Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

In May 2015, the now Prime Minister announced the scheme that would become robodebt. I have the media release here with his name on it. Under his new scheme, the Prime Minister said that the government would 'track down suspected welfare fraud and noncompliance'. Those words have not aged well, because instead of tracking down actual welfare fraud and noncompliance, thousands of law-abiding Australians have been falsely accused and treated like criminals by their own government for almost five years.

In 2016, when he was Treasurer, the now Prime Minister joined forces with the now Attorney-General to announce a dramatic expansion of their illegal robodebt scheme. I have a copy of that press release too. Its title is, 'The Coalition's plan for better management of the social welfare system'. I don't think they were trying to be ironic. In it the now Prime Minister promised that no Australian who honestly disclosed their income would be worse off under the expanded robodebt scheme. Those words have not aged well either, because the Prime Minister's illegal robodebt scheme has left many thousands of honest Australians worse off—not just financially worse off; this scheme has destroyed lives, and, in some instances, it may have cost lives. And it took until today for this Liberal government, led by this callous and cowardly Prime Minister—

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