Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Seselja for that question. This is a very good news announcement for a whole range of people that I have referred to earlier, but for those people who try to defraud the welfare system, quite frankly, it is very bad news. We will be greatly enhanced in our ability to catch those people who are deliberately trying to rip off the government and taxpayers for their own gain.

We already have a very extensive fraud and compliance program. We saved over $870 million in the last financial year with that program and we conducted over 3,000 criminal investigations and sent in excess of 1,100 matters to the Commonwealth DPP for further investigation and potential prosecution—all of those steps taken in the current system. The new system will give us an ability to do real-time monitoring or risk profiling. Due to the age of the system, we will be able to do away with the need for our staff to be manually manipulating data from other agencies, so that we have much more effective compliance—(Time expired).