Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I'm casting no aspersions on this minister, but, I've been in this place for quite a significant period of time now and reviews that have been committed to in other areas have, in fact, not been delivered, or have certainly not been delivered in a timely manner. I didn't hear the minister say that the proposed review that the government is undertaking will be independent. I apologise if the minister did say that, but I didn't hear it.

I didn't hear a commitment to the other requirements that we have in this amendment—for example, that the income report recipients must be consulted and that the government would report in a timely manner. There's no time frame for when it would start or when it would report. The fact is, this legislation will have been working for 12 months before the review. The review will start as soon as practical after 12 months of operation, so it will, in fact, cover people who are taking part in and using the Single Touch Payroll system and those that aren't. The fact is that people may be adversely affected by this for 12 months, so I don't accept that we should leave it even longer. It's absolutely imperative, given the nature of these changes, that we ascertain whether they're working. This amendment makes it a requirement that it happens. Quite frankly, I don't care if it's setting a precedent. I know we don't usually embed it in primary legislation, but these are changes that have significant ramifications, hopefully positive, for income support recipients, but we don't know. We need to find out if it is working, and, if it isn't working, we need to make those changes as soon as we can, to make sure it is delivering for all those income support recipients who will be required to use this system.