Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

Today's matter of public importance is one in which I wish to have a conversation not just with the parliament but with the people of Australia. I want to talk about a Federal Court case from yesterday which has significantly altered the landscape of this government's welfare compliance crackdowns. I want to talk about the problems that this case has revealed in the government's shocking administration of welfare. I want to talk about the context, the damage, and I want to talk about the future and where we go from here.

For four years, Labor has complained about robodebt. We've spoken about the problems and the unfairness. Many thousands of examples have been revealed. The media have been diligent. In recent months we have formed the view not only that robodebt was incompetently and unfairly run but also that, indeed, the very basis of the scheme was illegal and unlawful. The government ignored us, as they do. They attacked us, as they do. They laughed at us, as they do. But yesterday the Federal Court made a significant decision. It found that the government's robodebt scheme, in fundamental features, is invalid; it is actually unlawful. I congratulate Victoria Legal Aid for taking the case and the plaintiff, Deanna Amato, for taking the matter of robodebt against the Commonwealth of Australia to the Federal Court.

The court specifically held, and I paraphrase: 'Any demand for payment of an alleged debt first made by the government to Centrelink recipients is not validly made in circumstances where the information relied upon by the Commonwealth is not capable of satisfying the decision-maker that a debt was owed or preconditions for penalties were present.' I say to the people of Australia: what this means is that your government, the current government of Australia, has been engaging in illegal, systemic extortion of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Australians. This case establishes beyond doubt that many thousands of our fellow Australians, people who rely upon the safety net of the social security system and of Centrelink—students on Austudy, farmers, single mums, the unemployed and people who in many cases are marginal, vulnerable and down on their luck—have been put upon in an unlawful manner. They have been not just treated unfairly, not just treated incompetently, but the recipients of illegal treatment from their own government.

Today I wish to explain to Australians why yesterday's court decision is most important to the people of Australia. The government introduced an online compliance scheme following the 2015-16 budget. I suspect it was on the basis of relying on computers to get rid of human jobs and, indeed, to whistle up money for creaky budget surpluses. On 11 February 2017 it renamed robodebt 'employment income confidence scheme'. The community know this is robodebt. At its heart, robodebt essentially calculates a Centrelink recipient's entitlement during the relevant fortnight—the fortnight in which they're entitled to the money—by reference to the total amount earned by the recipient across the financial year, and assumes what they earned in a year can simply be averaged across every fortnight of the payment. The court found that this is invalid. Not only did the government get the facts wrong; more significantly, the government of Australia has been told by the Federal Court, in consent orders, that the power to issue these robodebt notices doesn't exist. The power to issue every debt notice doesn't exist.

Before I discuss the import of this case further, I want to draw the attention of the Australian people and the parliament to the fact that the Federal Court issued consent orders. The nub of the consent orders is that the Commonwealth didn't argue against the plaintiff; they agreed. At the last minute, they agreed. The Commonwealth consented to orders which said that what they were doing was unlawful. They agreed it was illegal. The government agreed in the Amato proceeding that the algorithm they were using was not the valid basis on which to issue debt notices. They agreed that the debt notice issued to Ms Amato was not valid. The Commonwealth agreed that the garnishing of Ms Amato's tax return was unlawful. They agreed Ms Amato was owed interest on the tax payment which was garnished up until the date on which she received the tax payment. The government agreed that what they were doing was unlawful. But this comes a little late. Nine hundred thousand people have received these debt notices generated on an averaging of annual income and cursory and desultory checking.

If anyone says, 'Oh, well, they do a lot of checking,' let me tell you about the facts in Ms Amato's case. They sent a notice to her at an address at which she had not lived for three years. They then sent it by registered post and it was sent back to them—'doesn't live here'. So the government just kept sending notices to that address. Then they rang her. They left a message to ring, and didn't say what about. In the end, on the third call, they didn't even leave a message. On that basis they let the ship sail, on that cursory, perfunctory reversal of onus. This government has relied on speculative judgement by simply and arrogantly assuming that what one person earns in a year can be averaged over every fortnight, and therefore someone who has lumpy income and may be eligible for Centrelink in one fortnight and not another owes the Commonwealth money. No, they don't. And for the record, let us not pretend that the Commonwealth hasn't been told that these are problems. But now we have the reality of it.

Did you know that, if a bank sent hundreds of thousands of letters demanding money unlawfully, this government would eventually say something? They'd probably call for the CEO and the chair to go—not a bad idea. If this government presided over a scheme where people took their own lives as a result of the pressure, where mental harm is caused and where the stigma meant people couldn't get jobs because they carry debt notices, this government would complain. But this is actually what has happened with robodebt. Of course, we've got the poor old minister who says, 'I'm not going to apologise.' What he really means is that he's not going to apologise for the mistakes of his predecessors—but now it's on his watch.

Now we move to what needs to be done in the future. The government MPs sitting opposite will have constituents, like we will, who have received these robodebt notices. What are you in the government going to tell these people who've been served notices which may well be unlawful? What are you going to tell them to do? Are you going to tell them to seek a refund? Are you going to tell them to join a class action? Or are you going to tell them: 'No, go away. I'm not apologising for anything'? This is the question now arising out of this case. How long did the government know that it was unlawful? They consented at the Federal Court hearing. When did they form the view that this was unlawful?

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