Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Allman-Payne for the question. I can assure you, Senator, that, between the Minister for Social Services and myself, we have had a number of discussions around how we respond to the Federal Court case that considered income apportionment. Just to be clear, because parallels are often drawn between robodebt and income apportionment, robodebt was bad policy dreamt up by those opposite to pursue vulnerable people to provide a budget saving and to threaten them with jail if they didn't pay back debts they didn't owe. That's that. Income apportionment was not designed to punish welfare recipients or to claw back revenue; it was about making life easier for people. Let's be clear about the difference between income apportionment and what happened under their watch—the biggest failure of public administration in our country's history, a decision by them over there to pursue vulnerable Australians for billions of dollars they didn't owe, as it turned out.

We are considering our response to that. Debt, the length of time for debt and low-level debts are all part of the work currently before the Minister for Social Services. She has had a number of discussions with me about that and we will resolve them shortly. I'm not in a position to advise you at the moment about any changes to debt waivers or our policy in relation to that, but we are working through the detail and the judgement of the Federal Court and we will provide a response once those discussions are complete.