Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

In many cases, they have put them up to the media and they have raised them in the parliament and, yet, we still have not had them approach us.

We will continue with our compliance system because it is important to protect taxpayers' money. They want to be assured that the people who are in receipt of welfare payments get the right payments, and no more and no less. Unfortunately, over the years, including in the Labor years, there were a great many cases which the Labor Party just overlooked which we are subsequently uncovering. I have spoken in this parliament about the case where a person reported $5,000 that he earned in a particular financial year while on Centrelink payments, but the Australian Taxation Office said that he earned more than $100,000. That was one case that the Labor Party overlooked when the member for Sydney was in charge, but we have not overlooked that. That is exactly why we have this system in place—to do a proper audit, to identify discrepancies like that and to ask the person to explain that discrepancy, and if they cannot they will be asked to pay back a debt. Of course they have review mechanisms. Of course they can get through to the 1800 number, which has a waiting time—this was the member for Sydney's point—of less than five seconds. (Time expired)

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