Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges the release of the report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, a 990-page report that examined the establishment of the scheme and who was responsible for it, and made 57 recommendations;

(2) recognises that the Robodebt Scheme, which was put forward as a budget measure in 2015 and was found to be unlawful by the Federal Court in late 2019, caused great harm to vulnerable members of the Australian community;

(3) notes that despite the mounting warnings and criticism of the scheme, in the words of the report the Government of the time 'continued to illegally raise debts against some of society's most vulnerable';

(4) commends the courage, leadership and bravery of victims, families, advocates and whistle-blowers who continued to raise concerns about the Robodebt Scheme; and

(5) welcomes the Government's commitment to ensuring such a tragedy never happens again, and to carefully consider the recommendations from the report and provide a response to these recommendations in due course.

Robodebt was a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals. In essence, people were traumatised on the off-chance they might owe money. It was a costly failure of public administration in both human and economic terms. Those are the findings of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme. There are 434,901 people who are known victims of robodebt. This includes as many as 2,125 victims in my community.

The impacts of robodebt went far beyond those who were told that they owed money. Children, parents, family members, community members and loved ones were all impacted by this scheme—all impacted in so many ways because of the program that those who sit opposite operated for years, despite the warnings and the criticisms and despite the fact that we now know it was illegal.

In a way, we shouldn't be surprised that over these years the Liberals ignore the warnings, because if there's a chance to be nasty, if there's a chance to punch down on people in our community who we should be lifting up, then the Liberals will take it.

Of course, one of the chief proponents of the scheme in the coalition government was the member for Cook. The member for Cook has described himself as a bulldozer. When it came to welfare, to the social security net that holds our country together, he was—self-described—a tough cop on the beat. As both a minister and as a prime minister, issue after issue, he decided he'd just crash through, regardless of the impact on people's live. The royal commission found that the member for Cook 'allowed cabinet to be misled'. The commission found:

He failed to meet his ministerial responsibility to ensure that Cabinet was properly informed about what the proposal actually entailed and to ensure that it was lawful.

And yet, despite these findings, just last week the member for Cook made it clear he will not be changing his mind on the role he played in the robodebt scheme. In fact, he dismissed the findings of the royal commission as 'disproportionate, wrong, unsubstantiated'.

The now Leader of the Opposition has called those words from the member of Cook, his former boss, a strong defence. The Australian people have a right to ask the now Leader of the Opposition, 'Who do you support? Whose side are you on? Are you on the side of the victims of this illegal scheme or are you on the side of the member for Cook, the bulldozer?' At the moment it seems like the Leader of the Opposition still can't bring himself to side with the victims.

It is vitally important that we do not forget the stories of the victims of robodebt, to ensure that we never see another government running a scheme like this. This is a commitment our government have made—that we will work to ensure we never, ever see a scheme like this again. We understand, as the royal commissioner said, that 'anti-welfare rhetoric is easy populism' that doesn't build up our country but just drags us all down. That, of course, is not what those on the other side have done. The nasty party are happy to engage in a bit of welfare bashing.

Rosemary Gay, an age pensioner, gave evidence to the royal commission. Rosemary said of the pension:

… (it) help[ed] keep my head above water financially. This benefit has enabled me to live my life with dignity and to pay my living expenses. It has been particularly important given my health issues and inability to work full-time.

Of course, Rosemary was shocked when she received a debt notice in late 2016, and then part of her age pension was withheld to pay the debt. Rosemary said to the commission:

It turned my life upside down. It was just sheer terror that I owed a figure that was such a huge amount that I've never earned that much money. How could I owe that much money? I could not possibly owe that amount of money to Centrelink.

Rosemary, the pensioner affected by this scheme and whose life was turned upside down by this scheme, knew it wasn't correct yet, over years and years and with successive ministers, those opposite, who should have known and should have asked questions about what was going wrong and about why people were being slugged with these inaccurate, wrong and ultimately illegal debts, did not ask the questions. They failed these victims.

