North Coast Voices will not be posting from Saturday 19 August to Wednesday 23 August 2023

Personally, I find a UK gaoler/overseer supplying convict labour for outdoor work in Australia has an uncomfortable historical resonance even when dressed up as ‘work experience’

 

Clarence Correctional Centre is a 1,700 bed maximum- and minimum-security correctional centre for male and female offenders, which includes 400 minimum security beds. The centre is located at Lavidia 12km south east of Grafton in the Clarence Valley.

This prison opened in July 2020 is managed on a twenty-year contract by Serco Asia Pacific on behalf of the NSW Government. This contract was initially worth UK £1.5 billion to the Serco Group.

The Serco Group Plc is a UK-based, publicly listed, multinational corporation which in the first half of 2023 had revenue of UK £2.4 billion and is expected to end the year with revenue of at least UK £4.8 billion (AUS $9.4 billion).

Apparently Serco appears to be anticipating that Clarence Valley Council will assist it in meeting this revenue target – presumably by way of a program grant from government directly to Serco.

Personally, I find a UK gaoler/overseer supplying convict labour for outdoor work in Australia has an uncomfortable historical resonance even when dressed up as ‘work experience’.

It should be noted that Serco has a long history of contract breaches when it comes to correctional and immigration detention facilities, for overcharging government for its services, poor security and human rights abuse.

The Daily Telegraph, 15 August 2023:

The United Services Union states Clarence Valley Council wants to use prison inmates for repair and maintenance work in parks and reserves such as Market Square in Grafton.

But the council has hit back in a statement accusing the union of embarking on a campaign “built on misinformation and scaremongering”.

Northern regional organiser John Hickson said the main issue which upset the union was the lack of communication from the council.

“The way we found out was a phone call from our delegate that two supervisors had been summoned to a meeting about areas where prisoners could work around Grafton,” he said.

“We were upset because we weren’t informed or consulted about it … we even sent a letter to the council asking them to respond to the issue, which they’ve failed to do.

“What’s happening is so wrong because it should be council work for council employees — not for prisoners.”

In response, Mr Hickson started a campaign on Tuesday – including flyers and a placard on a bus – to make Grafton aware of the council’s proposal.

“The community response so far has been absolute shock and outrage — they knew nothing about it too,” he said….

The council stated key outdoor staff have been asked to provide feedback on the pilot program, which, if it goes ahead, would provide work experience to inmates.

“The ideas floated at a meeting with Serco executives early in August include repair and maintenance of park and recreational spaces,” the council stated.

“The pilot program is at the inception end of development and no details have been finalised or agreed.

“Council management is disappointed in the response by the United Services Union, which is built on misinformation and scaremongering.”

The statement declared the program “is not intended to replace council staff”.

“(Council is even) preparing to increase its Open Space workforce by up to six employees to accommodate increased workloads due to recent upgrades and the influx of tourists to the area,” it read.

Later in the afternoon, council issued another statement, which welcomed a decision to discontinue a matter that was being heard in the Industrial Relations Commission today.

“(The ruling gives) council clear direction to progress discussions with staff and the union about partnering with Serco to establish a day release work program, noting any activities should not be those that are contained within current staff work program,” the statement read.

Clarence Valley Council has been contacted for further comment.

Ray White Yamba is to be congratulated for deciding to not use the Ailo app in its rental business model

 

Ailo app 1.0 was released in or about April 2020 and has had nine iterations up to 25 July 2023.

From the beginning this app appears to have had stability issues – eg., app crashing, failure to load (Loading Error, Server Timeout Error, Connection Reset Error, Connection Failed Error) – and raised some general concerns about security of personal information due to potential third-party data sharing, possibly including photographs of occupied rental interiors.

This post in a Reddit thread appears to encapsulates renter unhappiness:

I've had nothing but problems since being forced to use this god awful app. Incorrect due dates for rent, incorrect amounts being charged for rent, receiving repeated emails stating my rent is $5 overdue ( this one lasted for months). Not to mention the annoyance of trying to pay rent without being charged a fee.

While a Whirpool forum show tenants are fighting back:

I successfully complained to the Dept of Fair Trading NSW and Ailo have now offered a 'fee-waiver form' as a way to stop fees being charged for direct debit rent payments.

