Mr ROBERT (Fadden—Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and Minister for Government Services) (15:31): It's a pleasure to respond to the waffle that our comeback member for Maribyrnong, in his pitch for the centre of the front bench, has just delivered to the House, notwithstanding that Labor's own lawyers, Gordon Legal, have acknowledged that the settlement is not an admission of liability, does not reflect any acceptance of the allegations that the shadow minister has been rolling out and does not reflect any knowledge of unlawfulness. However, the shadow minister does make one particularly good point: we should go back and understand the history of how we arrived at this point. That history is reflective. On 15 November 1990, the Hawke government introduced a piece of legislation into the other house: a data-matching bill. The minister at the desk, Senator McMullan, introduced the bill by saying: We expect that by matching data it will be possible to detect where a person has provided inconsistent information to one or more agencies and is thereby receiving incorrect payments … The advantages of matching data on income, family structure and tax file numbers are enormous. So who was the minister at the time in the Hawke government? Graham Richardson, the fixer himself. You can't make this up. Hawke and Richo began it. I've got Graham Richardson's media release from 30 years ago, and here's what it said: The Federal Government tonight announced further measures to detect incorrect payments in the income support system. It is planned that the changes will involve: the use of Tax File Numbers to automatically verify … information … increased computer matching1between various Government income support agencies … to detect "double-dipping" … The press release continued: "The Government has stopped hundreds of millions of dollars in incorrect payments. The level of voluntary compliance has also … improved," the Minister said. The Government now plans to use newly developed technology to close … significant loopholes … In the Senate, as the debate continued, going through to 18 December 1990, we find that Labor guillotined the debate, so quick they were to get this bill through parliament. We then learn what the situation was in 1994 from letters I've tabled in the House previously—not just the letter from the ISIS computing system which shows it was drawn on as the base document but also a letter to an individual saying: I am writing to you about your Newstart Allowance. The Department of Social Security … compares its records with those of other government agencies under a program called the Data-matching Program. It goes on to say the following: If you do not reply we will use the Tax Office's information about your income and we will write to you about how much money you need to pay back. Let's unpack that, because you can't deny the fact. Let's unpack it for a second. Here is the background. Let's unpack it. Opposition members interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Llew O'Brien ): Members on my left will cease interjecting. Mr ROBERT: We know that income support payments are determined on a fortnight-by-fortnight basis but the ATO use annualised data. So in 1994 this letter tells me if this citizen did not reply to this letter, the government of the day—in this case the Keating government—will use the tax office information which is not fortnightly, it is annualised. The tax office doesn't have fortnightly information, it's only got annualised. We will use this annualised information about your income and we'll write to you about how much money you need to pay back. How in 1994 could the Keating government write to someone about how much money they had to pay back on their Newstart fortnightly by using the ATO's income data? They did it by income averaging. Hence, why income averaging, which is the basis upon which the Commonwealth has reached agreement with Labor's lawyers and which this MPI is about, goes back 26 years. That fact is not in dispute, and the documentation shows it clearly. Hawke, 'Richo', Keating—that's the genesis of data matching; that's the genesis of using averaged ATO information. Then it continued. In 1998 the 1990 bill was updated. The Data-matching Program (Assistance and Tax Amendment) Bill 1998 No. 2 replaced the 1990 bill. And what did Wayne Swan have to say about it on 25 November 1998? He said the bill: … seeks to make the data-matching program a permanent feature of the social security system, and the opposition welcomes this. The Data-matching Program (Assistance and Tax) Act of 1990 gave effect to measures announced in the 1990-91 budget. Now, of course, the government does not seek to highlight that fact. This Labor initiative introduced a method for detecting inconsistent payments— Mr Albanese: Go Swanny! Mr ROBERT: Swanny in 1998 said: This Labor initiative— Oh, it goes on, shadow minister opposite. Let's go to the budget paper 2009-10. Let's have a look at what it says. The Government will increase the number of compliance reviews that Centrelink undertakes, using information obtained from existing data matching programs … We know from 1994 that all of this is based on averaged income data, because that was the basis by which reviews were done. Then we've got 13 July 2010: the member for McMahon, who was then Minister for Financial Services, releases a press release: 'Centrelink reviews recoup millions for taxpayers'. 'In the 2008-09 financial year, Centrelink conducted 3.8 million payment reviews resulting in the reduction of 641,000 payments.' It continues. 'These reviews saved taxpayers $87.4 million a fortnight'—Labor boasting about reducing outlays by $2.27 billion. Let's have a look at those 2008-09 payment reviews: 898,000 on age pensioners; 874,000 on Newstart, 500,089 reviews on disability support pensions. I'm just getting started, the little gobby member opposite; I'm just winding up. On 29 June 2011 the member for Sydney and the member for Maribyrnong put out a media release: 'New data matching to recover millions in welfare'. It starts: A new data matching initiative between Centrelink and the Australian Taxation Office is expected to claw back millions of dollars from welfare recipients who have debts with the Australian Government. Claw back—that's the member for Sydney and the member for Maribyrnong on 29 June 2011, building on the data-matching initiative. Let's go to Budget Paper No. 2 2011-12, which says: The measure will provide Centrelink and the Department of Veterans' Affairs with the capability to match customer data with Annual Income Investment Report data— Annual; not fortnightly, annual. Even here it is annual. They're comparing it with annual. The issue at stake is the use of averaged income from the ATO, and every step along the way we find the Labor Party using annualised data. Why? Because that's how the process has been done since 1994. For 26 years averaged ATO data has been used—a quarter of a century. This government simply continued a process that had started in 1994. It's this government that called it to account, it's this government that stopped the use of averaged annual income from the ATO and it's this government that said, 'This is not sufficient.' In 2012-13, when the demise of the then Labor government was taking place, they continued: … providing $41.3 million over three years to increase the number of data-matching reviews— to expand where the reviews sit. And, if you look at the number, they did. Just going back to the 2010-11 financial year—the year the member for Sydney was at the desk—we saw that 24.4 per cent of debts raised that year were solely or partially using an average. That's a fact. In 2009, 16.8 per cent of reviews were done solely using averaging or partially using averaging, using computing, using automatic data-matching. Remember the letter from 1994, because those opposite say a human was involved. Well, if that was the case, explain why it said: If you do not reply we will use the Tax Office's information about your income and we will write to you about how much money you need to pay back. Explain that. This process has been going for 26 years. They know it, we know it and we stopped it.