Rosemary's story is just one of many shared during the royal commission. I want to acknowledge every victim, their families, the advocates and the whistleblowers, who, despite the roadblocks they hit, kept going. They didn't let others shut them down. They, I hope, are reassured by our government's assurance that this will never happen again.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today's motion is another step in Labor's relentless political attack on the social security compliance program carried out under the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments. It is deeply regrettable that the Minister for Government Services devotes such a large proportion of his time and energy to this unceasing political attack rather than concentrating on improving the delivery of government services to the millions of Australians who rely on them today.

A clear risk of this royal commission is that it will make the Public Service more timid, more risk adverse and less likely to think creatively and ambitiously about how best to serve the government of the day and in turn the Australian people. High-performing organisations in the private and public sectors encourage their people to generate ideas and to take risks. Many of the recent advances in the government services space at the federal level have relied on emulating best practice in the private sector and in other countries.

Consider the rollout of voice print, digital assistants, digital identity and video chat appointments, amongst many other reforms, delivered under the coalition. Consider in New South Wales the scrapping of the old motor registries, replaced by Service NSW model pioneered by then minister Victor Dominello and the New South Wales coalition government. These new ways of service delivery required innovative thinking from both the Public Service and within government.

If we are to do a better job of serving the public, it is important that public servants feel they are expected, encouraged and supported to develop, propose and implement evidence based public policy. It is also important that ministers can encourage and rely on innovative advice from their departments. Both of these desirable outcomes are, in fact, deeply threatened by the ferocious politicisation of the outcomes of the former government's income compliance program.

The royal commission's report makes it crystal clear that the central idea was developed by officials within the Department of Human Services. I do not say this to be critical or to point the finger; I say this because it is an example of what we want public servants to be doing—generating ideas. But how will any rational public servant in the future conduct himself or herself, at least in a world where the member for Maribyrnong remains in the parliament prepared to trash the careers of public servants if it will gain him a short-term political advantage?

Equally troubling is the novel doctrine put forward by the royal commissioner that, in the future, ministers should not feel confident in acting on the written advice of their departments. It is not in factual dispute that the then Minister for Social Services in taking forward a cabinet submission for the income compliance program did so on the basis of a formal new policy proposal prepared by his department which said on its face that no legislative amendments would be required to implement the proposal. Yet the royal commissioner says the then minister was under a duty to second-guess and to doubt this advice and, because he accepted it and took it forward to cabinet, he in some way had breached his duty.

I think, with respect, this conclusion makes no sense and is very bad for public administration. It is, yet again, a regrettable consequence of the ferocious politicisation of this matter, carried out by the member for Maribyrnong. Let us be clear. Our governments, the former Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments, made mistakes with the Income Compliance Program. They were made based on the clear advice of the Public Service that the program was lawful. Once that advice changed, we acknowledged the mistakes on our watch, and we fixed it on our watch. The incorrectly raised debts were cancelled, all who had paid such a debt had it refunded or had their debt zeroed, and the then Prime Minister apologised to Australians.

One other troubling consequence of the member for Maribyrnong's royal commission is that it appears to reject the idea that there should be continuing scrutiny over the validity of social services payments and an ongoing process to identify instances of overpayment, whether innocent or fraudulent. To the extent that the royal commissioner puts this proposition, I express strong disagreement with it. Every dollar paid in social services benefits is a dollar raised from a hardworking Australian taxpayer, and taxpayers rightly expect that there are controls in place so that social services benefits do not go to people who are not entitled to receive them under the law. It's very important we draw the right lessons from this royal commission.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For more than 2,000 people in the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury, getting a letter telling them that they'd been overpaid a social security benefit was the start of a long-running nightmare. Before it had a name, it was a threatening letter, often from a debt collector, with a payment due date and a series of instructions but no explanation as to how the debt was calculated. I saw those letters. They were cold, impersonal and, as we now know, largely automated. We now know that it was robodebt. For the pensioners, students, disability pension holders and many others who were sent these letters, the royal commission findings brought down last month show that they were among 435,000 people who were targeted by their own government in a cruel and unlawful scheme from July 2015 to November 2019. The scheme was finally paused but not before it unlawfully raised $1.8 billion of debt against approximately 435,000 Australian. The royal commission into robodebt was our election commitment to get to the bottom of what happened, why and how, and to make sure it can never be repeated. We established the royal commission on 20 August last year, and the final report was delivered within 12 months.

