Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Curtin for raising this private member's business on a very important issue. I'm always prepared to speak in this place on the disgrace that was robodebt. Shortly after my own election in 2016, I labelled it a 'criminal enterprise'. I said that it was government sponsored, government authorised theft, and I've been proven right. Money was stolen from Australians.

For four years, under the previous Liberal government, robodebt unfairly and illegally mounted debts against innocent Australians who deserve help and support from their government but got anything but. They were humiliated, vilified and made to feel like criminals. From early 2015 to November 2019, robodebt unlawfully raised $1.8 billion of debt against around 435,000 Australians. These Australians received illegal and unfounded debts during a time that they should have been receiving support from the government through our social safety net. Instead of that support, they were demonised and forced to pay back debts, many of which turned out to be nothing more than fictitious, unfounded and ultimately illegal.

This campaign against welfare recipients did not end until November 2019. Remember, I'd been elected in July 2016. We'd been warning for two years about this scheme. They didn't end it until November 2019, on the very day that ministers and senior public servants would have had to give evidence in the class action against the Commonwealth. It was only at this point that the previous government finally admitted it had no legal basis for raising those debts against those 435,000 Australians.

Coming into government, Labor was determined to end and make right this disgraceful chapter in Australia's history. We took a royal commission into robodebt to the 2022 federal election as a commitment, and on 25 August last year the Albanese government delivered on the pledge. The royal commission exposed the terrible truths of the campaign against welfare recipients by the Liberals via robodebt. The complacency and the willingness of cabinet ministers and senior public officials to turn a blind eye to this heinous scheme was also brought to light with the final, scarifying report handed down by Commissioner Holmes on 7 July 2023. It's important to remember at this time that the royal commission was an independent process overseen very ably by Commissioner Holmes. Following the royal commission and the handing down of Commissioner Holmes's final report, the government is taking time to consider the 57 recommendations that were made.

It is important we acknowledge and implement recommendations with the victims of robodebt in mind. The evidence given throughout the royal commission was incredibly disturbing, especially that regarding the conduct of former Liberal ministers who implemented and oversaw the scheme for more 4½ years with the knowledge and reservations that the scheme was illegal and certainly immoral. Over 46 days of public hearings, Australia heard from more than 100 witnesses who gave heartbreaking and infuriating accounts of their experiences of robodebt—vulnerable people hounded by their government, with no way of defending themselves or fighting back. To those Australians, I'm sorry. To the 11,269 Tasmanians—2,505 of which are constituents of mine in Lyons—I'm sorry that you experienced that heartlessness from the former government.

Despite all we have learned and now know, many in the Liberal Party appear to feel that nothing was wrong. The Leader of the Opposition said, when the royal commission was announced, that it was nothing more than a political 'witch-hunt'—this from a man who wants to lead our country and once again exert control over the welfare system and the lives of the people who dependent upon it. Robodebt is a shameful part, perhaps one of the most shameful parts, of Australia's history and the darkest of all marks against the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments. It's something I, and the 435,000 victims of robodebt, will never let the Liberals forget. They caused this mess, and vulnerable Australians have paid the price. The government is now considering the royal commission's recommendations, and it will ensure that such an atrocity never happens again.

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