Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Government Services. How will the commencement today of the royal commission into robodebt help to bring justice to the victims of robodebt?

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

I thank the member for Lalor for her question and for her advocacy on behalf of robodebt victims. For the information of the House, I was privileged to be in Brisbane this morning for the opening of the robodebt royal commission. I was in the audience with Kath Madgwick and Jennifer Miller. Kath's son, Jarrad, took his own life after an argument with the previous government about the collection of a debt. Jennifer's son Rhys took his own life.

I congratulate the royal commission for starting this process in the course of five weeks—it's a remarkable effort. What I thought I might do is to take this opportunity to inform the member for Lalor and other members who are interested in robodebt matters—including some of those on the opposition front bench—of the opening remarks by Her Honour the Royal Commissioner. She said: 'The premise for the scheme was unsound because it treated average earnings as though they were actual earnings.' But that was most unlikely to be true, she said, unless the recipient earned the same amount every fortnight. The very circumstances which caused people to need benefits meant it was very improbable that many did. She went on, at another point in her opening remarks, to say that a good deal was known of how the robodebt scheme operated but not much has been revealed about why—about what advice or consultation or reasoning or response to criticism was occurring 'behind the scenes' at any stage. She's made the point, about people likely to be called as witnesses, that 'the focus, appropriately and in accordance with the terms of reference, will be those in senior positions who had or should have had oversight' of it.

Counsel Assisting Justin Greggery KC has given us some further understanding of who is likely to be called: those involved in the design and implementation of the scheme; those who were made aware of its risks, complaints, legal challenges and their responses—

Opposition Member:

An opposition member interjecting—

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

And I'll take that interjection from the opposition, where they try and say that everyone was doing it, so what was the problem? In fact, Her Honour went to these Liberal speaking points. She didn't call them that. She said, 'What changed in the implementation of the robodebt scheme in 2016 was that the Department of Human Services used an automated process to demand information from current and former recipients on a scale not previously attempted.' She further said: 'They sought the information going back years and the department proceeded to use debt recovery powers without any further attempt to substantiate the alleged debt.'

This royal commission is important. It is about justice for people who were unlawfully treated by the then government. I have no doubt that this royal commission will make sure that that shame never happens again, and those responsible will be held to account.