As it happened: Suspected visa scams choking immigration system; Labor to replace building watchdog

Brown said he was “upholding the laws of nature” and an international convention on biodiversity.

“The parrots cross the Bass Strait in three hours, whereas it takes the ferry all day or all night, and they find where the eucalypts are blossoming and that’s where their biggest population will be,” he said.

“This year, it’s in the north-east of Tasmania, and instead of protecting that habitat as the biodiversity convention would have us, they’re logging.”

Brown joined the protest yesterday and camped out overnight at the site, where two people had tied themselves to machinery and one staged a tree-sit today.

“It’s broadscale destruction,” Brown said.

“The current coupe that they’re logging is 200 hectares and, significantly, what they’re doing is taking out the big trees, and they’re the very ones that these birds need for nesting.”

Brown questions the legality of logging in the area, and is calling on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to end logging in Australia’s native forests.

Bob Brown Foundation campaigner Erik Hayward said protesters’ requests to save swift parrot habitat had been ignored by the Tasmanian premier and forestry authorities.

“The forests of the Eastern Tiers are some of the last remaining habitats for the swift parrot,” he said.

Mr Brown was arrested twice in two days in December 2020, also over anti-logging protests in swift parrot habitat in Tasmania’s Eastern Tiers.

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“[If] any government is seeking savings they would generally come to fraud and compliance because it is a mechanism by which savings can be found and dollars can be generated,” he said.

“Definitely the emphasis was on the dollars and the savings associated with those measures.”

Britton wasn’t sure whether the emphasis was coming from the ministers or the department itself, but he felt the pressure.

He said there was “significant” non-compliance in the welfare program and the department was overwhelmed with workloads trying to crosscheck claims against actual incomes.

“[We were] certainly ... looking at ways by which we could treat that volume of work,” he said.

The policy that would become robodebt was proposed as a means of automating and reducing some of the workload and Mr Britton said it was also seen as a way to modernise the department’s processes.

“There were multiple layers and drivers more than just about the savings,” he said.

“Savings, I think, became the primary driver, but initially it was about modernisation.”

Legal advice from the Department of Social Services rejected the proposal because of issues with the debt calculation method.

Calculations were done through a process called income averaging, which compared people’s reported income with tax office figures.

The commission has previously heard the social services department received legal advice in 2014 that the proposal was unlawful.

But Britton said he could not recall receiving this legal advice.

“I don’t remember specifically ever receiving the actual advice, conversations associated with it maybe, but not the physical [advice],” he said.

“It would have been one of those points that I would have remembered if somebody came back and said, ‘that’s not lawful’.”

Britton told the commission there were known issues with the tech system used to produce the debt notices.

“It wasn’t really an option at the time to not deliver,” he said.

“We just all pushed on with what we had to ensure we had systems that were able to support the intent.”

Hundreds of thousands of Australians were sent debt notices under the scheme, which recovered more than $750 million.

The commission is accepting submissions from people affected until February 2023, with a final report due by mid-April.

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I have made this graph with the latest available figures from the Australian Department of Health.

It is probably an underestimate given the figures are now a week old, and it is no longer mandatory to report the results of a rapid antigen test in a number of states, including NSW and Victoria.

Get this: A senior public servant has resigned from a federal government agency after being accused of urinating on colleagues.

Under questioning about sexual harassment at the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, chief executive Lisa Croft was asked if she was aware that a male senior staff member had allegedly urinated on colleagues at a work function.

Croft said she had been made aware of a “private urination matter”.

“I am aware of an incident that occurred in a private capacity, not at a work function,” she told a Senate estimates hearing.

“Individuals raised the matter with me directly.”

The authority, which is the Australian government regulator of agricultural and veterinary chemical products, has its headquarters at Armidale in NSW.

Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson told the hearing he was aware of potentially three complaints from female staff members about the alleged incident.

Croft told the hearing that while the people directly involved had wanted her to be aware of the matter, there was no official complaint made.

“I’m not aware of any complaints from those staff members in relation to a sexual harassment matter,” she said.

Croft said after discussions with the organisation’s human resources team, the staff member resigned from their position.

“Discussions were had in terms of what may be able to be done in relation to the matter, and the staff member resigned very soon after that,” she told the hearing.

Croft said she did not speak directly to the executive staff member.

Whish-Wilson said he would be filing further questions to the authority.

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt described the questions as “concerning”.

“Certainly, it’s the first time I’ve heard about any of them, and I’ll be seeking an urgent briefing from my department about it,” he said.

With AAP