Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With Christmas just around the corner, we are truly entering the silly season, because if you are a welfare recipient with a non-attendance report because you have not shown up for your obligatory work-for-the-dole or interview requirements, you will be, as of today, reconnected to your Centrelink payments just before Christmas, no matter what you do. That is right. Twenty thousand Australians, no matter what they do with non-attendance between now and Christmas, will routinely and automatically be fully reconnected to their payments to avoid hardship over Christmas.

If you read the regulations, they stipulate that there must be two working days where you cannot reconnect and get an interview, in which case hardship could be created and therefore we reconnect them. But, over Easter, the department does it again. That is right. Another bleeding heart solo flight with the Department of Employment reconnecting another 16,000 job seekers who do not turn up for work or who do not turn up for their interviews. We can do better than that. We can have a phone arrangement where these people seeking to reconnect can instantly book an appointment and be booked in, know that they have reconnected and have their payments started. But, no, the Department of Employment on this notice that I have here from 2 November, complete with typographical errors, asked jobactive providers to close down, finalise, all of their non-attendance reports. That is the ultimate in a Christmas gift over the silly season for people who do not do the right thing by the Australian people.