Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

What is likely to be considered in the history of digital transformation in this country is the fact that the launched a book and presided over bungle after bungle. We have seen, in the space of 12 to 18 months, a series of stuff-ups when it comes to digital transformation—a project that deserves and I think has support from both sides of the House, because everyone recognises that this does need to happen and that government can work in a smarter, more efficient way. If we make the right investment, we can see differences in the way that service is provided to general citizens.

But we have had the census debacle, we have had robo-debt, we have had problems with the Child Support Agency IT upgrade and we have had issues with the Australian tax office—their website was completely down for days, with genuine concerns about the loss of data and where that data has gone. Accountants are concerned about what has happened with the information they have provided to the ATO—no answer. We have had online NAPLAN fall apart. This is in an environment where general ICT spending when the government were elected was at $5 billion and it has gone up to $10 billion.

The government are questioned on this, and we had the assistant minister say recently on television that it was because Labor had gutted ICT spending. That was his answer. Then you go to their own audit, which they did as a political exercise to try and embarrass Labor. It was their own political audit that Finance conducted for them, the desktop review, which had to be basically prised out of their hands via an FOI request. That revealed that spending was adequate, there was no gutting and there was a standard level of investment over the term of the last government. There was no gutting whatsoever. So the assistant minister was denied that convenient lever of trying to argue that it was because investment had been cut massively by Labor. That does not exist on paper, and we have had stuff-up after stuff-up after stuff-up.

But the biggest one under his watch is the situation where we had nearly 2,000 websites being run by government, with a cost to build them and a cost to maintain them across government, and a project was put in place to consolidate them in Gov.au. And the business case that this government requested the former DTO to do was all of a sudden pulled, half an hour before it had to go in to be submitted by cabinet. What would be interesting to know is: if there were so many concerns about this business case and project, why weren't there steps taken—signals given about whether or not this project was worthy of the investment? Over three-quarters of a million dollars was invested in this business case. Why didn't it happen? How many times did the assistant minister meet with the former head of the DTO? We have been asking that question, and I am asking the question today. After he assumed the role of assistant minister for digital transformation, how many times did he meet with them? How many times did he express his concerns about the way in which the business case was being managed, the resources that were being applied, the potential outcome as a result of this project and whether or not it would meet the stated aim of consolidating those websites into one portal that would make it easy for people? We have no answer yet as to why.

They do a functional efficiency review, which the representatives of the DTA hid when they appeared before estimates in October, after the announcement of this 'vowel-led restructure' of the DTO to the DTA, and they have not explained how the senior figures within DTA were involved in that review. They are not releasing the review. They are not indicating why they made the change from the DTO to the DTA. They are not indicating to us what the expected improvement in performance is. So again I am asking the question: was the former CEO involved in the functional efficiency review? How many times did the assistant minister meet with the former head of the DTO to express views about whether or not gov.au was on track and whether or not it was worth putting a business case together on it? And why is it that we are constantly seeing stuff-up after stuff-up after stuff-up? They have doubled the digital spend and doubled the number of stuff-ups under that assistant minister's watch.

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