Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the member for Bradfield for moving this motion in relation to the cost of living and Services Australia. Let's start with some facts. Services Australia hosts a staggering 9.5 million customer contacts every week, helping Australians access critical services like Centrelink, child support, Medicare and much, much more. The government acknowledges the struggles faced by Australians accessing Services Australia, but let's not dance around the root cause of this issue. The member for Bradfield has, conveniently, departed—but the blame lies squarely at the feet of the former Liberal government of which the member Bradfield was a member, a part. It was a direct result of their slash-and-burn approach to our social services.

Instead of nurturing this institution, the former government—the member for Bradfield and his mates—chose to decimate it. Three thousand eight hundred hardworking Australians lost their jobs at Services Australia on the Liberal Party's watch. Why? The member for Bradfield talked about automation. Why? To make way for their malicious profit driven program, robodebt. Robodebt is perhaps the greatest failure of the Liberal government, and there are a lot to choose from. But that tells you everything. The scheme was so flawed, so callous, that it inflicted untold suffering upon countless vulnerable Australians. Families were plunged into false debt, individuals faced harassment and intimidation—all at the hands of a government that had long forgotten the meaning of 'empathy' and the meaning of 'responsibility'.

The former government said that robodebt was only going to affect a 'small cohort'. You know what their definition of a small cohort of Centrelink recipients was? That small cohort turned out to be 443,000 Australians. A significant number of these cases involved constituents in my electorate, and my office worked tirelessly to try to assist these people who found themselves targeted by this betrayal. At least 3,000 honest people in my electorate of Wills, people facing hardship, were victims of that Liberal government scheme. They had false debts under robodebt.

I'm just going to give you one example. A young man who was on youth allowance approached my office. He had received an incorrect demand notice for $12,377. For a young person, $12,000—he was absolutely shocked by it. He did not know what to do. It was just lucky that he spoke to his foster parents and said, 'What do I do about this?' and they said, 'Why don't you go to your local MP?' We intervened and we had that debt cancelled.

But that's just one case. More than half a million Australians were affected. It's impossible to quantify the kind of suffering that was inflicted upon them. The previous government made victims feel like criminals. Many people suicided, tragically.

So it is particularly galling to hear the party opposite suggest that there has been a failure to embrace digital service delivery. Of course we are committed to utilising data and digital technologies to improve our service delivery and decision-making. The Data and Digital Government Strategy, the final version released at the end of last year, clearly lays out that commitment, while consulting carefully with Australians to ensure everyone's experience with the government is inclusive, accessible and responsive to need. Given the $1.8 billion robodebt scheme relied on a hit-and-miss approach, backed by a single piece of internal legal advice based on a 'vibe', I think that careful consideration and consultation on the impact of digitisation is something worth embracing.

Now, we have taken some action. We've introduced 3,000 new recruits to work in regional centres across Australia, an important first step in replacing all those people who lost their jobs and an important first step in correcting the inept mismanagement of Services Australia's workforce by the previous government. These workers aren't just statistics; they represent a return of humans to government services and the return to a people centred approach. They're going to work in regional centres across Australia, they're going to help reduce call wait times and they're going to speed up claim processing. You're going to actually hear a human being on the other end.

There is a huge boost to funding which will support frontline staffing and operations at Services Australia, and it's the first step in getting us back on track. We have an unwavering commitment to restoring integrity and humanity to our social services, and we're taking tangible steps towards rebuilding Services Australia and putting people back at the centre of service delivery.

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