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Your views: on medi-hotels, jobs, lies and robo-debt

Today, readers comment on quarantine sites and staffing, visas and casual work and the federal government’s illegal welfare debt recovery scheme.

Nov 26, 2020, updated Nov 26, 2020
Photo: Tony Lewis/InDaily

Photo: Tony Lewis/InDaily

Commenting on the story: Medi-hotel SOS: Call for volunteers as investigation continues

Since this is the front line for Covid protection, how about SA stops penny pinching and pays people appropriately under contract, to operate in these facilities professionally. No volunteers, only appropriately paid professionals. 

The alternative is not to be contemplated; we’ve seen the results in both Victoria and SA when amateurs are in these roles. – Stephen Fitzgerald

Why do we have medi-hotels at all? Queensland don’t.

And why is the federal government not running them? Howard Springs in NT has a huge facility with 3,000 beds and a big airstrip that can take international flights. It’s not in any capital city and could be run by the ADF, who seem pretty capable .

Talking about the ADF, on Monday when I went into the CBD, two hotels in Adelaide that were being used to accommodate incoming passengers, so were medi-hotels, were cordoned off and guarded by two Army personnel. What function are they performing? – Helen Chadwick

Commenting on the story: Blaming the Woodville pizza worker won’t fix the problem

Proper wages for jobs would eliminate this problem. You can’t expect people to survive if they don’t get paid enough in the first place.

The fear factor of possibly being deported would make anyone lie to save themselves. – Philippa King

Commenting on the story: PM denies fault over illegal Centrelink robo-debt debacle

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What a shame we can’t get past the cheap politics of what happened with robodebt.

Prime Minister, this is not about how “Income averaging was found not to be a valid means of raising a debt, that’s what it’s about.” It is about What is the culture in Canberra that normalised the decision to target the most vulnerable people for debt recovery rather than better service outcomes”?

Two major things result from this:

Firstly, the Culture Problem – where government sees welfare recipients as the enemy. There is a culture issue in the relationship between “the Canberra bubble” and the citizens it exists to serve. At the first opportunity to use technology to improve the way Department of Human Services works with welfare recipients, bureaucrats interpreted as “how can we catch more bludgers faster” rather than “how can we make services better for welfare recipients”. Human Services appeared more interested to impress Treasury than its service users. That is a culture problem.

Secondly, trust has been severely damaged. Technology offers great opportunities for government human services to be delivered with much greater effect and efficiency, yet the first choice was attack – not assist – and as a result of robodebt few will trust the intentions of Australian Government Departments.

This will make it slower and more arduous to deliver digital transformation projects that could truly help citizens. Departments will be reticent to propose ideas for digital transformation for fear of being labelled “robodebt”.

A truly great outcome of robodebt would be an intelligent political discourse about how digital transformation could make life better for Australians and how a culture of assist before attack could be applied to Canberra culture of welfare management. – Paul Edgington, CEO, SYC 

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