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

In reply, at the conclusion of this debate, I do feel it appropriate to respond to some of the comments made by the members for Bradfield and Deakin.

What we've seen in response to the initiating resolution, which says that we accept the findings about the ministers, that we think that we should apologise and that we as a parliament also believe we should commit to making sure this never happens again, is the opposition's own amendment. They're entitled to do this, self-evidently. But I want to go to the core of their arguments criticising this resolution. It goes to whether or not the lessons of robodebt have been learned by the parliament.

The member for Bradfield is very punctilious with his words, so I listened to some of them. Essentially, his proposition was that the Public Service came the coalition government with this proposal. But what that glosses over—quite deliberately, in a calculated fashion—is the coalition government were interested in whether or not they could track down what they thought was a mountain of welfare fraud. This was deeply in the DNA of the previous coalition government, this sense of unfairness, that somehow people on welfare were getting something they weren't entitled to. They created this straw man, that somehow there is a lot of money being siphoned out of the welfare system by welfare recipients. They thought that they could turbocharge welfare compliance, drop out human oversight and reverse the onus of proof and that this would lead to rivers of gold for their budgets.

The royal commission exposes the fact that there wasn't an amount of gold there. This is like that explorer, in the 1930s, in Australia, Lasseter who went looking for an imaginary vein of gold but it never existed. The problem is, all Lasseter did was harm himself—he disappeared—but this was not a consequence-free proposition by the government. What they did, in their rush to have a war on the poor and demonise people on welfare as second class, is take away their rights. They reversed the onus of proof. It is truly ironic that the member for Cook bleats about how he feels that his onus of proof has been reversed onto him now that the royal commission has listened to him and formed a view. I just wish that he and his colleagues had shown some of the empathy they feel for themselves for everyone else.

Essentially, once the coalition triggered this runaway train of illegality, saying, 'Well, it's just the public servants', the member for Bradfield then glosses over 4½ years and says, 'We stopped it when we saw it was wrong'—it was as if they were never told. It was as if the AAT never existed. It was as if there weren't 19,000 internal appeals, 4½ thousand external appeals and at least 500 cases identified by the royal commission, where decisions are made on the use of income averaging. It's as if Pricewaterhouse never gave them a report, which they paid a million dollars for. It's as if Clayton Utz never gave them a legal opinion in 2018, telling them of the severe problems with the legality.

What we have is a coalition and opposition who haven't learned the first lesson of losing an election—you've got to show some contribution to the voters. Not on everything; you don't have to abandon your legacy. But sometimes, when a nation changes government, the party that was in government and is now in opposition needs to reflect on ways that they can demonstrate they hear some of the lessons. Those opposite are masters of using a word and pivoting off the word to create a totally different meaning. The member for Cook said that he regrets the 'unintended consequences'. What a minimisation that must be. What a sense of cold comfort that must be for the victims. Your harm was an unintended consequence. If you're just one person, you might say, 'Oh, okay.' But it wasn't just one person who had unintended consequences; there were tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. They were coming into coalition backbenchers' doors, too.

These masters of language also then seek to demonise the royal commission. They say it's not their fault. What is the point? What is the point of being a coalition cabinet minister if, every time the Public Service tells you to do something, you say, 'Thanks, where's my limo; where's my lunch?' That is not the job. The job of a cabinet minister is to interrogate the proposals. The coalition's defence is, essentially, 'We are glove puppets of the Public Service.' But then they move on to say, 'When it was wrong, we stopped it.' That's just an outrageous lie, and I'm calling it out as a lie. There were so many warnings on this—it's ridiculous. Then they say they stopped it. It's a bit like a pyromaniac setting fire to the bush and then, when the fire brigade puts it out, saying, 'Well, without me, it couldn't have been put out.' The point is that Deanna Amato and Madeleine Masterton—remember those names—showed more commitment to putting down this scheme than the coalition and the Victorian legal aid commission combined.

As for the member for Deakin's contribution, what a dishonest farrago of words. He couldn't even mention robodebt once. He's just beamed it out. But I also noticed the assault on the royal commission itself. I have to stand up for the royal commissioner.

The member for Deakin, bagging people for being politicians. Well, it takes one to know one, my friend. He says, 'Handpicked.' Well, yes, a government appoints a royal commissioner, but handpicked—it's the insinuation that we're all friends. That is not right. The royal commissioner has seen it all in the witness box. That's why she didn't believe the member for Cook. But then they get into what I think is the most shameless and incorrigible attack. The Greens made a contribution, but, as usual, they spent more time attacking us than attacking the Liberals, so I'll treat that sniper fire with the amount of time it deserves. We get to the attack by the coalition saying: 'It's just politics; it's political. Oh, the member for Maribyrnong, he's political.' Yeah, you got me; I'm a politician. I want to confirm one thing. My word, it's political, and my word, it's personal, but not in the way those refugees from the last cabinet of the coalition government would insinuate. It's personal and it's political to Labor, because you hurt a lot of people. For years we sat in opposition while you tucked your very important thumbs behind the very important lapels of your jacket, and you said, 'We believe in the rule of law.' Well, actually, you didn't! You hold yourself out in this cloak of sanctimonious conservatism—'We are the party of the law!' It's in the conservative DNA to be the party of the law and respect the law—but you didn't! When you say you believe in the rule of law, the klaxon goes off: wrong! If you believed in the rule of law, you would have checked if the scheme were legal. If you believed in the rule of law, Mr Morrison, when he saw in his first submission—

The member for Cook. Good point. I will call him the member for Cook. The member for Cook got a submission saying, 'You're going to need to change the law.' Then, in that marvellous, magical world that he lives in, of invisibility, the next submission says, 'No legal change required.' The member for Cook's far too smart to question his luck. He just goes on. 'Fantastic! That obstacle magicked away!'

If you believed in the rule of law, you would have listened to the AAT. If you believed in the rule of law, you would have paid attention to being a model litigant. The model litigant requirements of the Commonwealth say that, when you've got a series of decisions, you better report it to someone. In no fewer than 424 cases identified by the royal commission, these former 'masters of the rule of law' just never noticed. When you get a bad decision, and a series of bad decisions, and a conga line of bad decisions, you are obliged to either appeal the decision, because you think it's wrong, or change your policy. But you took the cowardly way, of ignoring it. There is no satisfactory answer to that in the minds of the Australian people.

It is personal to us when you demonise people on welfare and don't give them the same legal rights; when you ignore all the warnings; when you gaslight the victims; when you attack the advocates; when you use the power of your office to look up personal files to attack the critics in the media; when you take the pay as a cabinet minister; when you lecture year upon year, 'We're going to get these people,' and then it's wrong; and when you gaslight the royal commission, 'Yes, we are the messengers, and you can shoot us all you like.' If I were being really partisan, I would hope that you keep doing exactly what you're doing, because, at the moment, the way the coalition's handling this royal commission—with a few notable exceptions—means you've learnt nothing and you'll repeat the same mistakes again.

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