Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It is one of those rare occasions—all too rare—and I do not expect this is going to make the morning news broadcasts or the newspapers—where the Senate has actually been given the opportunity to do its job. We shared many of the concerns that Senator Lambie just put on the record, and indeed those that Senator Farrell just noted in introducing the opposition amendments.

For the sake of clarity, what I will do now is withdraw Australian Greens amendments (1) to (3) on sheet 8084. For similar reasons, that the government and the opposition actually slowed down the process for long enough to hear the concerns of the crossbenches and, indeed, those outside the building who were working through us to make sure that this was a better bill. As I said at the outset, in my second reading contribution last week, we have absolutely no problem at all with the minister's basic ambition of bringing DVA into the 20th or maybe even the 21st century so that they can speed up some of the processes, automate some of the processes where that is appropriate and so that the human beings within the department can actually spend a lot more time in face-to-face conversations and dealing with the more knotty problems directly.

But if these systems are improperly applied, as Centrelink certainly discovered to their cost and to the enormous cost of some of the people who found themselves going under the wheels of Centrelink, then they can actually create enormous misery. I was going back to the Bills Digest to make sure that we covered off all of the different issues and came across this report in 2004 by the Administrative Review Council, Automated assistance in administrative decision-making. They found that basically, yes, sometimes you can speed up and you can 'reduce inaccuracy and human prejudice' in the interpretation and application of complex rules and 'provide the opportunity for more accurate, consistent and efficient and transparent decisions'. Fine; we understand that is what the minister is trying to do.

They also pointed out:

… the use of expert systems in administrative decision making process is a developing area in which a mistake in the design or operation of such a system has the potential to affect many people.

The reason that the crossbenches jacked up last week, and eventually Labor cottoned on as well, is that potentially you will have decisions being made inside a black box by an algorithm, having had a spreadsheet fed into it. When a decision falls out that is non-reviewable, the veteran just has to suck it up. These are people who have suffered enough on many occasions, and they do not deserve that kind of treatment from the Public Service. I also take the minister at his word when he says they do want to bring things into the 21st century and that that is not the ambition of his officers either.

I think the solution that Labor eventually came to—I know Senator Lambie toyed with a couple of different ideas; so did we—means that basically the burden of proof now falls in the right direction. If a decision is adverse, if the software spits out an adverse finding, then that will go to a delegate, whereas the pay claims and the various other things can just move through much more rapidly if there are no problems. The Greens are very pleased to support this amendment.

I also want to thank Senator Lambie for her passion and her commitment in being the squeakiest of wheels on this issue, and being tenacious and not letting go, and for the constructive way in which Senator Kakoschke-Moore engaged. It was a pleasure dealing with Ms Rishworth, and I would also like to especially acknowledge the minister and his advisers, who did slow the process down. They could have rammed this thing through—we see that far too often in this place—and they chose not to. They chose to slow down, and so we will get a much better outcome tonight. We are pleased to support the opposition amendments.