Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

The responsibility still remains with the recipient to validate and authorise the submission of the form. That still sits with them. They're in total control. There's no other being that comes in and tells them they are right or wrong. The responsibility remains with the individual.

In the second stage of this—when Single Touch Payroll interacts with this change of assessment model—the information that has been provided to the ATO by the employer will prefill the form. The individual then gets a pop-up, which I was discussing with Senator Siewert. When the recipient goes in to submit their fortnightly form, they will be asked to make sure that they are happy with the information contained in the form. They will be asked: does this reflect what is on your pay slip? Are you comfortable that the information that has been prefilled into this form is accurate, as far as you are aware? That then gives the opportunity to the recipient to look at it and say: 'There's been a mistake made here. My pay slip says that I earned this much. That's how much money went into my bank account.' They then have the capacity to go in and change that.

The responsibility still remains with the individual. Nobody's going to override that, because it is obviously the right of the individual to make that determination. However, if, when the person goes to do it, they're concerned—they see that $1,000 is written on the prefill and their pay slip says it should be $600—that's when we would suggest that they make contact, either by phone or by going into an agency, to seek a clarification. Obviously, at that point, they would have a discussion with an individual in Services Australia about the appropriate way for them to then report what they actually received. In most instances it would, possibly, be due to an error in the system.