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

I move:

That this House:

(1) accepts the findings of the report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme regarding the former ministers involved in the design and implementation of the scheme;

(2) expresses its deep regret and apologises to the victims of the unlawful robodebt scheme, and to front-line Centrelink staff; and

(3) commits to ensuring this cruel, unlawful chapter in the history of Australian public administration is never repeated.

The reason why I'm moving this resolution and the government is supporting it is that we believe that the nation and the parliament cannot move on without accepting a genuine account of what went wrong.

It was Justice Murphy of the Federal Court in the resolution of the class action who described robodebt as a shameful chapter in the social security laws of Australia and a massive failure in public administration. The royal commissioner, Catherine Holmes, said, 'It's remarkable how little interest there seems to have been in ensuring the scheme's legality, how rushed its implementation was, how little thought was given to how it would affect the welfare recipients by ministers and public servants on a quest for savings.' She also said, importantly:

Where I have made findings against individuals that were liable to cause real damage to reputation … I have not reached those conclusions without a high degree of satisfaction about the evidence.

I'll come back to that point in this resolution.

The Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme was established on 25 August 2022. The final report was delivered on 7 July 2023. There were 46 days of public hearings and more than 100 witnesses. I also state importantly at the outset that the commission applied rules of procedural fairness. Individuals liable to be affected by a finding were given a fair and impartial hearing before any such decision was made—indeed, they got legal aid support. In her conclusion, Commissioner Holmes said the royal commission illustrated what:

… can go wrong through venality, incompetence and cowardice.

I thank the royal commission for doing their duty.

First, I want to talk about some of the victims' stories in robodebt. There was one lady who chose to be anonymous. She was a refugee and not literate in English. When she got the debt notices, she hid her own children, afraid that the authorities would come for them. There was Anjuli, pregnant and living in a refuge after escaping domestic violence. She was working three jobs to keep afloat. She was told she had a debt and, even though she had reported her income correctly, it got garnished. At the grocery store, she had to leave groceries at the till because, when she went to pay using her own money on her card, the money had already been taken out of her account. Maddy received an $8,000 debt while studying at uni. She was so overwhelmed that she actually attempted to take her own life.

There was another young single mum who said: 'I cried myself to sleep for two weeks thinking about where my daughter would go if I went to jail. I contacted her father for financial help. He then applied for shared custody of the daughter. To say robodebt ruined my life is a complete understatement.' Kathleen Madgwick told how her only child, Jarrad, took his own life after receiving a robodebt notice. Jennifer Miller gave a profoundly moving account of her son Rhys's experience of the scheme before he took his own life in 2017. Ms Miller said she went to her son's apartment in Melbourne and found debt letters hanging on the fridge along with a drawing of a person shooting a gun in their mouth, with dollar signs coming out of the back of their head. For the record, his debts were later reduced to zero. I say sorry to the victims, and we want the parliament to say sorry to the victims.

I say sorry to the frontline staff, and we want the parliament to say sorry to them. The staff at Services Australia were victims too. Their concerns were dismissed. They were given code of conduct violations for trying to speak up. They had to console robodebt victims contemplating taking their own lives. I got an email the other day from a grateful Services Australia worker thanking the government for the royal commission. She wrote: 'It was a really distressing time to work in the Public Service then. I felt embarrassed and ashamed about where I worked. It also went against my values, the reasons I was working there. When I questioned senior management, I was made to feel like a second-class citizen.' There was Colleen Taylor, who actually stood up to the then departmental secretary, Kathryn Campbell, saying:

… as a Compliance unit, we should not be the ones stealing from our customers.

At the royal commission she said:

There were so many people complicit in it that I think we all have to hang our heads in shame for what was being done to people … it was just horrific.

I'm also sorry to the advocates. You were underfunded, but you fought tirelessly on behalf of the most vulnerable. I include Genevieve Bolton, Katherine Boyle and Catherine Eagle. They told the coalition what was going on. I include the Not My Debt campaign and ACOSS. They warned the coalition government over 4½ years that the averaging process was wrong, that the automated process was unreliable and that it was wrong to have victims chasing up former employers for info. Victims had to borrow money to pay debts. There were domestic violence victims and homeless getting debts. I also acknowledge many backbenchers, including Senator Rachel Siewert from the Greens, many Labor people and some coalition backbenchers, who spoke up at the time.

I acknowledge the economic costs that the royal commission has identified. These economic supermen of the coalition made us believe there was a $4.7 billion mountain of gold which had been stolen, effectively, by the others, those on welfare. There was not a $4.7 billion mountain of gold. It did not exist; it was fool's gold. Instead, the Federal Court found that the coalition, using robodebt, unlawfully raised $1.8 billion of debt against no less than 434,000 Australians. The robodebt scheme was budgeted to save $4.7 billion for taxpayers. In the end, it has cost a billion dollars, not counting the money refunded. What a shocking waste of money in pursuit of a war on the poor.

