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

Thank you for the opportunity to continue my comments on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Simplifying Income Reporting and Other Measures) Bill 2020. While this bill should improve the ability of people receiving payments to manage their income, there are significant concerns about the government's ability to implement this system. The last thing that the Australian public wants to see is people having their payments cut off because of the sorts of technical errors that could result from this bill. The last thing they want to see is people left on the phone for hours on end if they have questions that need to be answered. The last thing they want to see is more people being saddled with unfair debts.

As we've heard from organisations who've made submission to the Senate inquiry into this bill, robodebt has caused a huge lack of trust in the community about these sorts of measures. Perhaps some of the concerns that those organisations raised might have been allayed if there had been any consultation by the government with people who are actually on Centrelink payments about the changes that are envisaged with this bill. The government might be better prepared for its implementation if it had thought to consult on the scheme and to test the approach with real people. In particular, there is real confusion about how these new measures will interact with gig jobs and casual jobs, where people might work one or two shifts every week. The Senate committee heard genuine concerns about how people's income will be averaged based on one-touch data for one week's work when a person may not work for the next two or three weeks. But there's been no consultation, no trials and no testing with people on social security to see how it's going to work. Despite the robodebt disaster, there's been no review included in the bill as it stands.

If they manage to get it right, this bill should simplify income reporting for people on payments. But what this bill won't do is fix the catastrophe that is the robodebt scheme. Let's hope we don't see a repeat of what is an undeniable mess. The government's robodebt scheme was not only mean and unjust; it's also been uncovered that the government knew about the faults with the robodebt system and, worse, they knew that it was illegal and they kept defending it anyway. They kept defending a robodebt scheme that caused stress, anxiety and financial hardship and, tragically, even contributed to suicides. When this government get it wrong, they don't apologise, they don't try to fix it and they don't try to write their wrongs; they just double-down and try to convince us that everything is just fine.

Robodebt was using a faulty and inaccurate algorithm that was unleashed against social security recipients, who, even if they'd reported their income correctly, were issued debts of thousands of dollars. It was using crude accounting measures to match up average annual income figures from the ATO and reported fortnightly earnings, apparently with very little thought about those in casual, insecure or intermittent work, who rarely do the same number of hours every fortnight. Some of the people targeted by robodebt were told to produce pay slips from over 10 years ago, leaving them stressed and anxious about trying to obtain those documents from former employers. So much time had passed that in some cases their old employers no longer even existed. Despite all of these problems and all of these issues, the government kept this scheme going for years, taking $1.5 billion in payments.

This cruel and unfair program was found to be illegal. Questions still remain about how long the government knew that their revenue-raising scheme, used to prop up their budget bottom line, was illegal. The government either got bad legal advice or got good legal advice but chose to ignore it—or they started the robodebt program without ever seeking advice as to whether or not it was legal. Whichever of these options actually took place, it doesn't exactly scream competence. It doesn't give us great confidence in the measures proposed in this bill. So you'll have to forgive my cynicism and lack of confidence in the government's ability to roll out yet another IT based program.

It's not just the government's lack of competence which concerns me. It's also their lack of care and their lack of compassion when it comes to those on the pension, Newstart and other forms of social security payments. Do they actually even care about getting the implementation of this sort of measure right?

This government has repeatedly attacked the pension and those on social security. Let's look at their track record on the pension. The current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, when he was Treasurer, tried to increase the pension age to 70 years three times. In 2014 they cut $1 billion from pensioner concessions—concessions that are designed to help pensioners with the rising costs of living. In the same year, they axed the $900 seniors supplement to self-funded retirees. It didn't end there. In 2015 they made changes to the assets test, which meant a pension cut to around 370,000 pensioners. Since then, they've also tried to scrap the energy supplement for new pensioners and limit overseas travel for pensioners. And cuts to the pension are still on the books, in the budget. The government wants to take away the pension supplement from pensioners who go overseas for more than six weeks, costing pensioners around $120 million. And they still want pensioners who were born overseas to wait longer before being able to access the age pension by changing residency requirements.

Does this sound like the record of a government that cares about people who are on payments? Does it sound like the record of a government that cares about pensioners? What about people on Newstart? Is there any evidence that the government cares about them? This government is still refusing to raise the Newstart allowance, despite the fact that it is trapping people in poverty. If you're on Newstart right now, you are living significantly below the poverty line. Even though Newstart is supposed to be a temporary payment, the average amount of time that people are on Newstart is three years. That's not because they want to be on Newstart. It's not because they don't want to have a go, as some on the government benches may have you believe. It is because the jobs just aren't there.

Over two million Australians are either looking for work or looking for more work; 1.1 million Australians are underemployed. Just last month we saw another rise in the unemployment rate, from 5.1 to 5.3 per cent. And 130,000 people on Newstart actually have a job, but they just can't get enough hours to make ends meet and get themselves off the Newstart payment. The rate of Newstart is so low that it actually prohibits people from getting out and having a go and doing what they need to do to get a job. It's trapping people in poverty. You can't live on $40 a day. That doesn't cover the cost of living, let alone the additional costs associated with looking for work, such as access to an internet connection, appropriate clothing and transport to interviews. If you're really struggling to make ends meet—to pay your bills and support your family—that is obviously a barrier to your being able to get out and look for the job that the government so wants you to get.

And this government currently wants to cut Newstart. Scott Morrison wants to double the liquid-assets waiting period from three to six months. That means that Australians who have some money in the bank would find themselves having to eat into their savings, into their own personal safety net, if they found themselves out of a job for even longer. The Prime Minister has said that the harder your work the better you do. Well, really? He's essentially suggesting that it's all down to you—'just try a little harder; just do a little better'. What he's saying is that if you're poor, if you're stuck on Newstart, it's your fault, and that's it. But that couldn't be further from the truth, because, as we know and as people on Newstart know, the jobs just aren't there—two million people unemployed or underemployed. The jobs just aren't there, not to mention that this government has sought to demonise people on social security payments with insulting schemes like their cashless welfare cards and the invasive and degrading proposals for mandatory drug testing that they want to roll out. Does this sound like a government that cares about people on Newstart?

When you look at the government's sheer lack of competency—I'm thinking about the robodebt scheme—and at their sheer lack of compassion, you have to wonder whether they are really capable of implementing the changes that are contained in this bill. When you consider that this government hasn't talked to people on Centrelink payments about how this is going to work, that they haven't asked for feedback on their new system and that they haven't trialled it with real people—the same real people who have been so adversely impacted by the robodebt mess—you have to wonder if this is a government that just wants to do things to people on Centrelink payments instead of developing a policy with them that will work to get them back into work in a respectful way.

I do want to believe that the government can get this right, because, if they can, this bill will certainly serve to deliver some improvements for people on social security payments. But the government's track record suggests otherwise. If they can get this change in reporting right then they stand to actually make the process easier for many others who are on Centrelink payments. But if they botch this change in Centrelink income reporting, just like they botched robodebt, then there is the potential that they will cause more stress, more anxiety and more pain to those who are already struggling on social security. We will be watching.