It's worth remembering how robodebt was designed. Under the scheme, some Centrelink debts were calculated using averaged Australian tax office income information. Averaging was applied where there was no explanation of discrepancies between income that recipients had reported to Services Australia and income data from the ATO. It was a blunt instrument with little but mostly no human oversight. In November 2019, on the day that ministers and senior public servants would have given evidence in the trial of the class action on this matter, the Commonwealth finally admitted it had no legal basis to raise these debts. The use of averaging ATO data as the sole basis for raising debts stopped. Justice Murphy, the judge presiding over the case, approved the largest class action settlement in Australian history, describing the scheme as a 'shameful chapter' and a 'massive failure in public administration'. Fast-forward 3½ years, and Commissioner Holmes has delivered her final report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme. What we saw in the 46 days of public hearings and what we heard from more than 100 witnesses was distressing and heartbreaking, with stories of how people who relied on the safety net were in fact hounded by their government with no means of fighting back. It was action where the major decisions were signed off by the former coalition cabinet, of which the current Leader of the Opposition was a member. After we announced a royal commission, the opposition leader called it nothing more than a political 'witch-hunt'.

Much has been reported about the findings of the royal commission on various ministers involved and comments made about them. But I want to highlight comments about the former self-styled senator for Western Sydney, Senator Marise Payne, who was the minister for human services. I note that more than 4,700 people in the Penrith area, the seat of Lindsay, received debts on top of those in Macquarie and across Western Sydney. We would have tens of thousands of people who received debts under this scheme.

The former Minister for Human Services is talked about by the commissioner, who says:

The Minister for Human Services, Ms Payne, could not remember whether the need for legislation in relation to the income averaging proposal was raised with her; she could not recall what happened to the advice that legislative change was needed and she did not have a record. Ms Payne did not remember anybody coming up with a proposal other than income averaging as a means of using ATO data. She did not have any specific recall how the question of legislative change for the proposal had disappeared and there was no material to inform her. This series of disparate and unsatisfactory answers would have the makings of a child's nursery rhyme if it were not so serious.

The commissioner made note:

The evidence before the Commission was that fraud in the welfare system was miniscule, but that is not the impression one would get from what ministers responsible for social security payments have said over the years. Anti-welfare rhetoric is easy populism, useful for campaign purposes.

Those are the comments from the commissioner.

This royal commission has gone some way to bringing a voice, visibility and some justice to those who were hounded. We want to make sure that we never see it again.

Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The royal commission puts it very simply:

Robodebt was a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals. … It was a costly failure of public administration, in both human and economic terms.

Those costs include lives, unjustified financial hardship for thousands, stress, anxiety, depression and other mental health problems for many. In the end, an illegal mechanism touted to raise at least $1.8 billion ended up costing the budget $1.7 billion, not counting the below-the-line costs within the government or indeed of the royal commission itself.

The report of the commission is an extraordinary document. Its preface deserves pinning to the wall of every minister's office and of every public servant's office as well. It reads:

It is remarkable how little interest there seems to have been in ensuring the Scheme's legality … and the lengths to which public servants were prepared to go to oblige ministers on a quest for savings. Truly dismaying was the revelation of dishonesty and collusion to prevent the Scheme's lack of legal foundation coming to light.

It's only a week since the government pushed the Public Service Amendment Bill through the House over the objections of many on the crossbench, including me. It was precisely what was apparent in the administration, or rather maladministration, of robodebt that led me to believe that the public service legislation was inadequate. Last Thursday, the Public Service Commission revealed that it had decided to investigate the conduct of at least 16 current and former public servants. It's disappointing but understandable perhaps that these public servants had taken their lead from the then Prime Minister, the member for Cook, in his observations about accountability and his view that the Public Service should be there simply to do the bidding of the executive.

