Page 762 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 20 March 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
already stipulates that overpayments must be repaid. The existing act says that arrangements for repayment must be agreed between the Head of Service and the public servant. The existing act says that repayment plans must be reasonable, having regard to all circumstances. This seems like a fair and reasonable approach in the face of government maladministration and error.
It is government maladministration and error that we are talking about in this bill. Of course, if overpayment has occurred due to the actions of the public servant—for example, due to fraudulent time sheets—the government has other means of recouping that money. I do not believe that it is necessary to punish hardworking public servants due to the failures and incompetence of this government.
The bill says that repayments must be made “regardless of when the overpayment was made”. How far back does this government intend to go in pursuing public servants over old debts incurred through its own incompetence? We continue to hear stories of small business owners being hounded over debts that this incompetent government has discovered years after the fact. These debt collection notices can cause significant financial hardship for small businesses. Is this government now going to do the same to its own hardworking public servants?
How does the Chief Minister plan to tell public servants that their pay is going to be cut or that they owe the government debt, so that the government can fix its own mistakes? Should retired public servants be worried that the Chief Minister and his heavies will be coming after their retirement funds?
This bill would extend to government rights and powers far beyond those extended to small business. If a small business employer overpays an employee because they incorrectly believed that the employee was entitled to that pay or because of a payroll error, they cannot simply take back that money. Instead, the employer and employee must discuss and agree on a repayment plan, as is the case here under the current legislation.
This bill would also extend to government rights and powers far beyond those extended to everyday Australians in our banking sector. If I make an internet banking transfer and I enter the wrong BSB—a mistake that I admit is of my own doing—and the money is no longer in the other person’s account, the bank will have to make “reasonable attempts” to get the money back. And if I only report the mistake seven months later, the money will only be returned if the other person agrees. Yet this government wants to penalise public servants in order to rectify its own mistakes and errors many years after the fact.
This bill calls for repayment plans to take into account a public servant’s entire financial circumstances. Will public servants be forced to hand over their personal financial records to the same government that mucked up their pay in the first place? This government has already begun going after public servants, demanding that they complete statutory declarations of total assets, liabilities, income and expenditure details, not only for themselves but for their entire households. Why should the privacy of public servants and their families be so violated, simply because the government has got their pay wrong?
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video