There were warnings ignored, and this really does go to the heart of lessons of robodebt. As one wit said on Twitter, 'There were more red flags than a May Day parade.' But the coalition government repeatedly ignored warnings. This is a very important point. If you create an unlawful scheme and you, for whatever reason, miss that it's unlawful, that is inexcusable. What is even more inexcusable perhaps is when you are warned by tens of thousands of internal reviews, thousands of AAT matters and hundreds of AAT decisions. When you are warned by legal academics or when you are warned by the parliament—parliamentary committees, the crossbench, Labor—it shouldn't take Madeleine Masterton, a student, Deanna Amato and the Victorian Legal Aid Commission to stop robodebt. They're the people who actually stopped robodebt, and the class action was the final nail in the coffin of robodebt. It shouldn't have taken whistleblowers from within the service.

The royal commission also made findings about ministers. For the record, coalition ministers—the best and brightest of a generation of coalition politicians, they would say!—said this on 140 occasions, after which I stopped counting: 'I don't recall. I don't remember.' There's a new collective noun for amnesia: it's called a coalition cabinet! There was Mr Morrison. I did say earlier that the royal commission had to be satisfied to a high level. This is not just someone in a press conference judging the Prime Minister; this is a former chief justice of the Queensland Supreme Court. The royal commission found that Scott Morrison misled the cabinet and failed his ministerial responsibility, and it rejected part of his evidence as untrue. It says:

Mr Morrison allowed Cabinet to be misled because he did not make that obvious inquiry. He took the proposal to Cabinet without necessary information … He failed to meet his ministerial responsibility to ensure that Cabinet was properly informed about what the proposal actually entailed …

That is not what any self-respecting member of parliament, much less someone who has held the great office of the Prime Minister of Australia, would want said about them, but it has been said. It has been put. Mr Morrison had the chance to make an accounting of what he said, and he just failed to convince an impartial inquisitor of the royal commission.

There was poor old Senator Marise Payne. The royal commission said about her evidence:

This series of disparate and unsatisfactory answers would have the makings of a child's nursery rhyme if it were not so serious.

No more needs to be said. On the former Minister for Human Services, Mr Alan Tudge, the commission said that he abused his power:

… Mr Tudge knew that at least two people had died by suicide, and that their family members had identified the impact of the Scheme as a factor in their deaths. Nonetheless, Mr Tudge failed to undertake a comprehensive review into the Scheme …

…   …   …

It was all the more reprehensible in view of the power imbalance between the minister and the cohort of people upon whom it would reasonably be expected to have the most impact …

On Christian Porter, the former Minister for Social Services, the commission found:

Mr Porter could not rationally have been satisfied of the legality of the Scheme …

The member for Fadden, who extended the doctrine of cabinet solidarity, giving permission to lie to the public about 'facts' that you know are untrue, rejected that as errant rubbish.

Then there was Michael Keenan, the Minster for Human Services, who I actually think came off less bad than some of the others, but Professor Carney, who was an eminent AAT member and, for the best part of 40 years, a professor of law, gave five decisions in 2017. He said, 'This is unlawful.' When it was picked up and put in the media and when our own Linda Burney raised this very point in 2017-2018, the minister dismissed Professor Carney with that trademark coalition arrogance. He just said 'What does the opinion of a former member of the AAT matter?' What arrogance. When you become a cabinet minister, it doesn't make you smarter than everyone else. You don't get a uniform that makes you better. They ignored this advice.

Given what's been said about the victims, the cost and the ministers, what's been the response of the opposition since the royal commission? Well, Mr Morrison said he doesn't agree with it. He dismissed the real harm it caused as 'unintended consequences'. The dangerous minimalism of dismissing the consequences to nearly half a million people and breaking the law for 4½ years is 'unintended consequences'. Then we had the Leader of the Opposition. I think he was a little ambiguous. He said the member for Cook gave a very strong defence, but the point about it is he just says he put a very strong case. We are still in the dark about whether not the member for Dickson actually agrees with the member for Cook or just thinks he's doing a strong job defending himself. Time will tell. We had the member for Bradfield create a new, creative scheme and proposition that public servants would be innovative and creative. This is jeopardised by the royal commission.

But I must say that not all coalition members have reacted with the same sense of denialism and lack of repentance. I acknowledge the words of Senator Dean Smith on the Q&A show. He gave straight one-word answers: 'Yes. It was wrong.' I don't mean to embarrass him, and his own words speak for him, but the member for Menzies, earlier in the week in the Federation Chamber, I think wrote the blueprint for how the coalition should handle the issue. I hope me quoting him is not the kiss of death for his career, because he does deserve a career. If you listen to the member for Menzies, you might just have a chance one day of getting back into government, because his words were very good. He described the scheme as 'illiberal, unfair and incompetent' and he went to the issue of how an opposition can't regain the confidence of the people unless it looks inwards at what mistakes it made. I commend people to go look at those words.