A year before the 2013 election, the then opposition leader and soon to be Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, put it bluntly to the Australian Financial Review, when he declared:

… what I'd like to be able to say to the public service is, 'Look, this is how we think it needs to be done.' Rather than relying on them to tell us, I'd like to be in a position to tell them on day one.

That's very different from the Westminster standard that the credibility of our democracy depends in large measure on a public service prepared and able to provide frank and fearless advice. In that regard it's telling that, in his initial response to the findings of the robodebt royal commission, the member for Cook defiantly declared that the inquiry's findings about him were 'based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of how government operates'. I don't believe that's how Australians expect their government to operate.

It's not just robodebt. Trust in government has been frayed by revelations of secret ministries, pork-barrelling, including sports rorts and car parks, the funnelling of billions to private consultants, the PwC scandal, dodgy offshore processing contracts, and the list goes on. It's going to take a lot to rebuild public confidence. The Australian electoral study points out that just 12 per cent of respondents believe the government is being run for all the people, only 30 per cent of Australians trust government and seven out of 10 believe that politicians are more interested in looking after themselves than the community.

In regard to the Public Service Amendment Bill, one central question is: what are this government's plans for strengthening merit based appointments, as recommended by the Thodey review, and to constrain the ability of the Prime Minister of the day to terminate appointments? A clear statement of intent and a timetable for action would be a good start if this government plans to put its money where its mouth is on integrity—as would some clear indications from the government for a timetable to implement the key recommendations of the royal commission's report about government services: notably, the establishment of a customer experience reference group, which would provide streamlined insight to government regarding the experiences of people accessing income support, and that make more face-to-face customer service support options should be available for vulnerable recipients needing support.

Even from the interaction that my office has with frustrated constituents dealing with the variables of Centrelink, the NDIS and other services, the need for this is self-evident, as it is for accepting the commission's closing observation—considering its difficulty in accessing some key documents—that section 34 of the Commonwealth FOIA Act should be amended to 'make clear that confidentiality should only be maintained over any cabinet documents or parts of documents where it's reasonably justified'. Documents should not be labelled cabinet-in-confidence merely to avoid inconvenient disclosure. The faith of the community in the quality of democracy and our public service demand it. (Time expired)

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

Politicians need to lead a change in social attitudes to people receiving welfare payments. The evidence before the commission was that fraud in the welfare system was minuscule, but that is not the impression one would have got from what the ministers responsible for social security payments said over the years—they're not my words; they're the words of the royal commission. And yet we had the member for Bradfield, a senior minister in the former government and now Manager of Opposition Business in the Reps, trotting out the same lines about hardworking Australians paying for social security and completely ignoring the words of the royal commission.

I want to address this point before I get to the body of my speech. Today's hardworking Australian is tomorrow's person who's busted their back. Today they're a hardworking Australian; tomorrow their relationship has broken down, they've lost half their income and they need support. Today they're a hardworking Australian; tomorrow they might suffer an emotional breakdown and need income support. We are in this together. This nasty politics of pitting hardworking Australians—taxpayers—against those who require income support at some time in their lives has got to end. It was a plea from the royal commission. Just stop it! And yet we had the member for Bradfield continuing it this morning. I'm so distressed to hear it because what we had in those years of robodebt were hundreds of thousands of Australians damaged by having debts unfairly raised against them—money they did not owe—that they were ordered to repay. It was a disgraceful and shameful chapter in Australia's history, and yet the member for Bradfield seems to have learnt nothing.

For four years, from 2015 to 2019, robodebt unfairly and illegally racked up debts against innocent Australians—Australians who deserved help and assistance from their government but instead received betrayal and humiliation. Over four miserable years, robodebt billed $1.8 billion against nearly 435,000 Australians, including more than 4,300 in my electorate who had fake and illegal debt notices issued to them. Concerns about automated income average debt recovery, robodebt, emerged early. By late-2016, the Australian Council of Social Service was saying, 'You've got to stop this.' Our electorate offices—I'm sure it's the case for the Deputy Speaker and everybody in this chamber—were being inundated by people saying they were being forced to pay back debts they did not owe.

