Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

As I understand the Greens amendment, it relates to the same principle but has a narrow scope with regard to the so-called overpayments that it addresses. Perhaps in the broader spirit of time management and the moderated tone with which we have managed to conduct the debate, I signal that the issues are the same and the concerns of the Democrats are the same. If the Greens amendment is not successful—if the outside chance happens—then I will not proceed with the Democrat amendment. The issues that the Democrats have with this measure being in the legislation are simply, firstly, the principle of what is being done here and, secondly, how widely you try to restrict what is being done—from my point of view, the key aspect is that it is being done at all.

The Democrat amendment is based on the suggestion contained in the submission from the Welfare Rights Network to the Senate committee inquiry. It really goes to the point that was made in the opposition senators’ minority report from the Senate committee that examined this legislation, which was that the aspect that is contained in the bill will create an inconsistency in the legislation whereby the right to recover overpayments is outlined in the law but the making of payments themselves under financial case management is not. My view is that, until you get that consistency correct, an imbalance is being put in place. It means, in effect, that there is a legislative regime covering the government’s ability to recover payments but there is no legislative detail set out about entitlements to financial case management payments. There is no appeal mechanism for people who feel they should be entitled to such a payment and do not get it, the amount of it or how it is applied.

It is very much an administrative bandaid measure and in my view it is a very flawed measure. A bandaid is better than nothing when you are in serious trouble, so I am not suggesting that we would be better off without financial case management. But I think the system is so lacking in transparency and consistency that it does present significant problems. Even if they are not massive problems as yet, I think the longer it is in place, the more potential there will be for problems to occur. It is quite problematic to be putting in place legislative criteria for recovering what are deemed to be overpayments under that mechanism.

Those are the reasons behind the scope of the Democrat amendment. I understand the argument for having a narrower scope to it, as has been put forward by the Greens amendment that is before the chamber at the moment. I did go into this issue in some detail in my second reading contribution, so I will not repeat the points at length. But it is worth making the point that people who receive financial case management, unless there is deliberate fraud or misrepresentation happening, on the whole are people who are in quite significant financial difficulties, which are of course exacerbated by the fact that they are having their general payments withdrawn. If, down the track, the withdrawal of those payments is reversed, it is unnecessarily stringent for people in that circumstance, frankly, to have those sorts of payments clawed back. They could be rent payments, electricity payments or food voucher type payments.

As I said in my second reading contribution, St Vincent de Paul do not go running after people to grab food voucher money back from them. Once people get on their feet or get their payments restored, people may choose to donate back to St Vinnies or others, but it is not standard practice to say, ‘You’ve got some extra money now, so give it back.’ If we were a nation that was in significant fiscal difficulty and stringency was being applied left, right and centre, it might be more justifiable, but frankly, given the difficult circumstances these people are in, the fact is that even when payments get restored they are still living below the poverty line in terms of their day-to-day income. I think it is unnecessarily harsh to be putting in place a system to recover that money—unless perhaps it is fraudulently obtained—given the current lack of regulated consistency in the financial case management system.