Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for his answer. I put on record that he can be guaranteed that we will be pursuing this ongoing issue through estimates to make sure that the education information is being provided.

I would like to move on to data provision. This was a very, very significant issue under the Welfare to Work regime. Anybody outside of Centrelink could not get access to data. Senators may recall that I was in the chamber on a number of occasions raising this issue. We also had the fiasco where data was actually taken down from the website. Not only could we—or anybody else, for that matter—not get access to data; when we raised the issue that we could not get access to up-to-date data, the previous data was actually taken off the website. So this is a very important issue. It is data that community organisations use very extensively. I am looking at what the government’s commitments are for the provision of that data. It is also very important that data is available in a way that is usable. Because this is new legislation and the comprehensive compliance assessment is a new approach—I understand why this new approach is being taken; we do not have an issue with that specifically—it is important, particularly with the change that is being suggested by Senator Xenophon to go from six to three for the no-show provision that is being put in place to kick off the CCAs, that data is available that allows a comprehensive assessment of this new approach.

I wonder what approach the government is taking and what commitment the government is giving about the provision of data, the timely access to data—and I emphasise ‘timely’—and the way that data will be broken down, such as the number of penalties that have been applied; the type of payments; the type of breaches; the number of people being breached and their age, their gender, their Indigenous status; the number of no show, no pay failures; the number of reconnections et cetera. Is all of that data going to be made publicly available? I do not want to tie up a lot of the Senate’s time. I have a list of areas where we are seeking assessment of the data and the way the data is broken down. I wonder how the government is going to be providing that data and whether there will be an ongoing discussion about the provision of that data.