Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing and Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I understand other members wish to ask questions. I will not spend time on grand rhetoric; I will try to get to the questions I would like answers to. In relation to communications at Centrelink, answers were provided at Senate estimates last week that suggested that the General Manager, Communication, of Centrelink, Mr Jongen, 'works closely' with your office in the preparation of items for the media. How often is your office in contact with the gentleman in question? To what extent are his media activities directed by your office? How does this relationship work? One could cynically suggest that the gentleman in question is rolled out on programs like Today Tonight for puff pieces when there is other more significant and possibly bad news on the horizon.

Ms Plibersek interjecting—

I will not respond to the interjection. I am interested in the relationship between the gentleman in question and your office, Minister.

Finally, in relation to the Centrelink disaster relief fraud task force, according to answers provided in Senate estimates in February this year, as of 23 February 2011 Centrelink reported that it had only recovered $124,735 more than it spent on investigating fraud of the disaster relief payments to that date. Can you update me on the figure of what has been recovered?

I end on an observation to which you might like to respond. There has been a lot of talk in the media about success, but $124,000 extra recovered, if that is the amount, is not a great amount as compared to the effort that might have gone into this. One might have expected, given the comments that have been made in the media about fraud in this regard, that more than that amount might have been recovered.

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