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

The Greens will be supporting this amendment. This basically puts into legislation what the court found and makes it crystal clear that it shouldn't be done. The court has already said this is illegal. The government are trying to argue in court that they don't have a duty of care to people, which quite plainly is absolutely ridiculous given we're talking about social security payments. This makes it crystal clear that you can't use solely income averaging to levy a debt against people. When we look at the hundreds of thousands of notices that have gone out and the distress that has been caused to our community, this is sensible in absolutely clarifying that you cannot use that very simplistic process to raise debt. In particular, it means that, when people have no idea and have never received the notice, notices won't be going to the ATO for their tax returns to be garnished so that the first time anybody knows about it is when their tax return is garnished. At the moment, those notices are solely based on income averaging under the current robodebt processes. This amendment will stop a lot of hurt to our fellow Australians.