Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I hear my colleagues say, 'Who is he?' They are right to ask this question. He has been completely missing in action with the census fail, the Centrelink robo-debt, the ATO tax office website failure and the child support agency failure. The only great thing I can say about Angus Taylor is that he has literally become the government's telepresence within the ministry. He is nowhere to be seen. He is a mere telepresence. He is not available, and it is disgraceful that he is not here.

The ATO website went down for four days. The transmission of information back and forth went down for four days. The ATO came out and said, 'We don't know anything about what's going on.' So we do not know if this was a cyber attack. We do not know exactly what was going on. They do not know how to fix it. No-one has stepped up. When the assistant minister is not present, when the revenue minister does not step up and when the Treasurer does not step up you know there is a problem.

The second thing I will mention is this: if the member for Fairfax is so confident about this resolution, I invite him to post his speech on Facebook, on his own page, and then advertise the heck out of it in his own electorate. I tell you what: no-one in his electorate will support him, and, in fact, they will probably suggest that he go and have a lie down. After all the problems they have had—

Ms Burney interjecting—

'A Bex and a good lie down,' as the member for Barton rightly interjects—because no-one could be serious. If he does not do it, I extend to him this offer: I will not only post his speech; I will post my response and I will advertise it in his electorate. People in his electorate should hear that when he comes to Canberra he defends the government. He does not come here to stick up for his constituents who have problems with Centrelink, the ATO, child support or the census; he comes in to defend the government. It is wrong.

Labor supports, and has always supported, the digital transformation push by the government, but this has gone off the rails. This has completely gone off the rails. It has undermined the effort of digital transformation. Look at the number of areas where this has gone off track. This is a problem. Digital technology is not just about the tech; it is the end-to-end process that should be looked at and the application of technology to improve the service. Constituents, the general public, should be able to get better out of digital transformation.

What is happening now is that the Digital Transformation Agency has turned itself into a think tank. It is not legitimately there to help. The problem is that, as these people get distracted in their own internal warfare, the general public is made to suffer. It is unacceptable. It should not be the case that digital transformation hurts rather than helps.

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