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

I rise in support of the amendment. Australians who are listening to parliament and the debate at the moment must be thinking, 'Surely the government must have a reason to refer class actions and the way in which some of them are funded to a parliamentary committee. And, on the surface of it, isn't it good to always ask questions and examine how things happen?' But, listening to the Attorney-General suddenly find religion about the need for transparency in parliament, I have to say that that immediately started to make me suspicious. This is a government that doesn't want parliament to sit despite Labor doing everything it can. This is a government that wants teachers to be teaching and wants everyone to be back to work, except themselves. They want to wait until August. So, when I hear the Attorney-General say that they want more transparency, I become suspicious. I say to the Australian people in relation to this debate: this is a government which doesn't want parliament to sit, doesn't believe in a national anti-corruption commission and already has a Law Reform Commission report on the very matter that it wants to take up parliament's time with, even though it hasn't done anything with that report for 17 months. And now, all of a sudden, this government has found religion on class actions.

I think it is warranted to look at the circumstances which have resulted in this sudden 'on the road to Damascus' conversion by a government that notoriously doesn't support an anti-corruption commission and has done nothing on that, and doesn't support the parliament resuming before 11 August unless Labor, the media and the people put such pressure on that you will be able to see their fingernail marks on the marble of the parliamentary hallways as they're dragged into parliament. All of a sudden they are outraged on behalf of ordinary Australians because they don't like the way some class actions are funded. Again, the Attorney-General got my hackles up when he said, 'This is a situation in these class actions where money is being transferred from Australians to lawyers or litigation funders.' First of all, class actions are promoted by people who don't have the means to seek recompense or justice in their own right and they're actually seeking, in the case mentioned in the member for Paterson's fantastic contribution, to have their environment and their land cleaned up, their house values addressed and to be compensated for the mistakes of government.

There's another class action underway at this very moment which is not funded by litigation funders, but this government is resisting. So, on the one hand, they want to have an inquiry into class actions; on the other hand, when confronted with a class action, they don't want to settle the matter even though they've already conceded liability. For the benefit of Australians who are listening, I mention that the matter to which I refer is called, for want of a better expression, the robodebt class action. A conservative government has, for a number of years, used a computer algorithm to assert that hundreds of thousands of Australians owed debts to the Commonwealth without any evidence other than a computer program saying, 'You owe the money.' This program has proven to be faulty, but it took years and years for the government to listen to reports of the faults in the system. In the intervening time, people took their own lives due to pressure, according to the parents of people who received the debt notices. Thousands of people have had their reputations besmirched by an unjust enrichment scheme run by a government that think they can get away with sending letters of demand to poor and vulnerable Australians because they think these people can't stand up and fight back.

Now it's been exposed through documents leaked to The Guardian Australia that this government and its cabinet has already this year and late last year deliberated on what to do about a class action which was launched by Gordon Legal seeking recompense for tens of thousands of people. The government has said in these documents that 449,500 refunds are in the scope of the faulty system and that they're going to investigate 80,000 of these to see if money is owed. They're not even disputing that the hundreds of thousands of others within this collective cohort of 450,000 unjust enrichment claims made by the government are wrong. They accept that hundreds of thousands of claims are wrong, but they only accept that because of legal action—and it's not through the class action alone. The Victorian Legal Aid Commission did a great job running the initial cases, but this government obfuscated and denied responsibility for invalidly raising debts against hundreds of thousands of Australian citizens. Australians listening to this parliamentary debate may say, 'Why has this matter burned so brightly?' Labor believes that this government cannot be trusted when it comes to plaintiffs and victims asserting their legal right to compensation from vested interests, from government and from people who have taken advantage—through product negligence, through the unjust enrichment of this government or, in the case of the PFAS class action, through the contamination of land. When I hear the Attorney-General say that, as a matter of principle, he is against transferring money from Australians to vested interests, I ask: then why on earth have they taken four years to concede that robodebt is wrong and why on earth are they now saying they shouldn't have to pay interest on the money they've taken from Australians? When you owe the tax office money, the tax office charges you interest, but this government, which has unjustly enriched itself and taken money from ordinary, vulnerable citizens, has said in the leaked document that they're not going to settle a class action if they have to pay interest to the victims. The case of robodebt is not a class action that is funded by litigation funders. We've got a lot of people in the government who say they're the true libertarians and they believe in small government, yet they have said nothing about the government robbing the people. And that's what robodebt was. It was an abuse of power. Invalid debts were raised by the Commonwealth against hundreds of thousands of Australian citizens. Is this government so lacking in shame that it thinks it can simply get away with perpetuating the raising of invalid debts against hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Australians?

I heard the Attorney-General say that what motivates him to make this great point of principle about having an inquiry into class actions is that he doesn't believe in the transfer of money from ordinary Australians. What on earth have he and his colleagues been presiding over for the last four years if not the unfair transfer of money from ordinary Australians?

The robodebt class action is due for mediation on 4 and 5 June. A hearing is set down for 20 July. If the government really believe they don't want to line the pockets of lawyers, if the government really believe they don't want to see unjust enrichment against Australians, why won't they release the advice that they're relying upon? Why won't they resolve and mediate the matters with the tens of thousands of people who they've ripped off? Why are they insisting on going through a court process on the basis that they don't want to pay interest on moneys that were unjustly enriched. Why is it that they stubbornly insist on taking it to court and forcing a class action when they cannot concede negligence in the matter?

I would say to Australians listening to this debate: do not trust the government when they say they want scrutiny, because in fact their record indicates anything but scrutiny. They don't support reform of electoral donations, they don't support doing anything meaningful about a national anticorruption commission, they didn't support the banking royal commission, they don't really want parliament to be heard and they don't like the idea that Australians without great financial resources can use the mechanism of a class action to seek justice. Time indicates to us, bitter experience has taught us, that unless you stand up to this government they'll run right over the top of you. Robodebt was running over the top of people for four years. Addressing it took individual citizens, legal aid commissions and, now, a class action.

When the government say that that they're interested in transparency, you know that it's only the case when they've been forced to, or when they're on the back foot, or, indeed, when they don't want you to look at what they're really doing. Before they put their referral up, they should resolve the class actions which are underway. They should seek settlement with the people of Australia from whom they've unjustly enriched the coffers of the government.

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