted research, policy and service development projects responsive to women's needs and circumstances, and will encourage and support women's contributions to Government policy formulation. The programme will also support women's capacity building and mentoring activities. The programme will be administered through the Office of the Status of Women and will bring their total funding for women's development to $7.6 million over the next four years.
The Government committed $240 million for the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy over the four years from July 2000. A significant amount of funding will go toward strengthening families in regional Australia through the establishment of new partnerships and will improve access to key services. Five of the nine elements of this Strategy are set out below, with the other four - Potential Leadership in Local Communities, National Skills Development for Volunteers, Local Solutions to Local Problems and Can Do Community - set out in the Community Empowerment chapter.
Advisory mechanisms for the Strategy have been put in place and targeting plans have been developed. Twelve demonstration projects were announced in January 2001.
Stronger Families Fund, with funding of $40 million, emphasises early childhood and parenting, and early interventions and prevention approaches.
Early Intervention, Parenting and Family Relationships Support, with funding of $47.3 million, provides services and activities such as parenting support, playgroups, marriage and relationship education and family counselling, with a focus on regional Australia.
Greater flexibility and choice in child care, with funding of $65.5 million over four years, provides for a package of measures to improve the ability of families to access and choose child care that meets their needs. This includes:
Longitudinal study of Australian children, with funding of $6.1 million.
Communications strategy for Stronger Families and Communities, with funding of $8 million.
The Government will provide $2.2 million in 2001-02, $5 million in 2002-03, $0.6 million in 2003-04 and $0.6 million in 2004-05 to address and prevent problem gambling through:
The Government is committed to improving the access of families living in rural and regional Australia to appropriate, affordable and quality child care. Child care services are supported through the Commonwealth's Child Care Support funding, and delivered by a range of providers, including private for profit operators, local governments, charitable and religious organisations, and non-profit community groups.
Since coming to office in 1996, the Government has acknowledged and responded to the unmet demand for child care, and the special requirements of service delivery in rural and regional Australia, by providing flexible services which meet community needs. Ongoing recurrent funding of $4 million per annum is available to support these services in rural and regional areas.
Flexible services are being established in small rural communities and regional areas with dispersed populations, where the need for formal child care has been identified but where the standard models of care, such as long day care, outside school hours care and family day care, are either inappropriate or unavailable.
Funding is also provided to assist with the child care needs of children with additional needs, including children and parents with disabilities, children from non-English speaking backgrounds, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and children from rural and remote areas.
Funding of $19.8 million per annum is provided for Multifunctional Childrens' Services, Multifunctional Aboriginal Children's Services and playgroups, mobile services, and enrichment programmes targeted to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.
The Disadvantaged Area Subsidy (DAS) is a recurrent subsidy to assist with the operating costs of a service. Overall, DAS funding totalling $10 million per annum is provided to some 650 services in rural and regional Australia. It is provided to community-based long day care centres in rural and urban fringe areas where there is no other service (for example, the sole provider of baby places), to all outside school hours care services located in rural and regional areas, and to some isolated outside school hours care services located in urban fringe areas.
The Family Crisis Child Care Pilot Projects aim to bring children with particular needs into mainstream child care programmes at no cost to the family (where cost would be a barrier). With their children in suitable child care, parents are able to access family support services such as rehabilitation, parenting skills and legal advice, knowing that their children are being well cared for. Three pilot projects are located in rural and regional Australia.
During 2000-01, more than $10 million will be allocated towards providing child care assistance under the Jobs, Education and Training (JET) Programme, which assists certain groups of Centrelink customers break down the barriers which prevent them from undertaking employment, education or training. In more remote regions where formal child care is not available, temporary creches can be established to care for children of JET customers while they participate in work related activities.
Reconnect, a youth homelessness early intervention programme, began operating in December 1999. By the end of 2000-01, Reconnect services will be operational in about 100 communities nationwide. Approximately 50 per cent of funding (around $10 million per annum) will be directed to regional, rural and remote communities.
Services are located in communities of high need identified by the State and Territory Governments. The objective of the programme is to reconnect young people with family, education, training, employment and their community.