It does sound like you only avoid paying fees if you know about the fee-waver form.

In my view the wording of the current legislation is too open to abuse, which is what Ailo have done (see Residential Tenancies Act 2010, Sect 35.) Fair Trading and others are putting pressure on Ailo and it seems to be working; make your voice heard if this is affecting you.

Fair Trading recommended contacting policy @customerservice.nsw.gov.au, who review legislation reforms, and Tenants Advice or Advocacy Services (TAAS) at www.tenants.org.au

Hope this helps.

So Ray White Yamba is to be congratulated for deciding to not use the Ailo app in its rental business model.

Clarence Valley Independent, 16 August 2020

Increasing cost-of-living pressures have led Ray White Yamba to elect not to use the Ailo mobile app, introduced by the company across its network of agents as a property management system, for tenants to pay and landlords to collect rental payments.

Recently, some Ray White agents, along with other real estate brands, across Australia emailed tenants and landlords inviting them to use Ailo, a third-party property management app to pay their rent, which was founded by former Ray White Director Ben White.

Ray White Yamba Managing Director, Daniel Kelly said after piloting and testing the Ailo property management system they decided against implementing it for their clients.

“The Ailo technology is not exclusive to Ray White, there’s other brands around the country that are using it as well,” he said.

“Based on our experience in using it, we feel as though it is not the right fit for us.”

The Ailo app charges 0.25 per-cent for an automated direct debit from a bank account, 0.95 per-cent for debit card payments and 1.5 per-cent for credit card payments, while also offering a fee-free method of payment as required.

In NSW, a law was passed in 2011 that every real estate agent must offer a fee free means of paying rent.

Mr Kelly said convenience and increasing cost-of-living pressures were reasons why Ray White Yamba chose not to use the Ailo app.

“Predominantly one reason was convenience for our clients, tenants in particular, because it’s a system that largely would have been accepted, I believe by landlords, but, from a tenancy perspective the feedback that we have had is that it removed a level of convenience for them in paying the rent,” he said.

“The decision we came to was, obviously cost-of-living is a big issue at the moment, and we don’t want to be inflicting further pain on people, so it wasn’t the right fit for us.”

A GST fraud wave costing Treasury at least $4.6 billion has been perpetrated by thousands of greedy people falsely asserting they own & trade as a business

 

Financial Review, 14 August 2023:

An explosive wave of fraud that has shaken the Tax Office’s GST system had been building for months before accountants began to notice early last year. By then it was everywhere and no one wanted to talk about it.

“I started seeing it through the office about March of 2022, a few people came in with business files with the ATO – these really large credits going out, big, big credits, unusual credits,” a western Sydney accountant told The Australian Financial Review.

“It didn’t prick my attention. Then I saw a few more, and a few more, and a few more. It kept growing. Tax time came [from July 2022] and it was rampant, absolutely rampant.”

By then, accountants around Australia were realising that the country was in the thick of a multibillion-dollar explosion of GST fraud that had gone viral. It’s the crime wave the Tax Office didn’t see coming.

How big a crime wave? “The inside word among tax officers is $4.6 billion – that is insane,” says the accountant, who like others spoke to the Financial Review on condition of anonymity. “Everyone’s too scared to go up against the ATO.”

The Tax Office has confirmed the $4.6 billion figure, which seems likely to be an underestimate.

It was “the biggest tax revenue fraud against the community in the history of the ATO”, deputy commissioner John Ford said in a speech in May.

The fraud is a simple one that involves individuals using their MyGov account to claim refunds on GST payments that were never made.

While the fraud may be simple, piecing together this invisible crime wave raises questions about why the Tax Office took so long to catch on.

And now it’s tax time again. While the Tax Office insists it has the fraud under control, accountants in western Sydney are painting a darker picture.

“They keep changing [the scam],” an accountant says. “I saw more clients today that [the ATO] didn’t pick up. One guy got $50,000, then another $35,000, then another $25,000.

“He hasn’t had to pay it back. He got this at the end of 2022. This isn’t being picked up as fraudulent activity.

