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

I'd like to express gratitude to the work of the robodebt royal commission so far for uncovering evidence which would not have otherwise been available to the Australian people. Some of that evidence shows that, by the middle of 2017, the former coalition government was well and truly aware of robodebt's many problems. As I updated the House yesterday, there were literally tens of thousands of articles in the media, several hundred mentions in parliament and countless representations made to MPs and senators on all sides; there was the missing million-dollar report, which was shelved, inconveniently, before it could be provided, but, most importantly, the former government were on notice from the victims bravely sharing their own stories.

Despite this, I can advise that, from 1 July 2017, a total of 764,000 Australians who had received welfare payments in the past were unlawfully accused of defrauding the government and slapped with robodebt notices. Of these, 438,000 were subsequently notified that there was an apparent discrepancy during the scheme but did not have a debt raised against them. However, the remaining 416,000 Australians were still issued unlawful robodebts after July 2017. If the coalition government had heeded these repeated, numerous, well-documented warnings and stopped the robodebt scheme at that stage, 764,000 of our fellow Australians would never have been subjected to this stressful, unlawful behaviour by their own government.

Not only did the Morrison government continue with this illegal scheme for more than three years until it was only eventually stopped by a class action in November of 2020; we know from evidence at the recent hearings of the royal commission that they were continually dismissive of the warnings. What if the Morrison government had not ignored the repeated warnings? What if they had actually published the $1 million report? What if they had heeded the pleas of the victims? Could this illegal scheme have ended in July 2017? We will never know—

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