Ann Sudmalis (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Our nation has an amazing system of welfare support, representing almost a third of the federal government budget. Things that have happened in recent times are not a generation of efficiency dividends. Sometimes I think that running a country is a bit like running a business, and I can say that after 17 years of making fudge, sending it out and collecting money for the stuff I sent out. If I sent too much or a customer owed me money, we would negotiate a payment and work out a schedule. I made a mistake. They might have made a mistake. We fixed it. I am not saying that the system is pure, but this is exactly the same as recovering overpayments from the taxpayer funded welfare support system. And it is only being done when there is an apparent difference between the self-declared income of a welfare recipient and the records held by the Australian tax office.

The system is going through some teething problems. We all know that. However, I have had a little look at the statistics that have been quoted this afternoon, and each member has stood up and said, I've had 10' in one case. Some people have said, 'I've had up to 100 constituents who have needed assistance.' I do not know about you but I have got 114,000 constituents. I have had about 14 people who have needed my help. I am sure there will be more, because I have just said to people: 'Come and ask me to help you, if this is causing you grief.'

This is my job. We are there to help these people get through a system that may not have worked for them. This is your job—the opposition—but that is not a lot in the scale of things in this system. Instead of putting their lives on the public record—I hope you got their permission to do so, because it is a complete breach of privacy, if you did not–you should have gone straight to the minister, as all of us did, and said: 'A constituent's got a problem. Can we help them?' That is our job as members of parliament. We are there to help our constituents and not throw their lives into the newspaper. Get real. Get it fixed and help sort these problems out for the people.

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