David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Technical Changes No. 2) Bill 2025. This bill contains a number of measures, some of which are very welcome. I recognise that designing an approach to respond to income apportionment is difficult as it could require the government to recalculate potentially millions of debts over many, many years. The retrospective application of this bill to validate income apportionment is a very serious thing for this chamber to do as it will potentially deny justice and rightful compensation to those that have been impacted by this unlawful scheme. However, I note the establishment of the Income Apportionment Resolution Scheme as a means to provide some payments to those that have been impacted. It is a difficult balance of circumstances to weigh, and I think it challenges us to consider what is just and what is fair.

There are some genuinely very welcome measures in this bill, and I want to thank Minister Plibersek, in particular, for the changes that are being made to debt waivers. The introduction of special circumstances provisions will be very welcome for people who are facing financial coercion, family and domestic violence, mental ill health, homelessness or substance dependence. I also welcome the increase in the small debt waiver threshold to $250 with future annual indexation. However, I note that if the $200 threshold had been indexed all along, it would now be over $440.

This has been a very difficult bill to consider, but I recognise that the government is presenting a solution in good faith. I also want to note the amendments by Senator Allman-Payne—and the work that she's done on this bill—some of which I feel genuinely improve the fairness in this bill and strike a much better balance.

With all that being said, the government then went and did something that I think makes it really difficult to support this bill and to look at the evidence, to look at submissions, to see what stakeholders are saying and to say, 'This is a bill I can vote on on behalf of people in the ACT.' At the eleventh hour in the House the government introduced new clauses which would give the AFP minister and the ASIO minister the power to cancel someone's social security benefits if there is a warrant out for that person's arrest. These provisions weren't considered in the inquiry. They were basically just paperclipped to the bill on the way out of the House into the Senate after the inquiry had finished. That is not a good faith move from the government. I don't know if the government thought that no-one would notice or whether it was some sort of deal to get support for the bill, but I really think it is in poor faith and very disappointing, given that the rest of the bill is, I think, genuinely in good faith. You can see the government has grappled with a very hard issue and tried to provide a solution.

I'm most disappointed, though, not because of the sneakiness of trying to insert something at the last minute that hasn't actually been through an inquiry but because this is yet another example of a government treating people on social security like criminals. The bill now seeks to treat someone as guilty before they have been put before a judge and seeks to strip them of their benefits. We're not just talking about JobSeeker; we're talking about the parenting payment as well and even paid parental leave.

The part I find most disturbing is that the measures to protect any dependants, any children, are extremely thin. On current reading, the minister's department has to seek advice on whether a decision the minister makes would impact a person's dependents. But here he's the kicker: it seems like, from the bill, they don't actually have to read that advice. They don't have to consider that advice or even receive that advice into their mailbox. They just need to ask for it. This is not a protection, and this has the potential to harm children. It is something that I simply cannot support. No matter if someone is being pursued for a serious crime, it is not fair, it is not proportionate, it is not reasonable and it is not ethical to put their dependents in harm's way or to leave them without the basic necessities of life.

To quote the Aboriginal Legal Service (NSW/ACT): 'Under this legislation, people's benefits could be stripped away simply because they are unaware police have issued a warrant for their arrest and without any opportunity to access legal help. The proposed amendments will inevitably have a greater impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who are grossly overrepresented at every stage of the criminal process. Cutting off people's Centrelink payments will not only impact those individuals but put their children and families, too many of whom already live below the poverty line, at risk of homelessness and child removals. Such a controversial proposed legislative change should be the subject of considered consultation with community and legal experts. We call on the government to withdraw this proposal.'

This is from the Council of Single Mothers and their Children, who also raised that powers such as these have every possibility of being weaponised against partners: 'Council of Single Mothers and their Children are perturbed by this proposed amendment which has the to cause further harm to women and children who have already been subject to family violence. We have plenty of evidence that perpetrators of such violence are often skilled at using government systems to weaponise their violence. False reports of child abuse and of violence already see too many single mothers and their children, many of them Aboriginal, misrepresented as perpetrators of violence or taken into child protection. We call on the government to withdraw the proposed amendments—withholding social security payments, concession cards, family assistance payments or paid parental leave payments on the grounds of arrest for any reason—until any unintended consequences for children and their primary carers can be fully and openly assessed.'

I go to Anglicare and what they've said. They've said:

Cutting off someone's income before they have been found guilty of any crime is punishment without conviction. We should not have to explain why this has no place in a fair society. This is a shocking overreach of police powers into the social security system. We've seen too many times what happens when governments rush through changes without thinking through the consequences. Robodebt should have been warning enough. We're calling on the government to withdraw these amendments and commit to a system that upholds people's rights and dignity, not one that tears them away.

This is incredibly disappointing of Labor. On reading the bill, as I said, I think much of it is in good faith. Then you've tacked on this amendment that clearly has no support from organisations who are actually working on the front line with people who will potentially be affected the most by it. I note that the Labor Party actually opposed these measures under the former government.

In the first instance, I'm proposing that we split this schedule back out of the bill, put it in its own bill and send it to an inquiry. As Senator Liddle said earlier in this debate, it is entirely inappropriate that these measures were not put before a committee. The Law Council of Australia has said:

Adding Schedule 5 after a parliamentary scrutiny process vastly undermines the democratic rule of law principles which underpin Australian lawmaking …

The Law Council urges the Senate not to pass the Bill with Schedule 5 included. Instead, Schedule 5 should be separated from the rest of the Bill and referred to a parliamentary committee for proper and careful public scrutiny.

I urge the Senate to heed the advice of the Law Council. Pass these powers if that's what you really want to do but at least do so after an inquiry where we can actually interrogate the measures, where stakeholders can have their say and where we can ensure that we're not putting a single child in harm's way.

I will also be proposing a smaller amendment to make sure that the AFP minister must seek advice and, crucially, consider how any decision they make under these laws will impact a person's dependents. I think this is really the bare minimum, and I really hope that the government and opposition see the sense in ensuring that a decision cannot be made if a dependent is going to be put into poverty, put into danger or left without the basic necessities of life.

Just finally, I want to come back to the robodebt royal commission. When you look at Commissioner Holmes's comments and the recommendations in the report, you see that this is a golden opportunity for this parliament to actually act on the maladministration and the secrecy we saw that had devastating consequences. One of the things that really struck me in Commissioner Holmes's remarks was the way that politicians and the parliament talk about people who are receiving social security payments. She urged us to do better. She urged us to change the way we talk about people in Australia who are receiving support that they're entitled to. As a community we've decided that we want to live in a country where, if you need that support, you're going to get it. Yet, tragically, here we have a bill that's not aligned with that. It's saying that, before you're proven guilty, we're going to strip that away because, in our minds, you're either a criminal or a dole bludger. It's just not good enough. I urge the Senate to reconsider these sorts of things, which, when you add them all up, are exactly what Commissioner Holmes was talking about.