Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm grateful to be able to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Simplifying Income Reporting and Other Measures) Bill and about our social security system. This bill does fix issues arising with the reporting of income for Centrelink programs so that a person reports their income when it is paid, not when it is earned. This is a commonsense approach—more closely aligning the payment of wages with the timing of Centrelink payments. It will make the reporting of income more straightforward for most, and it's useful that people will be able to use prefilling Single Touch Payroll data from the ATO. This will, if implemented correctly, make interacting with Centrelink easier for those on social security payments while also making it easier to manage their budgets. But with this government's record, that is a big 'if'. It is all about the implementation of this bill, and this government's record on implementation is hardly something that generates confidence.

We're concerned—and, I believe, rightly so—that the government runs a very high risk of mucking up the implementation of these changes because this is the same government that has run down Centrelink services so that pensioners are waiting months to get their pension payments, this is the same government that has run down Centrelink services so much that people spend hours and hours on hold when they pick up the phone to talk to a real human being, this is the same government that has been secretly shutting down Centrelink shopfronts around the nation, and this is the same government that brought us the absolutely catastrophic disaster that is robodebt. So, given its track record of mismanaging the implementation of projects like these, its record of attacking social security, and its record of showing a complete lack of compassion, I am more than a little concerned about the government's ability to role out these changes effectively.

Debate interrupted.