By January 2017, Labor formally called for the program to be stopped. I recall, four weeks later, in February 2017, that I stood on that side of the chamber asking the government why it hadn't responded to our call for this scheme to be halted. I made many of the points I'm making now back then. And yet it continued till November 2019, nearly three years later. The member for Bradfield would have us believe it was some sort of divine prophecy that they decided to go ahead with it.

But why 2019, you may ask? That's when ministers and senior public servants would have had to give evidence in a class action against the Commonwealth for the scheme. It was only then, four years after robodebt started stealing from Australians, that the Liberals finally admitted that they had no legal basis to raise the debts falsely issued to 435,000 victims. That was it. It took that, and they kept it operational up until the last minute. Presiding judge Justice Murphy referred to robodebt as a 'shameful chapter' and a 'massive failure in public administration'—not just a failure but a shameful chapter overseen from start to finish by the Member for Cook first as a minister and then as Prime Minister. We pledged at the election that we would have a royal commission, and we put one up under Catherine Holmes, a former Supreme Court justice in Queensland and commissioner of the Queensland floods commission—a very eminent Australian. She delivered a report with 57 recommendations. It makes for very tough but required reading for every member of this House. The testimony of former ministers and senators and of senior public officials displayed disturbing levels of wilful ignorance, and the heroes were the low-level officers who tried to sound the alarm. The heroes were also, of course, the victims and their families who testified.

Never again should we see such a shameful chapter in Australian governance.

Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to the speakers that have come before me. Australians expect us as the opposition to hold the government to account, and often that means that in motions like this we come up here and we fire back, but I won't be doing that today. There are times when we have to acknowledge when things were wrong on our side and there are lessons to be learnt. There are a few reasons for that. One is that it's not honest to do otherwise. Opposition is a time to reflect on how you can do better if your party is given the honour of being in government again. People won't listen to you when you actually have valid criticisms if you don't look within.

We all come to this place with our experiences. I was a barrister for 12 years before this. In the early days of the scheme, someone I know well came to me and said: 'My daughter is distraught. She's got this letter, and I don't know what to do.' I looked at it and I offered to help her pro bono, which means you don't charge. The more I looked into this, the more I realised something was going wrong quite early in this scheme. Then I heard of others that were in a similar position. What struck me quite early on with that one example was the unfairness of it and how it was not competent. As someone who's a Liberal and believes in the sanctity of the individual, due process and the presumption of innocence, it offended all of those. It was illiberal, it reversed the onus and it hurt people.

And it hurt people on a large scale. We now know—I didn't know at the time—that close to 500,000 people were affected. I saw one number of 470,000. The scale of that did warrant a royal commission. It was warranted, and that process is something that we should review carefully. It is a 900-page report with many recommendations. We have an onus here, whether we're in the executive or in the parliament, like we are, not to blindly follow every recommendation. Despite the distinguished qualifications of commissioners, they're still people too, and it's an administrative inquiry, so we must do a proper reflection upon all of the recommendations.

We must also, going forward, recognise that we still have a duty to have a strong and sustainable safety net. I'm proud of Australia's safety net, and the member who spoke before me is right: any of us may find ourselves in the position where we rely on it. Even if you don't rely on it, I like to know that it's there for my fellow Australians when they need it. That system should be one that is compassionate. It should still incentivise work for those who can work and for whom work is available. It must be affordable and sustainable. We have that duty to those who pay taxes, and we also have that duty because of the impact that excessive spending will have on inflation, which affects everyone.

But, when you look at this particular scheme, in trying to achieve some of those objectives it overreached and it wasn't properly scrutinised. At all levels of government, we should be conscious of the feedback loops when we hear that something has gone wrong. If someone drafts legal advice that says something might be illegal, that should be properly considered and passed up and down the chain of decision-making. We must never tell decision-makers just what we think they want to hear; we should tell them the truth all the time, and that should be timely. It seems, from my reading of the evidence that came before the royal commission, that there was a breakdown in that flow of information, where honest, frank and timely advice wasn't being properly moved up the decision-making chain and probably wasn't being properly considered as well.

