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

I'm wondering if I may seek the chamber's indulgence. I want to take note of the government response to the Centrelink report. I promise I'll keep it short, as I have a very tight deadline.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With the concurrence of the chamber, we could do that—very briefly, Senator Siewert.

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

I promise I'll keep it brief. This is the government's response to the second interim report of the Community Affairs References Committee's inquiry into Centrelink's compliance program. In fact, the government's response is the very reason that they got into the mess with the Centrelink compliance program in the first place. When you look at what the government says, it's basically a joke of a report. Let me remind the chamber that this is about robodebt, where the government is paying out $1.2 billion because the program was illegal—or, as the government puts it, legally insufficient. It was illegal.

The government do not support—who would have guessed?—recommendation 1, which was that they immediately terminate the income compliance program. They note the next two recommendations; they are to do with the process of the repayment of the debt. They note recommendation 4, but then go on to say that the government notes that a person can request a review of a decision at any time. Now, this recommendation was actually about going back and looking at elements of the act to make sure that the program was compliant with and met the legal requirements of sections 1222A and 1223 of the Social Security Act and, likewise, going back and looking at whether section 66A of the Social Security Act provides an appropriate legal basis for requiring individuals to update income information. The government's response is that people can go and lodge an appeal or ask for a review, and we know from the extensive inquiry into this how hard, in fact, that process is.

The government doesn't support recommendation 5. This is about an independent review being immediately initiated into the policy, design, administration and impact of Centrelink's compliance program, including the Income Compliance Program. Now, we established during this inquiry that, in fact, the process of the government going back and checking robodebts only goes back to 2015. We don't know that the government has not, through this compliance program, applied other illegal processes to apply debts that are actually illegal, because they haven't gone back that far to look. That's why we need a royal commission into this process. Until there is a royal commission, we will not see the end, potentially, of the illegal use and illegal application of debts.

This report is a joke. The government needs to go back and rethink its whole approach to this compliance program, otherwise we or other people are going to be back in this chamber having to litigate all these arguments again because we're in another fiasco where it has illegally applied debts, in terms of the government using and abusing the Social Security Act that has already brought so much misery to Australians. I don't want this place having to see that process ever again. They need to have a royal commission.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.