Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I think about people like Tony, who lived in my electorate at the time. Tony had cancer twice in two years. The second time, he received support from Centrelink while he went through chemotherapy, once his sick leave ran out, for a period of time. He is an honest man but he was dealing with these life-changing health issues. He was in his 20s. He made a full recovery and went back to work as soon as he could, because that's the kind of fellow he is. But five or six years later, he started getting these aggressive letters accusing him of owing nearly $5,000. For Tony, it wasn't just the stress of finding the money—he'd done it so tough—it was the suggestion that had lied and taken money as if he hadn't been sick, when he had been undertaking chemotherapy and had gone through the trauma that having cancer in your 20s will bring. But that's what happens when you take humans out of human services, which is what those opposite did: human services stripped of humanity, social services without social conscience. We are, through the robodebt royal commission, trying to get to the bottom of this to make sure that it can never happen again. We do need to have answers to this. The robodebt royal commission is playing a critical role in exposing the events that led to such trauma for hundreds of thousands of Australians. We owe it to them, including those who aren't around anymore, to get to the bottom of these facts.

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