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

I foreshadow that I'll be moving an amendment on sheet 3498 which relates to the duration of the resolution scheme. Minister, when we spoke with advocates such as Economic Justice Australia, they raised significant concerns that the timeframe for the scheme being only 12 months is insufficient. They talked about the fact that this scheme will overlap with compensation arrangements for robodebt and that for many people this will potentially cause confusion. They've also talked about the fact that, because somebody who accesses a resolution payment is waiving future liability or their future claims, they will require legal advice in relation to this. Therefore, they have indicated that limiting the scheme to only one year means that many people will potentially not be able to access it, and that they—despite the fact that there's been talk of additional funding—will not necessarily have the capacity to advise the number of people that will require legal advice.

Minister, given that unlawful income apportionment took place over decades, why is the government limiting access to the scheme to one year? I note that this is in circumstances where the department is still able to raise debts back to whenever. We're not introducing a six-year limit on debt recovery. We have a scheme that has gone on over decades unlawfully, and yet, for people to get a resolution payment, we're saying that you have to get it in 12 months or you miss out. Minister, why are you limiting the scheme to only 12 months?