Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for this opportunity to contribute to this important issue. The conclusion to Senator O'Neill's speech indicates the objectives of the other side here. Senator O'Neill was most passionate when she was accusing the Prime Minister of certain ills, not when she was seeking to defend or pursue the interests of average Australians. Clearly, the objective of the opposition is not to help people but to hurt the Prime Minister. That is the approach they have taken here. In fact, in her very first contribution, Senator O'Neill accused the government, the Prime Minister and others of being untruthful. Then she went on to make clearly untruthful statements at the very time she herself was accusing others of being untruthful. Senator O'Neill mentioned that, in her view, Minister Birmingham did not provide truthful responses to the questions given today. One of the questions that she claimed there was no response to was: who was the social services minister in 2016? Despite a simple Google search being able to provide the answer to that, Minister Birmingham did mention Mr Scott Morrison in answer to that question. Despite the heckling from the other side—it was often hard to hear half of what was being said by ministers this afternoon—I did distinctly hear Minister Birmingham, the Leader of the Government in the Senate, say that, yes, Mr Morrison was the social services minister in 2016. That was a very useful part of question time this afternoon.

Unlike the opposition, the government's focus now is on helping those that have been put in this situation. The Prime Minister has apologised for the hurt and harm that has been caused by the issues with this program. The government's focus now is on ensuring that people receive the relief as soon as possible. We know and have been transparent about the fact that around 525,000 debts have been wholly or partially raised using income averaging. The total amounts of the refunds being provided because of these debts sit at around $741 million. Around 430,000 Australians will have their debts zeroed through this process. Of those, approximately 378,000 will receive a refund. The balance hadn't actually made a repayment, so there'll be no direct refund, of course, but the debt will be wiped. As of 27 November, just over 406,000 people had had their refunds completed, with a total of $707 million paid. While not mentioned here in my notes, by my math, that leaves around 23,000 to 24,000 people that are still to process their debts. But the vast majority, about 95 per cent of people and 95 per cent of refunds by value, have now been processed. That's going to remain as the focus of the government, including through the settlement that has been reached in the class action with Gordon Legal. And that should be the focus of any government, because if the opposition were true to their claims to care about the impacts of these issues on people then what they should focus on now is that relief—be focused on providing that assistance to people in this circumstance.

It's still very important, of course, that we continue to maintain the integrity of our welfare system. The Australian government spends $180 billion a year on welfare, and support for such welfare programs is reliant on making sure that the money is spent on those who truly need it. Of course there are those who do seek to defraud the Commonwealth and it is important that there are compliance activities to stamp out and penalise such fraud when it does occur. For decades, all governments have pursued such anti-fraud programs. I'm confident that all governments in the future, including if there is to be a Labor government in the future, will continue to do so, because we support our welfare system and we support its integrity. We'll continue to operate it in the best way we can.