Mr CREAN (2:19 PM) —My question is to the Prime Minister and it concerns the family payments system. Prime Minister, why do parents who receive family tax benefit part B and who return to work during the financial year and play by your rules, notifying Centrelink immediately of change of income, still get large debts at the end of the year? Why are you putting 1.2 million families and their 2.1 million children at risk of debt, and why did you personally authorise the stripping of thousands of families' tax returns for debts that they should never have incurred? Prime Minister, why won't you change the system so that honest Australian families are not put under further financial pressure at the end of each financial year?

Mr HOWARD (Prime Minister) —I refute completely the suggestion that people have been denied benefits to which they are entitled. This is a very simple issue: if somebody is paid more than they are entitled to under the law, it is not unreasonable on a proper basis for that money to be repaid.

Mr McMullan —Immediately?

Mr HOWARD —This is a bit like the Labor Party's policy on border protection. They say they are in favour of it but then they run around implying that they would change it. The reality is that the system we have introduced provides for certain benefits. If people's income changes and there is money that they have been overpaid, they are expected to pay it back. There is nothing wrong with that, and that is the basis on which it operates. As for the reference the Leader of the Opposition made to people's entitlements being stripped, it has long been a principle that, if a debt is owed to the Commonwealth, it is set off against a taxation refund entitlement. That has been used for a long time.

The former government, of which the Leader of the Opposition was a member, as I understand it, would regularly have recovered overpayments of family allowance and the like through the taxation system. There is nothing new about it. If you were to listen to the Leader of the Opposition's question and did not understand precisely what the situation was, you would imagine that we were taking back money that people were entitled to. We are not. I operate on the basis that, if you are entitled to more at the end of the year, you should be paid it and, if you have been paid more than you are entitled to, it is not unreasonable for the rest of the taxpaying community to expect that money to be returned. I think most Australians agree with that.