This scheme was illiberal, it was unfair and it was incompetent. We must all learn the lessons from it, and we must do so in a way that's above politics. There is excessive joy about this scheme by some, and we see it in the House every day. I would ask for us all to reflect on that. I understand why that would occur, but there are lessons to learn about how to have a competent, fair system of welfare in this country, because Australians deserve no less.

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to put on Hansard that maybe the member for Bradfield should read the good member for Menzies's contribution. That was a fine contribution in this House.

In my list of thanks, I would like to thank the member for Jagajaga for moving a motion in this place on an issue of such importance not just to the people of Australia but to the people of my electorate of Spence. Through the sad, sorry saga better known as robodebt, we had over 6,300 victims in my electorate of Spence. That number was multiplied further by the families affected by vicariously living through their ordeal at the hands of the previous government. Without indicating that this is by any means over, I would like to thank the Minister for Government Services and the Attorney-General for their unwavering efforts to disinfect this dark chapter of Australia's history with a dose of sunlight.

I would like to thank the former members for Aston, Fadden and Pearce—although not in the same manner as I have above. Despite this not being the only point of controversy that brought about the ends of their political careers, to an extent they would inevitably have seen the writing on the wall at some point throughout the robodebt time line, no matter how late, and they realised that their actions were not compatible with being a member of this place, let alone a minister. This is not an issue that is a partisan attack, despite what some in the opposition and some elements of the media would have you think. This is not Liberal versus Labor. In the time I have known the current members for Aston and Pearce, I have developed a strong feeling that they would do so much better than their predecessors. For that matter, I would like to express exactly the same hope for the newly elected member for Fadden as well.

Then there is the member for Cook. For some out in the community, it is a fact that they have a family member who is no longer with us, as a constant and eternal reminder of robodebt—something that will haunt them forever, something that nobody can take back and rectify. For others, seeing the member for Cook still sitting in this place feels like nothing more than a slap in the face. In this 47th Parliament, the member for Cook has delivered five speeches, three of which were nothing more than him defending himself against any number of scandals during his time as minister and, indeed, as Prime Minister.

I note that the Leader of the Opposition called a royal commission into robodebt nothing more than a political witch-hunt, which is what one must do when one is harbouring a coven within one's party room. It is one of the most systemic failures of government, coupled with the most egregious examples of those who have been found wanting by the final report having made every attempt to shirk any responsibility for the part they played whilst holding some of the highest offices in this land.

Despite the lack of responsibility shown by the ministers who were at the coalface of the scheme, I would like to thank the brave victims of robodebt, families of robodebt victims, advocates and whistleblowers for coming forward, either to the royal commission itself or in the years leading up to this reckoning through all channels leading from the electoral offices of our local members of parliament—those are sometimes the best way to get the word up the food chain that something is seriously wrong. 'Seriously wrong' is an absolute understatement. Despite that, when in government all the way to now, those opposite did everything they could to downplay this—and I'm not talking about subjective things like undermining the role of the royal commission itself. I'm talking about the mistruths and using lines like, 'Robodebt was something used by governments on all sides,' or that it was in fact set up by the Minister for Government Services himself when in government. This is completely misleading all and sundry, or at least attempting to.

The fact is that they knowingly tweaked the system that was used to help identify debts and then be checked by staff members. Instead, they had a scheme that took the human element out of it entirely. A computer punched out a debt notice, it was sent out to the unknowing victim of the robodebt and the onus was placed on them to prove their innocence. Some of these alleged debts could have been from years ago, meaning they were stuck having to find old payslips and bank statements, often at a cost to themselves, just to try to get this debt to go away.

The moral of this story is that when you take the human element out of government, bad things can happen. We can't forget that lesson lightly, especially when we know that these acts and omissions by many senior figures in government and the public service at the time had a human cost attached to them. This is something that nobody should ever forget. I thank the House.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.