“I’ve seen two more already this morning. One has a debt of $18,000. He tried to get more but was stopped eventually by the ATO.”

A client received $130,000 from fraudulent claims in July 2022 and was not picked up until December. Another client was paid $60,000 last September. How did it get to this?

Banks had been warning the Tax Office about a rising pattern of GST fraud – and freezing suspect accounts – from late 2020. They became increasingly frustrated by the apparent lack of action by the ATO, as they were faced with the decision of what to do with the frozen accounts…..

By mid-2021 the fraud was exploding as social media – in particular TikTok – was full of explainers how to get a “loan” from the government.

In one example cited to the Financial Review a man claimed a $50,000 GST refund in August 2021, then raised another $50,000 several months later. It was only when he tried it again last May that the Tax Office caught up with him.

Read the full article here.

There were more income averaging schemes than just Robodebt robbing welfare recipients and the rot appears to have started under Prime Minister John Howard, Minister Amanda Vanstone & Department Secretary Mark Sullivan

 

In March 1996, by virtue of being Parliamentary Leader of the Liberal Party, John Winston Howard became Prime Minister of Australia. In January 2021 Howard made Senator Amanda Vanstone Minster for Family and Community Services, while he appointed Mark Sullivan as Secretary of the Family and Community Services in January 2002.

It would appear that sometime in the seven years between the start of1996 and the end of 2002, a virulent political, policy and bureaucratic rot began to to grow…..

In July 2002 the Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) had introduced changes to quality control and quality assurance processes and had in place

comprehensive Centrelink processes to ensure

Quality control, service profiling, national validations.

• Awareness: newsletter, regular reviews, debt prevention strategy, life events products

• Deterrence measures: regular reviews, prosecutions, warning letters, raising and recovering debts

• Compliance initiatives: Accelerated Claimant Matching (ACM), ACM Rent Assistance, ATO tip-offs, Data-Matching Program [ATO, Australian Valuation Office (AVO) & Centrelink], Corrective Services Matching, DIMIA matching, Registrar-General’s Office death matching, Defence Housing matching, Com Super matching, ATO investment property matching, TDF matching, Tip-offs, T&Cs (ATO & ASIC matching), ID fraud detection, Optical surveillance, outposted Australian Federal Police agents, inter-agency Cash Economy Field Teams.

The Department of Family and Community Services, Annual Report 2002–03 Volume I & 2, (pp.14,16, 77, 216) revealed how this rot began to be seen as healthy:

[my yellow highlights throughout this post]

“There was a $162.1 million decrease in the write down of assets, primarily the result of a decrease in the provision for doubtful debts for the Student Financial Supplement Scheme ($386.6 million). This was offset by an increase in the provision for doubtful debts for other personal benefits ($224.5 million) due to a change in methodology for calculating the provision for doubtful debts.”…..

“To tackle the upward debt trend, we developed a national collection strategy that is already making an impact on collections and stemming debt growth. This ensures more parents support their children according to their capacity to do so. The strategy also provides a basis for implementing the 2003-04 Budget measures to target recalcitrant debt.”….

“Service profiling was introduced gradually in 2002–03.”

“Other methods to identify possible incorrect payments include:….

• risk-based review selections generated from statistical analysis of client characteristics

• duration reviews that examine client entitlements at specific intervals from payment commencement”

“Centrelink has contracted mercantile agents to recover some client debts when the debtor’s whereabouts are unknown or when pursuit of the debts through standard debt recovery processes is not cost effective.”

By February 2023 it had become clear that Services Australia and the Department of Social Services had been withholding information from the Commonwealth Ombudsman and possibly from the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme.

According to Rick Morton writing in The Saturday Paper on 12 August 2023:

Centrelink used the same bad mathematics as the illegal robo-debt scheme to raise debts estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars from more than 100,000 welfare recipients – some of whom have faced prosecution.

The revelation shatters any illusion that defective administration was contained to a single program. If all inaccurate debts are ever found, the cost to fix the mess could top $1 billion…..

Services Australia chose not to tell the Commonwealth ombudsman in early 2021, when the ombudsman raised individual cases of inaccurate debts with the department. The integrity agency was only briefed on the issue in February this year, at which time it launched an own motion investigation into the matter.

