Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I put on the record, in response to the tonally very reasonable argument from Senator Abetz on behalf of the government, that he mischaracterises what happens when we get funding for times when we might be unemployed and need some support. There are people who have paid tax all their lives, like Debra, who gave evidence to the committee in Tasmania around very significant issues with the Newstart program. She has worked for 35 years. She has paid her taxes for 35 years. The company went bust. She and many others lost their jobs. Now, after expending all of her life savings, she's on Newstart, but she said that this government is making her feel that she is a burden to this country. A woman who has worked and paid taxes for 35 years is being made to feel, by this government, that she is a burden on society. A young man, Patrick, sitting next to her, said he feels that the Prime Minister has made him feel so unworthy that the only thing that's preventing him from taking desperate action is that he wants to continue for his eight-year-old son. That's the state we've got to in Australia because of this government and the kind of rhetoric that's embedded in this conversation.

What is robodebt? Hopefully, you don't know what it is, but the people who know what it is know what it is in a pretty bad way. It is exactly what Senator Gallacher said. About three years ago this government figured out that it could ramp up a whole lot more income into the coffers of the government if it started sending out notices to people based on information straight out of the ATO. Australians who have a period on Newstart have to fill in forms down to the level of each hour to account for the money they receive. They put in very specific documentation about how much they've worked and how much they're eligible for.

What this government decided to do was change the way things had been done, where reasonable claims like that could be judged against the evidence and information at the ATO and then a government employee, a public servant, would do due diligence. They would go and have a look at the ATO information, have a careful look at the information that was held at Centrelink, make an inquiry of an employer, make an inquiry of a bank and have a look at the whole thing and say: 'No, this person has done a pretty good job of keeping things square. They deserve every cent they've got to keep their family clothed, fed and sheltered, and that's an appropriate spend.' What those opposite said was: 'Oh, well we can get rid of that bit of the process. We can take the public servant out, and what we'll do is we'll make it robotic.' That's where the 'robo' comes from in 'robodebt'. So, if the ATO, which averages everything out, decides that the average doesn't fit with your very specific week-by-week figures—which can amount to two very different numbers—out go the letters.

For the last three years there have been three schemes that have been sending letters out to Australians without any of those checks and balances. It is a disgrace. It disgusts me. At estimates, in a room just up here in another part of the building, I asked, 'How many people have you helped get the records that they need to prove that they don't have this debt?' Because that's what happens now—you've got to prove there is no debt. They say: 'You're a 24-year-old. Get your figures and your paperwork from seven years ago and prove to me, prove to the Australian government, that you don't owe the debt.'

Since the middle of 2016, 600,000 people have got robodebt notices—900,000 for the whole scheme. How many people do you think the public servants have helped to get those documents? One thousand. One thousand Australians out of 900,000 Australians got a little bit of help from this government to get their paperwork together to prove that they didn't have a debt, and that's why we are outraged at this third iteration of this failed system in three years. The government need to be held to account for the shame that they have inflicted on people and the terror that they've put into people's livelihoods and people trying to manage their finances. They are just wrong and have failed. (Time expired)