Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] Services Australia was established as an executive agency in February this year. The agency was previously the Department of Human Services and the transition from department to executive agency requires the legislative changes in the Services Australia Governance Amendment Bill 2020. The bill also amends multiple references in legislation to the former department and its secretary. This bill also amends several acts to specify that the CEO of Services Australia is the chief executive of Centrelink, the chief executive of Medicare and the Child Support Registrar. Given Services Australia's broad service delivery functions and the overall responsibility of the CEO for the operations of the agency, the government no longer considers it necessary for these offices to have different occupants.

Labor supports sensible changes which improve Public Service governance arrangements and, in turn, lead to better service delivery for the millions of Australia's who rely on these services. But, when it comes to the issues facing Services Australia in delivering timely and quality services, this government is merely scratching the surface. The fact is that this government has been chipping away at the agency's capacity to support Australians ever since its savage cuts in the 2014 budget. This is an agency which deals with some of Australia's most vulnerable people, often in their time of greatest need. If Services Australia isn't receiving the funding it needs to properly support its customers then it is the most disadvantaged and vulnerable members of our society who will suffer.

Erosions in services for students, families, older Australians, jobseekers, people with disability and their carers, and a range of other Australians is what we have come to expect from Liberal governments, which simply see these people as a burden. The vulnerable Australians who rely on the government for income support are those who former Treasurer Joe Hockey referred to as 'leaners' or, to coin a phrase from our current Prime Minister, they are the ones not having a go and therefore not getting a go. These philosophical pronouncements outline the Liberal world view that every individual is responsible for their own success or failure in life regardless of their background or circumstances, that helping those less fortunate is a role for charity and not the responsibility of the state. That's why the Liberals are the party that promote cuts to pension, have cut the NDIS and continue to engage in rhetoric about cracking down on what they see as dole bludgers.

This is the kind of attitude that last year led to that selective leaking of JobSeeker compliance data to News Limited papers a day before it was published on the department's website. Whoever leaked the data must have known that the Murdoch media would use headlines that would help feed the perception of jobseekers as lazy freeloaders. The Murdoch papers delivered in spades with headlines like 'Doling out the excuses', 'It's a hard day's shirk' and 'New stats reveal the extent of bludging'. The articles quoted statistics about the number of missed interviews and suspended payments. But if the so-called journalists who wrote the articles were doing their jobs they might have looked in more depth at the reasons behind those statistics. Did they stop to consider that for many jobseekers, particularly those experiencing multiple forms of disadvantage, there might be a more complex picture at play? Did they bother to ask for a comment from the welfare sector instead of simply providing a platform for the government's jobseeker-bashing rhetoric? It was a brazen attempt to demonise jobseekers, no doubt perpetuated by those opposite. It is a sad reflection on the professionalism and integrity of some in the media that journalists and editors allowed themselves to be complicit in this outrageous smear.

I placed a series of questions on notice in the following round of Senate estimates to get to the bottom of whether the minister for employment had authorised the leak or investigated the leak and why data was given exclusively to Murdoch papers ahead of its official publication. In answer to a long series of detailed questions I got a single sentence in reply, stating, 'The data has been tabled and is available on the APH employment, skills, small and family business website.' Call me old-fashioned, but when someone deliberately avoids answering a question I think it usually means they have something to hide. If the minister leaked the data or authorised the leak, I challenge her to come clean. We all recognise it wouldn't be the first politically motivated leak to come from a minister's office and, if she didn't authorise it, I challenge her to have the leak investigated. Unlike those opposite, Labor believe every Australian has the right to a social safety net. If you don't believe in that right, like those opposite, then you will not—