At the start of this month, the Commonwealth ombudsman published a report titled “Lessons in Lawfulness” about this debt calculation technique, known as “income apportionment”, which Centrelink used for almost two decades until December 7, 2020, to effectively fit the reported income of welfare recipients into the rigid eligibility fortnights defined under the legislation.

“The agencies are still determining how much the known and potential debts are affected – that is, how much payment rates went up or down because of unlawful or inaccurate income apportionment calculations,” the report says.

“It is unknown how many other customers may have been impacted by unlawful or inaccurate debts or underpayments.”

The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions told The Saturday Paper that Services Australia had “identified prosecutions before the courts affected by income apportionment which may affect the amount of financial advantage alleged”.

“At this stage, the CDPP is considering the circumstances of each prosecution with a view to allowing the income apportionment issue to be addressed,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “The CDPP has taken or is taking steps in relation to these matters to ensure these defendants/courts are advised. As a result a number of matters have been adjourned.”

What will happen to the historic cases dating back to 2003 is unclear.

Prosecutions are just the pointy end of the compliance system, however. The vast majority of Centrelink clients affected were simply slapped with a debt.

Scholars such as the University of Sydney’s health and welfare law lecturer, Dr Chris Rudge, as well as insiders who have spoken with The Saturday Paper, suggest the number of people affected could be higher than 500,000.

The bureaucrats “never worked out how to make a mathematical… a lawful mathematical approach”, Rudge says.

Centrelink could have changed the legislation to allow its accounting practice, he says, but this did not happen. “If the law had said you can just do it across different periods, then this wouldn’t have happened.”

At issue is an obscure provision of the Social Security Act, section 1073B, which purports to give officials the power to take the self-reported earnings of a benefit recipient and squeeze it into a Centrelink fortnight by dividing the lump sum income by 14 days. The practice is called “income apportioning”. It was considered necessary because the reporting periods did not neatly match the Centrelink assessment fortnights, and often overlapped. However, the section of the social security law immediately following is clear that this method can only be used within a single fortnight.

“In training they actively told us to never ever go to the legislation. Because they thought – and frankly they would be right – that the level of staff member that did that sort of work would not be able to accurately interpret it.”

The use of income apportioning to assess eligibility for welfare payments is discrete from robo-debt, which was a specific program of debt-hunting using annual tax office data, and created illegally in 2015 when it received cabinet approval. Under this administrative practice, bureaucrats used payment amounts accumulated over, for example, several months’ work, and attempted to fit them into fortnightly blocks. However, it is the same mathematical concept – averaging – that was deployed under the robo-debt scheme. Neither had a legislative basis. The earnings apportionment tool used by Centrelink employees actually did this averaging automatically. Robo-debt used the same tool, but with annual data, and with a deliberate strategy to raise debt.

Centrelink public servants were using the dodgy mathematics to uniformly populate successive assessment fortnights which, had a person been receiving benefit payments, could have retrospectively rendered them ineligible for those payments, creating a debt.

“It’s so artificial,” Rudge says. “If it goes beyond one entitlement period, it’s unlawful.”

As a former debt team worker tells this newspaper, cultural problems at the agencies meant these assumptions were never tested.

“In training they actively told us to never ever go to the legislation,” the source says. “Because they thought – and frankly they would be right – that the level of staff member that did that sort of work would not be able to accurately interpret it.

“Their view was go to the operational blueprint because we’ve got this wonderful team of people that are always reviewing the legislation and AAT [Administrative Appeals Tribunal] decisions and making sure it’s adjusted so it’s always right.

“In hindsight, that wasn’t correct.”

The robo-debt royal commission uncovered a political and administrative conspiracy spanning six years in which the debt-raising scheme was conceived, delivered and continued despite legal advice from the beginning that stated it was against the law.

Despite robo-debt’s effective end, in late 2019, and the use of income apportionment to determine payment rates being aborted in December the following year, it is clear sections of the vast social security bureaucracy either did not know what they were permitted to do, did not seek to find out or, worse, knew and continued anyway.

