Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Does the government agree that it owes all Australians, including Centrelink recipients, a duty of care to behave lawfully?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government, of course, in all of its activities, seeks to do those in a lawful manner. That is the responsibility of every citizen, let alone every government, and that is what the government will always endeavour to do. Where we have advice and where matters indicate, as has been the case in relation to the use of income averaging as the sole determinant of raising a debt, then obviously government practices change. I simply just note again that this is a practice that has been in place over at least two governments, that elected in 2013, until now, and the previous Labor government, which applied the same practice.