Additional Comments - Coalition Senators

1.1The Coalition supports the intent of this bill in its aims to provide legal clarity to the practice of income apportionment, expanding access to the special circumstances waiver, increasing the small debt waiver and a one-off waiver of small undetermined debts.

1.2The Coalition accepts that it is indeed reasonable for amendments to be made to the current legislation to increase small debt thresholds and to index the thresholds annually as the administrative cost of recouping small, accidental debts is often higher than the value of the debt itself and these thresholds have not changed in over thirty years. This change will also see 1.2 million undetermined debts waived, freeing up the resources of Services Australia from chasing debts that are uneconomical to recover.

1.3The Coalition notes the operational details relating to the Income Apportionment Resolution Scheme are absent from primary legislation as the bill provides for the Minister to determine provisions relating to the scheme via legislative instrument.

1.4Due to the absence of these essential details in the primary legislation, the committee’s capacity to properly scrutinise the scheme has been limited. The Coalition will closely scrutinise and consider the legislative instrument once it is tabled.

1.5The government has stated it will strengthen existing safeguards to ensure the waiver system cannot be manipulated. However, it remains unclear how these safeguards will be strengthened.

1.6Effective implementation of these reforms will be necessary, and the responsible agencies should carefully oversee their progress to ensure intended outcomes are achieved.