In the course of normal business, Centrelink has raised almost $12 billion in debts from mid-2018 to March this year, and waived $180 million of that due to “administrative error”. Income apportionment, which goes beyond simple error, dates back “at least” to 2003, according to the ombudsman…..

When Senator Patrick first raised individual cases related to the use of income apportionment, he spoke with two key figures found to have been intimately involved in robo-debt: Kathryn Campbell and former DHS chief counsel and chief operating officer Annette Musolino.

Campbell, then secretary of Social Services, said there had been “challenges” in administering the social security system because of a timing issue: whether income was assessed at the time it was earned or at the time it was received. She flagged the December legislation change as a way to end this impasse.

The cases Patrick’s staffers had been chaperoning through internal review, the AAT, senate estimates and finally put in writing to the then Social Services minister Anne Ruston in the Coalition government were all significant. There were 15 cases with an average debt of $3853.

Campbell’s explanation – that there were challenges in administering the scheme – failed to take account of the fact it was a policy choice made by bureaucrats to use the date income was earned as the trigger for benefit assessment, rather than when it was paid or received. They believed other approaches would create an inequity: some people could defer payments, rendering them eligible for social security benefits in fortnights where they would otherwise have been ineligible.

In doing so, senior bureaucrats read the law wrongly, for two decades.

When the legislation was changed in December 2020, the bills digest gave a hint of the scale of “overpayments” that would otherwise go on to become debts.

“The changes … are expected to provide savings of $2.1 billion over five years from 2018-19. The savings will be derived from reduced overpayments arising from inaccurate income reporting.”….

Although the Commonwealth ombudsman notes there is “an unresolved and significant difference of opinion between some of the legal advices”, its investigation statement leaves no room for interpretation.

“Our investigation found Services Australia and its predecessor the Department of Human Services had been spreading employment income evenly over two or more Centrelink instalment periods (Centrelink fortnights), in circumstances where this was not permitted by social security law,” the ombudsman says.

“This approach, known as ‘income apportionment’, could result in customers’ employment income being assessed in the wrong Centrelink fortnight, which could in turn result in their fortnightly Centrelink payment being over- or under-paid.”

A former Centrelink employee says the ombudsman’s certainty on unlawfulness and the competing legal interpretations of the departmental advice suggests the disagreement is not over the legality of using income apportionment but how to remedy a roughly two-decade overreach…..

“Once the legal issues are resolved, the Secretary of DSS will finalise a remediation strategy for historic cases and the General Instructions will be refreshed, as required, to reflect this strategy. We acknowledge this has taken longer than we would have wanted but we are determined to get it right.”

These general instructions were created by DSS to guide Services Australia in “how to process and review potential debts … which were potentially miscalculated due to unlawful application of income apportionment provisions”.

The ombudsman says they contain a glaring omission.

“General Instructions represent the policy position for how to calculate income apportionment debt-raising processes,” it says. “Currently, they do not cover any potential underpayments which may have been caused by income apportionment practices.”

These same instructions suggest the DSS secretary will only review historical decisions where a person requests a review and it is “not expected that the Secretary will initiate administrative reviews of historical debt decisions”.

The ombudsman disagrees.

“We consider the position adopted by DSS and Services Australia in the General Instructions is not appropriate,” the report says. “This is inconsistent with the principle of discretionary power and may lead to unfair outcomes for customers.”…..

Centrelink public servants were using the dodgy mathematics to uniformly populate successive assessment fortnights which, had a person been receiving benefit payments, could have retrospectively rendered them ineligible for those payments, creating a debt.

“It’s so artificial,” Rudge says. “If it goes beyond one entitlement period, it’s unlawful.”

As a former debt team worker tells this newspaper, cultural problems at the agencies meant these assumptions were never tested.

“In training they actively told us to never ever go to the legislation,” the source says. “Because they thought – and frankly they would be right – that the level of staff member that did that sort of work would not be able to accurately interpret it.

“Their view was go to the operational blueprint because we’ve got this wonderful team of people that are always reviewing the legislation and AAT [Administrative Appeals Tribunal] decisions and making sure it’s adjusted so it’s always right.

“In hindsight, that wasn’t correct.”….

