Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In relation to the government's response to the order for production of documents that there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Government Services, no later than 10 am today, responses to all questions placed on notice by Senators Siewert and O'Neill relating to legal advice and Centrelink's compliance program, I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

The government has tabled those responses. I will note that the government, in those responses, continues to say that the minister has made a public interest immunity claim with respect to any legal advice obtained in relation to the income compliance program—into the circumstances surrounding any legal advice obtained in relation to the income compliance program.

The community affairs committee rejected that claim for public interest immunity, saying that we didn't think it met the requirements of a public interest immunity claim, in that the government and the minister did not outline how it would hurt the public interest to produce that legal advice. The minister has now tabled answers to other questions that we asked, and in some instances they're useful; in others they're not. We still do not have an understanding of how many debts are affected by the government's suspension of the program of income averaging. We do not know how long the government has known that the robodebt process was illegal, which debts are illegal, when people will be compensated, how long it will take the government to review the debts and what the final process is.

When we had the hearing on 16 December we only heard about the first level of review that is being undertaken. We expected that that first review, and the department led us to believe that, would be undertaken or completed towards the end of January. Yet we still have not heard what the next phase of the process is and how many debts are involved.

Through the Senate inquiry process and the ongoing court case, we are learning more about the government's position. For example, the government don't think that they have a duty of care to the people who have been traumatised and demonised by robodebt. The government claim that they deny allegations of duress. Well, tell those people, who have had debt collectors turned up on their doorstep, that they don't think that they have been under duress. Tell people who are getting notices—and who got robodebt notices over the last three years—that they shouldn't feel duress that they got these notices for, in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars, and now, as it turns out, a lot of them are illegal.

Part of the legal advice that we have been seeking is a further outline of the process of garnishing by the ATO. The government has ramped up their garnishing of people's tax returns. The first thing that people know about a robodebt is when their tax returns get garnished. For those people you can guarantee that most of those debts will have been done through income averaging because, if somebody doesn't know about it, they haven't responded to the letters. They have moved—quite a while ago, because some of these debts stretch back a large number of years. They have moved, so they have never had the contact from the department. The first thing they know is they get garnished. That will have been done by income averaging—income averaging that is illegal.

How long has the government been doing this? I was asking in the hearing on 16 December: 'Can't they stop? Are they able to stop some of this garnishing? Weren't they able to identify which ones were done by income averaging?' The ATO said, 'No, that's up to the department.' The department will know very well which of those debts are income averaged and which ones aren't. How many resources are now being put over to looking at these robodebts? How much time from the department now is being taken up looking at robodebts? We still don't know the answers to that.

But I want to go back to this duty of care and the government claiming they don't have a duty of care. To say I was gobsmacked that government claims it doesn't have a duty of care to Australians on our income support system is to put it mildly. It is unbelievable that the government is running that line in its court case trying to defend its illegal robodebt system.

As Bernard Keane—in a very interesting article, I will say—rightly points out, the idea that the government does not have a duty of care towards its citizens is at odds 'with the core principles' of our social security system. I couldn't agree more. He also then points out that the DSS Social Security Guide clearly states that duty of care means:

Australian government employees have a duty of care to the public when performing their duties. This advice extends to any advice given and any actions performed.

So the Public Service has a duty of care to those accessing our social safety net, but the Australian government doesn't have a duty of care?

It is clear that our government does not care about people on our social security system. It cannot escape the fact that our social security system is, in fact, built on a social contract that provides people with a minimum standard of living. That's the very basis of our social security legislation. That's the basis on which people trust our government. There is a contract with our government, a social contract, that they will provide a minimum standard of living for people. The fact that that's below the poverty line is something I have debated in here before and I'll continue to raise, but there is an expectation from our community that our government does take a duty of care to its citizens, and particularly those who have fallen on hard times and need support through our social security system.

More than 600,000 debts have been issued under robodebt. We still don't know how many of those are illegal, how many of those were done strictly by income averaging and how many of those had some income averaging, but we know that there are a lot. The community deserves answers, and we're not getting them from the government. We simply don't know how many of these debts are illegal. We don't know when the government intends to let people know. We don't know if Australians are going to be reimbursed and also compensated for the very real distress they suffer when they get a letter in the mail that says they owe money. The government likes to use semantics and say, 'That's not a debt notice.' As soon as somebody gets a letter indicating that the government thinks they owe money, whether it says they have to pay it now or not, they get nervous and think that they owe money—money that they don't have.

I've heard more and more in the community about the other thing people have done. If it is between $1,000 and $2,000, people, particularly if they are working—if the social security system has done its job and supported people while they looked for work and they found work—are just paying it. They don't fight it, because they don't want the hassle of interacting with the government. They just want to get it off the books. They don't want to be in trouble. They believe the government. Potentially, people haven't challenged thousands of debts that they didn't owe. Time and time again I'm being told that. Then you have people still on social security not being able to get advances in their payments because the government says that they owe money, so they're getting further and further into poverty. More than likely they're going to dodgy loan sharks and payday lenders and running up more bills. They are being driven further and further into poverty.

Robodebt is a mess. The government need to come clean. They need to tell us when they knew that this was illegal. How long have they known? How many debts are illegal? They need to come clean and say, 'Yes, we know we have a duty of care to our community.' Of course they do—they're the government. Of course they have a duty of care to the citizens of this country. It is completely objectionable that the government think they have caused no distress to and no duress for people and that they think they have no duty of care. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.