Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

We do not expect there to be an onerous cost to the government in the application of this measure. We are, of course, expecting that people are aware of their responsibilities. We want to have a situation where people who are debtors register, which is why there is that requirement. There is a new obligation requiring debtors who are going overseas for longer than six months or who have lived overseas for longer than six months to notify the ATO. This is an obligation that begins from 1 January 2016. Those already overseas will have until 1 July 2017 to register. Those debtors who have been overseas for six months but have not registered we expect can be identified through some of the data-sharing arrangements between the ATO and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, as well as the application of the reciprocal arrangements that I spoke about earlier.