BACKGROUND

Lessons in lawfulness: Own motion investigation into Services Australia’s and the Department of Social Services’ response to the question of the lawfulness of income apportionment before 7 December 2020, 1 August 2023, excerpts.

Highlights, p.1:

[my yellow highlights throughout this post]

WHY DID WE INVESTIGATE?

In February 2023, Services Australia and the Department of Social Services (DSS) told our Office

there was an issue with how Services Australia had been apportioning income to calculate social

security payment rates before 7 December 2020, when the law changed.

• ‘Income apportionment’ is different to ‘income averaging’ that was at the heart of Robodebt.

• The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) sent some debts back to Services Australia to be

recalculated. This raised concerns about whether income had been lawfully calculated.

• Services Australia advised it paused approximately 13,000 debt reviews while the agencies sought

legal advice. Another 87,000 files which may become debts were also potentially affected by

unlawful or incorrect income apportionment calculations.

• Given the scale, significance and potential impact, the Ombudsman decided to conduct two

investigations into income apportionment:

Investigation 1 – lawfulness of the    agencies approach to income apportionment.

Investigation 2 – examining the agencies’  administration of income apportionment  decisions, communication with customers, and  handling of complaints, internal reviews and AAT  or Federal Court appeals.

• This statement relates to Investigation 1. Investigation 2 is ongoing.

WHAT DID WE FIND?

• Since at least 2003, Services Australia (and its precursor the Department of Human Services), was

unlawfully apportioning customers’ income across two or more Centrelink instalment periods. This

in turn likely affected social security payment rates and may have lead to unfair debts against

customers.

• Since becoming aware of the issue in October 2020, the agencies took steps to seek legal advice,

but could have acted quicker to finalise advice.

• There is an unresolved and significant difference of opinion between some of the legal advices.

• The General Instructions that DSS developed to guide how decision-makers should recalculate the

approximately 100,000 actual and potential debts need further development.

• The agencies could have acted quicker to inform us of this issue, particularly since Services

Australia knew our Office had investigated some of the affected complaints.

• The agencies are still determining how much the known and potential debts are affected – that is,

how much payment rates went up or down because of unlawful or inaccurate income

apportionment calculations. It is unknown how many other customers may have been impacted

by unlawful or inaccurate debts or underpayments.

Background to the investigation, p.2:

On 29 October 2020, at Senate Estimates, then-Senator Rex Patrick raised concerns with Services

Australia about the lawfulness of its approach to apportioning income when calculating Centrelink

payment rates. The Guardian Australia reported on the Senator’s questions and AAT reviews of

debts in November 20201 and March 20212, respectively.

In February 2021, the AAT made two decisions requiring Services Australia to recalculate debts that

related to income apportionment. The AAT identified issues in how Services Australia was applying

section 1073B of the Social Security Act 1991 (the Social Security Act) to apportion income. Section

1073B was in force between 2003 and 7 December 2020.

Around March 2021, the Office began receiving complaints about delays in Services Australia

reviews. Between then and January 2023, we investigated or made preliminary inquiries about these

individual complaints. Services Australia did not inform us, as part of these investigations, that these

review delays were affected by this underlying legal issue.

In January 2023, Services Australia approached the Office to offer a briefing on income apportionment. At that briefing, on 17 February 2023, Services Australia and DSS told us that, in the period between becoming aware of the issue and advising our Office, they:

• obtained several draft and final advices from multiple legal providers

• identified approximately 13,000 requests for reviews of debts that may be impacted by

income apportionment – they placed these reviews on hold while the agencies considered

how best to approach them, and

• identified another approximately 87,000 potential debts which may be affected by income

apportionment.

Due to the scale of the issue and the significant number of potentially affected customers, on 14 March 2023 the Ombudsman initiated this investigation using his own motion powers. The Ombudsman used section 9 of the Ombudsman Act 1976 (Ombudsman Act) to require information from Services Australia and DSS about income apportionment. Under the Ombudsman Act, it is an offence to fail or refuse to respond to a section 9 notice without a reasonable excuse.

