Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I always listen carefully to Senator O'Sullivan's contributions on these bills. He always makes a thoughtful contribution and is always very well prepared. He's dedicating himself assiduously to the task of performing his role as a backbench defender of the government's position, and he's done that again today. He's a thoughtful contributor in our committee system, and he plays that role well as well. Sometimes that means he's passionately defending the government's interests, when it comes to a bill that will really enliven public debate, and sometimes that means he's making a more workmanlike contribution over a bill that's unlikely to be on the front page of tomorrow morning's The Border Mail or the Sydney Morning Herald or any paper—except some obscure government gazette, because the bill that's in front of us is an amendment to the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act. It's the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Waiver of Debt and Act of Grace Payments) Bill 2019, not something that's likely to breathe excitement and passion into people out there. It is, nonetheless, important.

Firstly, Senator O'Sullivan's described the bill and the Labor Party's approach to the amendment as a facade, a veneer, conducted with no consultation, a bill that's not really necessary. The truth is, someone's got to be paying attention to public accountability in this place. Someone's got to be working on evolving the legal position, evolving the laws to improve public accountability, and during the term of this government that so often falls to the Labor Party because the government's just not up to it. His first argument, I think, was that there's got to be some other way. That's not a very strong argument, really. The amendment would achieve—if it's supported here—what it sets out to achieve: a higher level of transparency and accountability of act-of-grace payments.

Secondly, Senator O'Sullivan says, if I can put words in his mouth, that there are profound privacy issues. I'm not persuaded as much as the drafters of the amendment are that there are deep privacy issues here. I think, if a decision is made by the Commonwealth to pay an act-of-grace payment or to do a debt waiver, there are deep issues of public accountability and transparency involved here, and I would lean towards transparency over the rights to privacy of individuals or companies that have received either a debt waiver or an act-of-grace payment. However, the amendment does deal with that question. There is no proposal here to name the recipients of those payments. It is to, simply, record the amount of those payments and to record the number of those payments that are made in the annual report of the Department of Finance, which I'm sure is read very deeply out there.

The original legislation, in 2013, was developed to merge two existing pieces of legislation that went to accountability. It was designed to reduce complexity, increase operational efficiency and provide for clear accountability requirements. This bill, this amendment, strengthens the original purpose and intention of the bill. There is a power for the Minister for Finance, circumscribed, as Senator O'Sullivan pointed out, by the processes set out in the legislation, to waive debts owed to the Commonwealth. That means debts are no longer payable. There's a $100,000 threshold below that. Public servants can simply make a decision to waive a debt to the Commonwealth. Above that, there's a requirement for the minister to do that work himself or herself.

Where an individual or a company is impacted by a decision of the government or a failure to make a decision and they had a loss of earnings as a result, it may be appropriate for the government to make an act-of-grace payment in those circumstances. Those payments are currently not publicly reported, and there is no requirement for there to be any publication of details about how many act-of-grace payments have been made or the amount provided through those payments. That is an impossible proposition, in my view, for the government to defend. It would be alright if the government came in here with an alternative proposition to the one that is outlined in the amendment, but there is no alternative proposition, and the position that the parliament is left with is that there is an unsustainable weakness in accountability and transparency in the legislation.

These payments are made when there is some inequity that causes hardship, an act of grace in special circumstances for non-government corporate entities that have taken or not taken an act that causes harm or have legislation or an intention to have legislation that causes economic harm. There is a very simple requirement in this very straightforward amendment: that the Department of Finance report in its annual report the number of waivers, their total dollars, the number of act-of-grace payments and their total dollars. It can't infringe privacy; there is no requirement to report on the individuals or the companies.

In recent times, in the Senate estimates process, it came to light that a debt waiver of $157 million was provided to the Tasmanian government. It was performed in a way consistent with the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment Act 2013. There was no requirement for that decision, which was one of immense political and fiscal significance in Tasmania, to be reported. What mechanism the government used to provide debt relief to the Tasmanian government only came to light in Senate estimates. That is a big public policy call—to exempt one state from its obligations in housing related loans. When one looks across the Commonwealth, there are vast liabilities from the states to the Commonwealth in relation to public housing. New South Wales, as of the middle of last year, owed the Commonwealth $838 million in public housing related loans; the Queensland government just over $27 million in housing related loans; the West Australian government $343 million; and the Australian Capital Territory just over $115 million in total. The Northern Territory, with vast housing needs, particularly in remote communities, owes a disproportionately large $190.5 million.

The illusion is created whenever the Commonwealth government gets up to talk about housing, public housing and social housing. Somehow, every time it makes an announcement, it creates the idea in the public that these are grants to the states. Well, they are termed 'grants' but, for accounting purposes, they are loans. They have concessional rates of interest, but they are loans and they create a long-term obligation for those state governments and, I believe, create long-term inertia between the Commonwealth and the state governments in dealing with the public housing crisis and the crisis in accommodation for workers and families on low incomes, a crisis that grows every day.

It seems to me that public housing is a total mess in Australia. There is a growing queue of families and workers lining up for public housing. How is it that we've allowed this position to evolve? In 2008 and 2009, as a response to the global financial crisis, and over the course of the rest of the Labor government, Labor built and refurbished 70,000 social housing dwellings. The Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government's response to this crisis has been to wind back capacity, to fall further behind. In response to the economic crisis that's the result of the government's steps to deal with the public health crisis of COVID-19 the government's only announcement so far has been HomeBuilder. There has been zero in terms of social housing and zero in terms of support for low-income workers and low-income families to build homes and to buy homes, and that sits across the back of a long-term legacy of policy failure in this area.

There has been an entire refusal to countenance reform of the taxation arrangements that surround new home construction and the renovation of existing homes. There's been no attempt to deal with the taxation arrangements in the real estate market that constrain the building of homes, particularly in our big cities. The government closed the National Rental Affordability Scheme, which provided 38,000 new, affordable housing units and was on track to achieve its target of 50,000 new home dwellings. The government scrapped the First Home Saver Account scheme, which was helping people save for their first home. The government closed its eyes and its ears by abolishing the National Housing Supply Council and the Prime Minister's Council and Homelessness. The government has cut $44 million a year in capital funding from homelessness services. The government defunded Homelessness Australia, National Shelter, and the Community Housing Federation of Australia because the government doesn't want to hear the voices of people who can't find a home. It doesn't want to hear solutions for homelessness or arguments in favour of increasing the federal and state governments' public housing stock. And, until 2019, the government failed to appoint a dedicated minister for housing.

The only sign of any activity is the HomeBuilder scheme. If you got the smartest people in Canberra together in a room, gave them the remit to design a hopelessly complex scheme that was impenetrable to outside observers, that had such a narrow base it was hard to identify who fell into the category of people who could actually use the scheme and that was so profoundly inequitable, if you asked those people to design a scheme that would provide zero stimulus to the economy and to the construction industry I think that even the smartest people in the public sector in Canberra brought together could not design a scheme as dumb as the HomeBuilder scheme patently is. If we had some sensible transparency and capacity in terms of the arrangements between the Commonwealth and the states that this bill is designed to assist develop— (Time expired)