Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

Here is another one: they have declared less than $4,000 in employment income while on payments the entire time, while the Australian Taxation Office suggests they earned $26,000 for that time. We think it is quite right and proper that when there is such a discrepancy that person is, at least, inquired about that discrepancy and that they are given the opportunity to explain the discrepancy if they are able to do. An inquiry is worthy of being made in order to determine whether or not there has, in fact, been an overpayment.

I should point out that the member for Barton put up more than 52 cases to the media over the summer period, but a full third of those cases had nothing to do with the new online compliance system. Even in her remarks this afternoon she mentioned a Miss Roxborough—another case that she had given to TheCanberra Times—but it had nothing to do with the online compliance system. She said that case was done through the system the Labor Party would revert to if they were back in office.

It is worth asking, if Labor were back in office, what exactly they would do to some of these very egregious cases where there is such a stark discrepancy. We have looked at many cases and I have spoken to this chamber about a case, for example, back in the Labor years where the person earned $5,000 but where the employer reported to the Australian Taxation Office that they had, in fact, earned more than $100,000 during that same period. That occurred during the Labor years. It occurred when the member for Sydney was the Minister for Human Services, the member for McMahon was the Minister of Human Services, and the member for Gorton was the Minister for Human Services.

They did not catch that particular case. They did not catch the case of $5,000 versus $100,000. They did not catch it then and now when they are asked what they would do if they were back in government today—and the member for Barton answered that question on ABC News Breakfast on 18 January. She was asked directly, 'What would you actually do to recover that money when there are genuine overpayments?' And she said, 'Well, Labor would do exactly what we've done in the past.'

I will just talk about the implications of that. In the past there were cases where people self-reported $5,000 but their employers said they earned $100,000. And Labor did nothing. Now they are saying that if they were back in government they would again do that same system, where they do not pick up cases like that. We do not agree with that. We think there should be a fair and reasonable system of compliance that is fair to the welfare recipient. We have already made refinements to the system, and we will continue to make refinements to the system, to make it reasonable. But it also has to be fair to the taxpayer, and that means we will continue to do this important work of data matching to identify cases where there are discrepancies and we will recoup taxpayers money when it is overpaid.

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