As It Happened In The Australian Senate On Thursday 10 August 2023: a case of the biter bit

 

Having left it to the last day both the Upper House and Lower House chambers were sitting in August, to spring what the Opposition obviously thought was a clever raid on Labor's legion holding the Senate, the Liberals smugly alerted the media to their intention to save pharmacists across Australia from a non-existent threat. Rather swiftly the plan began to go awry.

However Opposition forces rallied. 

As Business of the Senate a postponement notice was promptly lodged ie., Notice of Motion No. 1 (to disallow government dispensing reforms making medicines cheaper for six million Australians) in the name of Shadow Minister for Health Liberal Senator Anne Ruston and others, seeking postponement to 4 September 2023.

Then the wheels spectacularly fell off the Liberal Party chariot......

The Guardian, extracts from Live News, 10 August 2023:

15.59 AEST

What happened in the Senate today

This is for those who have asked me what was going on with all that procedure because it was a bit to keep track of.

Yesterday the Coalition gave notice it was going to move a disallowance motion to stop the 60-day dispensing changes coming in from 1 September.

It had to be moved today, because the parliament doesn’t resume until 4 September, after the changes came into effect.

At one point, the Coalition thought it had the numbers to make this happen, or at least could spook the government into thinking it had the numbers to make it happen, and force the government to delay the start date itself.

Along came the Greens who said, actually, no thank you to the disallowance motion, we have been chatting to the government and they are bringing negotiations on the next community pharmacy agreement forward by a year and that is what we wanted.

So that meant the Coalition needed to get all the remaining crossbenchers on board to beat the government on numbers.

The government needed the Greens to all show up in the chamber and one other crossbench MP. Cue late night chats and Mark Butler emerges this morning on the interview circuit saying “watch what happens in the Senate, but we have had VERY PRODUCTIVE chats with the crossbench”.

Very productive chats in that context is “we have the support we need, but can’t say so officially”.

The Coalition, realising it is about to lose, then tried to delay the disallowance motion, pushing it into the next sitting.

Labor, who wanted it dealt with once and for all, decided, actually no, we ARE going to have that disallowance motion today, senate what do you think? And all the senators who were voting with Labor on the motion agreed, meaning it the Coalition couldn’t delay it.

BUT (continued in next post):

Updated at 16.15 AEST

16.03 AEST

How Labor 'adopted' the disallowance motion – and defeated it

(Continued from previous post)

It is very difficult to move another senator’s disallowance motion and shadow health minister Anne Ruston wasn’t moving it (because the Coalition wanted it delayed). Labor tried to force it, but couldn’t because it wasn’t their motion.

So in a bunch of boring procedural motions, Labor managed to de-couple the motion from Anne Ruston’s name, making it an orphan.

The poor little orphaned disallowance motion was sent into the senate orphanage as as a delayed motion to wait out question time, when SURPRISE, it was adopted by Labor senator Louise Pratt.

Before it even had time to see its new bedroom, Labor called to suspend standing orders so it could call it on for a vote, where it was once again centre stage, despite Liberal senator Simon Birmingham objecting very loudly.

But this time all the procedural ducks were in a row, the motion was in Pratt’s name, so Labor had control and a vote was called.

And the disallowance motion was decided in the government’s favour – 33 votes to 28.

Which means that the two-for-one prescriptions slated to begin on 1 September will go ahead, the disallowance motion is defeated and this probably won’t be an issue again until six months time when the next tranche of medications join the list.

We hope that little motion gets to live out its dreams in the hansard now.

Updated at 16.20 AEST

16.34 AEST

Opposition to try to disallow 60-day medicine move again in September

Bridget McKenzie, the Nationals leader in the Senate, has said the opposition will launch a further attempt to disallow the government’s 60-day pharmacy dispensing changes when parliament returns in September.

On Thursday, the Senate voted down a Coalition push to tear up Labor’s changes.

McKenzie, speaking to the ABC, said the opposition had already moved to try to disallow it again.

We have lodged this afternoon another disallowance for this mechanism. This highlights for the government that we are very very serious, it is not good enough to say is not going to have a negative impact, the people’s healthcare delivery and particularly in the regions won’t be impacted when it actually will.

Updated at 16.41 AES

The 60-day script dispensing reform is due to commence on 1 September 2023 and the Senate Chamber does not sit again until 4 September 2023.