Shanks Katrina: Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Shanks Katrina: Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:641;Page:10860] 
KATRINA SHANKS (National) 
: 
 I rise to speak in the first reading of the Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill. This bill addresses the prevention detection and recovery of debts and the misuse of social security student allowances and the student loan system. 
It seeks to improve and broaden data-matching provisions. Earlier we heard from Mr Fairbrother who talked all the time about tracking and the computer system we have in place to do this. This computer system has been in place for a long long time. It has actually been matching data not tracking data. There is quite a big difference. If we want to track people then we will have to chip them. But we are not; we are only matching the data between two different systems—two different departments. That is actually what this bill is all about. If the Government wants to track people that is all good and well but that is not what this bill is about. Otherwise we would be putting little tags on everybody or even in their little smart cards so we could track them. This bill is not about tracking; it is about data matching. 
There are two parts to this Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill. The first part amends the Corrections Act 2004 for the facilitation of disclosure of prisoner information to ensure that a benefit is not payable during imprisonment or detention in prison. We know that benefits are paid to prisoners. The system that the Government has in place at the moment is that someone goes into prison and says to prisoners: “Would you like to volunteer the information that you are on a benefit?”. And the prisoners say no. Of course the agencies are not told that prisoners are now in prison so they are still paying out benefits. So what happens? This voluntary system that is in place—which has been in place for a long period of time now—just simply does not work. Hopefully this bill will close that gap just a little bit more. 
Another of the functions of the facilitation of disclosure of prisoner information is to provide for recovery of debts due to the Crown. These are debts that mount up time after time as beneficiaries obtain more money more easily for things like washing machines and dryers. These are all very good things but they are things that a lot of us save to get to begin with. They are not just given to us and those debts are not then eventually just written off. 
The facilitation of the disclosure of prisoner information is also to allow recovery of debts in respect of the payment of allowances student loans or other money to which people are no longer entitled. When a prisoner walks into the prison and is asked: “Would you like to voluntarily tell student allowances that as you are in prison you are no longer entitled to an allowance?” the answer is of course no. These individuals keep on getting paid and of course these debts just keep on increasing. The bill also provides that students imprisoned or detained in prison are not entitled to receive any payment under those regulations. 
Part 1 will also allow benefits allowances and student loans to be able “to be suspended despite section 103(1) of the Privacy Act 1993 immediately a relevant discrepancy arises or is identified …”. This is probably the most controversial and important part of this bill as it is where we start tampering with the Privacy Act. What happens now is that when people go into prison their data is matched in the prison system for example. Three months ago it was once a week that this data would be matched. When a person went into prison that person would not voluntarily want to say that he or she was now a prisoner because that person’s benefit would be cut. It would then take another week for the corrections system and the relevant department to match the data to say that all of a sudden that person was a prisoner so he or she was no longer entitled to a benefit. What the departments were not allowed to do was to cut a person’s benefit off straight away. They had to give a person 10 days’ notice that he or she had been matched and would lose that benefit. That would mean that that person would have his or her benefit paid not only in that 1 week in which he or she had not disclosed the information but also for another 10 days because the department would have to wait in case that person wanted to appeal the matching process. So it might not have been 2 weeks; it might have been 3 weeks. If a person appealed the result it could be a lot longer. 
This amendment also authorises the disclosure of prisoner information for social security purposes. That is basically Part 1 of the bill. 
Let us go on to Part 2. Part 2 addresses the amendments to the Customs and Excise Act 1996. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.