Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Human Services (Senator Ian Campbell) to a question without notice asked by Senator Lundy today relating to a proposed access card.

I do this because Senator Campbell’s contribution reached a new low for the level of arrogance displayed by coalition government ministers. I think it is a sad reflection on the Howard government that, when you combine the contentious concept of an access card with a government with an appalling record on the management of information technologies, it is quite predictable that all we can expect is a dog’s breakfast. Today the pile of mush that is the access card got a bit mushier. The minister refused to back away from extremely arrogant remarks describing MPs who disagree with him as supporting fraudsters and rorters. If you have a read of Steve Ciobo’s contribution to the second reading debate on this issue in the other place, you will get a sense of just how critical the minister’s remarks are of his own party colleagues.

I think his comments are particularly arrogant when they are seen in light of developments today—reports from the coalition party room—that the government has been forced to bend to internal pressure and has now changed guidelines relating to the access card and how old you have to be to be automatically eligible for it. We know that the bill as it stands says that you have to be 18 to get the access card. This contradicts current practice for the Medicare card, which the access card is designed to supersede, because people of the age of 16 or over are eligible for a Medicare card. This is established, sensible policy that has been in place since Medicare was first introduced.

Now, as a result of internal party pressure, the Howard government is apparently introducing guidelines to permit people from the age of 15 to have access to an access card. The problem with this is—and this is where the dog’s breakfast comes into it: how can the bill proceed when it says that you have to be 18 or over but guidelines have now been flagged, introduced or drafted to provide for people over the age of 15 getting this card? We do not know if the guidelines protect the interests of young people. We do not know whether they are going to create a regulation or some sort of administrative instrument. The government itself is clearly engaged in a process of policy on the hop that has not been thought through even within the coalition party room, let alone in a decent debate in the parliament or in the public.

That takes me to a major point throughout the debate so far, and that is the appalling arrogance with which the coalition have treated the public debate. We heard the minister today imply that there was a six-week inquiry into this access card. What rubbish! There are three days worth of hearings within an extremely truncated two-week window in which the senators on that committee have the opportunity to conduct hearings, take evidence, hear witnesses, sift through it and prepare their reports. I challenge the minister to come back into the chamber and clarify precisely how long that inquiry will be, because it is not the six weeks he implied in today’s response to questions. I think it is another sign of the government’s willingness to abuse their majority in the Senate when they inflict these kinds of decisions on Senate committees and force their way through this chamber. These are policy changes that the government have very poor form on.

We know from the debate so far that the access card’s success or otherwise is intertwined with the sorts of systems that underpin it—the software, the hardware, how that information will be accessed via the smartcard and the devices that can read the smartcard information. But I would like to remind my colleagues that this government have very poor form on IT management. I am of course referring to the IT outsourcing debacle that characterised the first eight years of the government’s time in power, where they systematically wasted taxpayers’ money and made false claims about savings on IT. The previous IT outsourcing debacle is a good analogy, I think, because here we are and the government are claiming that this card will create $3 billion in savings over an extended period of time. That savings figure has already been refuted. They are unable and unwilling to accurately benchmark current costs. The Department of Finance and Administration is running the process, and that ought to put the fear of God into every minister who has anything to do with it. The contract costs have already blown out to some $1.2 billion, leaving a mere $400 million between the estimated savings costs and the cost of the card itself. And we know, because of their poor management, that that is likely to—(Time expired)