Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The community has been waiting over two years now for the federal government to enact significant legislative reform following the final report of the royal commission into robodebt. But, to their shame, the government has failed to do so, and this bill seeks to remedy that.

Now, I do acknowledge that the government has made some efforts and made some progress, particularly on cultural change within Services Australia. But we simply can't accept this as job done because still missing is the legislative change to ensure that robodebt never happens again.

Remember, robodebt was a catastrophic failure of government administration that destroyed the lives of thousands of Australians. As the royal commissioner herself noted, it was 'a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals.' Moreover, two years ago, the Prime Minister himself described robodebt as 'a gross betrayal and a human tragedy' which 'should never have happened and should never happen again.'

But, it turns out, so far at least, that this was just paying lip service to the matter, which is troubling because it's entirely at odds with the tragic impacts of robodebt on thousands of Australians, especially those who suicided at least in part due to the financial and emotional devastation inflicted by the scheme and the impact on their friends and their family.

Indeed, the possibility for human tragedy under this scheme was made clear to me and my office as early as 2016 when, after hearing from many distressed constituents who had received frightening and unfounded debt notices, I was among the first to raise the alarm, with the media, with the Ombudsman and with the government.

But, while the media were slow to pick it up, and the then government didn't want to hear it, my office continued to hear countless shocking stories from my electorate in Tasmania, and indeed right across the country. In one memorable case, a person presented to my office so distressed that they curled up into a ball on the floor in my waiting room and broke down in tears, having a panic attack.

Of course, all now agree that robodebt was a shameful chapter in Australia's history. Well, maybe not all, seeing as many members of the former LNP government don't seem to have any or many regrets about the whole sorry saga.

It's also now better understood that, while the core of the scheme was found to be unlawful, many legitimate aspects of social security legislation did also encourage the situation to arise and supported it continuing unexamined for so long.

No wonder the core of the royal commission's findings was the simple fact that government services need to return to providing Australians access to an effective income support system and to ensure that they are treated with respect and dignity when they do so.

And so that's what this bill aims to do: to improve and expand the principles and duties contained in social security law in line with the royal commission recommendation relating to the effects of robodebt on individuals, and to make other changes to the social security law to align with recommendations on compliance activities and vulnerability, automated decision-making, and debt recovery and collection practices.

In particular, a large part of the bill aims to give effect to recommendation 10.1, that Services Australia should design policies and processes with emphasis on the people they are meant to serve. And it does this by inserting, within social security law, improved principles and duties for the secretary in administering that law.

There's also a duty to avoid language and conduct which causes unnecessary stigma and shame for recipients of government support. This is a particularly important counter to decades in which governments, the media, and plenty of others demonised and used welfare recipients as policy punching bags.

Moreover there's a duty to ensure sensitive, easy and efficient engagement with Services Australia in person, over the phone, or online, which I'm sure would be welcome news to anyone who's tried to get in touch with Centrelink to do even the most basic task, particularly when they're then directed to a phone line which rings for hours only to hang up.

There's also a duty to explain processes in clear terms and plain language so that people can find out what is required and expected of them, and, just as importantly, what is expected of Services Australia. Moreover there's a duty to act with sensitivity to financial and other stressors, and where possible to avoid actions which exacerbate these stressors.

It's all simple stuff, but for some reason it's been missing in the legislation to date, and that's what this bill will remedy.

Now of course the 'robo' in robodebt referred to the use of computer programs and other forms of automation. So, importantly, this bill also includes new legislated guidelines for how automation is used and overseen by Services Australia.

This includes requiring certain automated decisions, which are likely to have the most distressing impact on people, to be reviewed by a real person before coming into effect.

And it requires any decision made by a computer program to be flagged as such to people and to have clear instructions on seeking further information or review.

Furthermore the bill makes changes to debt waiver provisions to better provide for Services Australia to waive a debt where it was raised, either as a result of an administrative error made by the Commonwealth or incurred because of family and domestic violence circumstances, including cases of coercive control.

The bill also implements the clear recommendation of the royal commission that a six-year limit be reinstated on debt recovery. Not only does this bring social security debts back into line with other debts, it would also go quite some way to addressing the decades of illegally raised debts which were the subject of the recent Federal Court decision on income apportionment.

This bill has been drafted in close consultation with Economic Justice Australia, which is the peak body for community legal centres providing specialist social security legal services. Alarmingly, these legal services continue to see the harm and distress caused by Centrelink debts and observe that this will continue so long as the government continues to sit on its hands and not bring about appropriate legislative change.

I'd also like to acknowledge Greens senator Penny Allman-Payne—who will be moving a corresponding bill in the Senate today, I think, and who will join me shortly in a media event to discuss our reforms—and Liam Dunn from my own team, who did much of the legwork to get us to this point.

To conclude, my crossbench colleagues and I are ready and keen to work with the government to ensure robodebt never happens again. Hence I urge the Minister for Social Services, the Minister for Government Services, the Prime Minister and, in fact, all members of this House to finally come together at the table for legislative reform to ensure such catastrophic failures of social services administration can never happen again.

In my remaining time, I invite the member for Indi, who is seconding the bill, to make a few comments.

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