ATO OUTAGES: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Australia has woken up to news of yet another ATO outage.

While Labor is the leading light on tax reform, the Government can’t keep the lights on at the Tax Office.

 

Enough is enough. Labor has urged the Turnbull Government to come clean on what is happening, but Malcolm Turnbull remains silent.

 

The Turnbull Government needs to explain to individuals and tax agents exactly what impact this will have on their ability to lodge tax returns for the rest of this tax season.

 

We have also repeatedly called for an investigation into these outages, something else the Government has ignored.

 

It's not good enough to blame the public servants, who have been left struggling after the Turnbull Government slashed more than 3000 jobs.

 

Malcolm Turnbull needs to tell Australians how many outages there have been and for how long. Taxpayers deserve to know what the Turnbull Government is doing - if anything - to fix this problem.

 

The ATO outages around the Christmas and in the New Year were part of the reason why Labor called for an independent review into the Turnbull Government’s dismal record on digital transformation, but they have not acted.

 

Repeated ATO system failures come on top of the collapse of NAPLAN online, the Census failure and Centrelink robo-debt debacle. The digital failures are plain to see, but the Turnbull Government continues to sit on its hands.