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

I'll be really clear: this legislation is about how people report. It's not an income compliance measure at all. It is about how people report and trying to improve the level of accuracy about how people report. A statistic, Senator Patrick, that's worth noting is at the moment we have close to $120 billion a year paid in payments, and the level of accuracy of reporting is about 95 per cent. And five per cent is a lot of money. What we're seeking to do by this is to increase the level of accuracy of reporting and, therefore, increase the level of accuracy of payments so that we make sure that people are receiving what they should receive.

In relation to the resources that are being committed to assist in the transition from reporting earnings to reporting payments, every person in Centrelink or Services Australia—sorry, I should be clear; it's all frontline personnel—who interfaces with the constituents or the recipients will be trained to understand what this change actually means, what needs to occur, what the recipient must do, and assist them as they would assist them in any other inquiry to Services Australia to make the changes necessary to report payment.

In addition to that, Services Australia have an additional $30 million for specific, targeted facilitation and consultation and are particularly focused, in many instances, on those cohorts of people that may require additional assistance because of remoteness, language barriers et cetera.