Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The federal government spends over $180 billion to support Australia's social safety net, about a third of Australia's total government expenditure annually. Australian taxpayers foot the bill of around $111 billion of social security payments as part of this. Taxpayers—in fact, all citizens—rightly expect that those engaged in the system are able to receive the amount of support for which they are eligible, nothing less but also nothing more. As of just the end of last month, over 950,000 Australians had 1.6 million social welfare debts totalling $5.3 billion. Recovering overpayments is a fundamental part of our welfare system and a fundamental duty of the government. When someone has a debt, the government is legally obliged to pursue recovery of that debt, just as the government is obliged to pursue recovery of tax debts when people have failed to pay their full tax liability. This debt recovery process has been a feature of our welfare system for over 30 years through successive governments.

As announced last week, the government has taken action to amend the income compliance program. The Minister for Government Services last week announced further refinements as part of the government's ongoing commitment to continually strengthen and improve the program. The program has already undergone a number of iterations and refinements since its inception in response to community feedback, and I anticipate it will continue to do so. The changes announced by the minister last week will make the program more robust by requiring additional evidence when using income information to identify potential overpayments. This means a debt will no longer be raised where the only information the department is relying on is the averaging of ATO information. However, income compliance activities are not ceasing and nor should they. The department will still review payments for discrepancies. For those debts raised to date which the department calculated solely through income averaging, debt recovery will be frozen and the debt will be reassessed with additional information. Services Australia will contact affected customers as they are identified. This process will take time as individual records will be checked, particularly for complex cases. Most of these cases will be ones where people did not fully engage with the department after they were initially sent the discrepancy notice. For reviews that are underway, the department will continue to work with customers to complete those reviews.

Decision-making going forward will not rely on income-averaging as the sole basis to determine the debts. The decision will not, however, affect the government's use of data-matching between income reported to DHS and that reported to the ATO to seek clarification of income whilst receiving a welfare payment. The department will continue to use income-averaging as part of a range of options to ask a welfare recipient to engage with DHS if there is a discrepancy. Importantly—and this is worth stressing—people can and should always ask to review decisions or provide new information at any stage of the process. The government has a responsibility to collect any overpayments. This is central to the community having trust in the administration of this safety net. We will maintain the government's focus on returning overpayments to our taxpayers and balance this with fairness and transparency in our compliance activities.

Members of the House will recall that it was those opposite who announced in 2011 Labor's automatic data-matching processes, beginning the joining of the data streams between the ATO and Centrelink. A joint press release on 29 June 2011 by the member for Sydney and the member for Maribyrnong, titled 'New data matching to recover millions in welfare dollars', announced the scheme. The member for Sydney is quoted in that press release saying:

… if people fail to come to an arrangement to settle their debts, the Government has a responsibility to taxpayers to recover that money.

The member for Maribyrnong is quoted in the same press release saying:

The automation of this process will free up resources and result in more people being referred to the tax garnishee process, retrieving more outstanding debt on behalf of taxpayers.

It is also worth noting that the opposition refused to commit to abolishing the current system during the election campaign.

The debt recovery process has been a feature of our welfare system for over 30 years through successive governments. There is nothing sinister about this. Government funds are not unlimited and they ultimately all come from the taxpayer. The average Australian who works contributes over $7,600 of their income, or one month of their earnings, towards welfare payments, and every dollar of overpayment to one welfare recipient is $1 less available for other welfare recipients; it's $1 less available for other worthy causes, like listing new medicines on the PBS or supporting the National Disability Insurance Scheme or responding to the findings of the aged-care royal commission.

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