Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think it's fair to say that there's no-one in Australia that's more surprised about the election result than the government itself. We do of course accept the result, but it is bitterly disappointing not just for those of us who were hoping and had thought our way through the plans to form government but most importantly for the community that I represent.

The electorate of Bruce has some of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged areas of Melbourne, and indeed the most disadvantaged council in the metropolitan area of Melbourne. I just want to record for the House that the government, despite making hundreds of millions of dollars of promises in seats surrounding it, made not one single commitment to my electorate. The most disadvantaged people in a city of over five million people under this government were not worthy of one dollar in the election commitments. All they've experienced since the election is the government's ongoing attacks on public services; the privatisation of Centrelink; cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme; and of course, the disgraceful effort, which is well underway with an announcement expected soon, to privatise the issuing and processing of Australian visas and citizenship—a disgrace.

But it's true to say that the Labor Party, I think, stuffed up this election, and we own that. We're in the midst of our political coprophagia, as we speak, thinking our way through it. But, as we've seen, the government has no plan; the economy is tanking; wage growth is at record lows; underemployment is at record highs—1.2 million Australians seeking more work; productivity growth has stagnated; consumer confidence and business confidence are down; and we see the Prime Minister making it up every day as he goes along with no plan for the economy, no plan for the country. The more he says those words—we hear them in question time: stable and certain—'We have a stable and certain plan,' the more Australians need to understand that that is because there is no plan. Prime Minister, he doth protest too much.

But one thing that has not changed since the election is this government's unrelenting attacks on the most vulnerable Australians. I just want to turn some remarks to the issue of robodebt. We've seen an incredible turnaround just in the last two weeks. Robodebt was inaccurate, unfair and damaging to the most vulnerable Australians. It was a dodgy scheme of debt collection, utilising the power of the state, the Commonwealth logo, to recoup debts that were not owed. It's taken the human out of Human Services. What the government has done with this is grab a computer that takes the tax office annual reported income and spits out a letter if that doesn't match the income that was reported to Centrelink. There's no human left anymore who checks the fortnightly reported income to Centrelink. They just raise a debt notice with no proof.

I want to record the example of Lydia, a wonderful constituent of mine who I met only three weeks ago. She came in, astonished, to have been told she had a debt to the Commonwealth of $22,000. Lydia's over 60. Three years ago—

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