Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm going to assume that the member for Wright has read his side's briefing notes and is not deliberately trying to mislead the House. But I'm just going to clarify something here. This government is really good at being really loose with the truth when they get caught out—and they've been caught out with robodebt. The government has admitted that robodebt is illegal, as it settled a legal challenge before the courts. When they do that, the first thing they do is scream 'Labor, Labor, Labor!' It's hard to figure out what these ministers are for, because all they talk about is Labor. They try and blame Labor for something they introduced three years ago, which is unlawful and is nothing like what Labor did.

Let me explain something to the member for Wright. Labor introduced data-matching because data-matching became possible. It was a really smart, really clever thing to do. But when the data matched, a human being looked at the case and worked out whether there was a case to answer. A human being was involved. It was the Morrison government that removed the human being from the equation and turned the seeking of debt that was owed into what is now known as robodebt—'robodebt' because people were not involved. They did something unbelievably stupid. A grade 3 maths student would know that this wouldn't work, that's how stupid it is. They assumed that you could take the tax office figures of how much a person earned over a year and average it over a year in which a person received Centrelink benefits as if the person earned that money equally for the whole year. Let me put it this way: I started four or five years ago and I was unemployed for three months. I received Centrelink benefits for three months, I told Centrelink when I worked and everything was above board and fine. Then I got a job, went off Centrelink benefits and earned $20,000 for the rest of that financial year, but this crazy group of people allowed robodebt to average that $20,000 and assume that I earned $400 for every week that I was unemployed. It is dumb. It was never going to work, it was always going to be ruled illegal, you were always going to have to pay back money you didn't owe, you were always going to be sprung.

For three years, virtually everybody has been telling you that. Once again it is the arrogance of: 'We're right, we don't have to listen. We're going for the surplus. Never mind if we are raining carnage on people who don't owe any money.' And now, of course, it's 'a minor refinement' and it's 'a small cohort'. Well, 900,000 letters have gone out for robodebt. Human Services says 600,000 of them were based on this flawed and now illegal system and 20 per cent of the debts were found not to be owed. That's not counting all the people that paid it because they couldn't deal with it. That's not counting all the people who, because of their life circumstances or because they simply couldn't prove they didn't have a debt, paid it. You've got to remember that robodebt sends a letter—with no people attached—and tells you the government believes you owe it money, and you have to prove you don't. The government doesn't come to you and say, 'You owe the debt because of this and this,' you have to prove that you don't. I have a person here who paid back $52,000. He doesn't believe he owes it. He was working part time and receiving a part disability support pension. He was reporting his income as he needed to do. He simply cannot provide the figures. They're asking for records of bank accounts that he closed over seven years ago. This is a person who believed he was doing everything right. He paid that $52,000. And there are many, many more. We all hear the stories of people who paid because they couldn't face it. They couldn't handle the stress of it. We know that. We heard from families whose loved ones have basically collapsed because of this. Another person, Rahwa, had a debt of $52,000, according to the government. We looked at it and thought, 'That's not right.' We got in touch with the minister. Entire debt waived. Wrong. 'Sorry we sent you a debt letter for $52,000, Rahwa. We got it wrong.'

This has been a debacle. Again, anybody who thinks about what it is would understand that it cannot work. Centrelink calculates what you receive on a fortnightly basis, based on your income in a fortnight, and the tax office only has figures for the year. They cannot be compared. It's comparing apples and oranges. It was stupid. The court has finally called you out and you are going to have to pay a hell of a lot of it back.

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