Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, during the inquiry into this bill, when the person giving evidence from Economic Justice Australia was asked whether they had concerns about retrospectivity, their comment in the inquiry was that it wasn't their preferred approach, but that it wasn't on the table—sorry. Their preferred approach was to waive the debts, noting that many of these debts are very old. So my question is: why has the government gone down the path of making past actions that were unlawful lawful, which is effectively giving the department a free pass for more unlawful activity, which we see repeatedly in the Department of Social Services. Why did the government choose to go down that path, when they could have simply waived outstanding debts?