This resolution is not about Labor versus Liberal, it's about those who think that robodebt was illegal—unlawful, a shame, a stain, a war on the poor—and those who are so emotionally bound up in defending their term in government that they just can't hear anything else, and that is a challenge.

In conclusion, we commend this resolution, and we commend this resolution because the narcissism of robodebt needs to be replaced by the ethos of servant leadership in government. Ceasing the scheme after 4½ years is not enough. The royal commission is not enough. What Australians want to hear from the political class, the people privileged to represent them, is a promise that it was wrong—not just unintended, not just a chilling effect on the creatives in the Public Service, not just a strong defence by the member for Cook. The people of Australia deserve better than the coalition's response. This was a breach of trust. The Liberal Party once stood for the rights of the individual in terms of the state, but, in a Frankenstein-like reversal of roles, they actually stood in the last government for the rights of the state against the individual. True conservatives believe in the rule of law, and the previous government was a government of lawbreakers. It is time to apologise to the victims, time to apologise to the staff, time to show real repentance for the illegality of your actions.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the minister. I was reminded during that speech that Mr Morrison, the former prime minister, should be referred to as the member for Cook.

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

I rise to speak on the motion proposed by the member for Maribyrnong. I'd like to start by again expressing the opposition's regret, and I extend our apologies to those Australians who received unlawful debt notices under the income compliance program administered by the Department of Human Services and Services Australia. To those Australians, I simply say: we are sorry.

The apology I have repeated today is of course consistent with the apology given by the then Morrison government in 2020. When the previous coalition government became aware of the problems with the program, we cancelled the program and ensured that those affected received a refund or had their debts zeroed, and we delivered compensation payments. In fact, by November 2020 the coalition government had delivered 95 per cent of the compensation payments two years prior to the commencement of the royal commission. To date, 99 per cent of the payments have been delivered.

Although this matter had been addressed by the previous government, and addressed on our watch, the present government came to power with a policy of holding a royal commission to examine what occurred. Given the substantial time, energy and public money which have been expended in the conduct of the royal commission, it is important that it be taken seriously and its conclusion studied carefully. The motion that the member for Maribyrnong has moved, in the terms that he has moved it, unfortunately is inconsistent with the objective of taking seriously the work of the royal commission and is an inappropriate course of action by this parliament.

I therefore move as an amendment to the motion moved by the minister:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

this House:

(1) expresses its regret and apologises to the Australians who received unlawful debt notices under the income compliance program administered by the Department of Human Services and Services Australia;

(2) notes that the Morrison Government cancelled the program and it ensured that those affected received a refund or had their debts zeroed, and that, to date, 99 per cent of refunds have been issued; and

(3) notes that debate on this motion moved by the Member for Maribyrnong is diverting parliamentary time from the pressing challenges which Australian are facing, including eleven consecutive mortgage interest rate increases under this government, gas and electricity prices increasing dramatically in the face of the government's inability to deliver the promised $275 reduction in power bills, and soaring inflation which is creating a cost of living challenge for Australians.

The first reason why this motion is inappropriate for this parliament to pass in the terms that it has been moved by the member for Maribyrnong and why instead the terms of the motion as amended, as I have moved, are appropriate is that, firstly, it is for the government to respond to the royal commission, not the parliament. As yet, we have not seen a formal response from the government.

Secondly, the nature of this motion reveals on its face that it is a political exercise rather than a considered response to the royal commission. The report of the royal commission is over 900 pages long and has 57 recommendations. Many of these go to detailed issues of public administration, but this motion makes no attempt to address those. Instead, this motion speaks only about accepting the findings against ministers and is silent about all of the other findings and recommendations. This is a very good indication of the motivations of the member for Maribyrnong. He is very interested in a political witch-hunt targeting former coalition ministers. He is not at all interested in a measured consideration of the lessons for good public administration that should be drawn from this royal commission. I note that the royal commissioner, in her preface, observes that what politicians say and do sets attitudes. The member for Maribyrnong would do well to reflect on those words.

It is not in dispute that our government made mistakes in relation to the income compliance program. It is also not in dispute that the mistakes were made based on advice from the Public Service doing exactly the job it is supposed to do—that is, advising ministers and implementing decisions made by ministers. The royal commission's report makes it crystal clear that the central idea underpinning the income compliance program was developed by officials within the Department of Human Services. Again, with the benefit of hindsight, it is now not in dispute that the central idea was one which required legislative change to implement. The public servants who came up with the idea failed to recognise that fact, and the legislative change did not occur. Of course, it also not in factual dispute that the cabinet submission and the new policy proposal prepared by the Department of Social Services for the minister of the day said that legislative change was not required. In other words, the Public Service gave the minister of the day clear advice, but the advice was wrong.

The royal commission goes through the sequence of events very carefully. Its findings deserve careful analysis and consideration. There are several factors to be weighed up here. Of course recipients of social services payments must be treated with dignity and respect. At the same time, it is important that there be continuing scrutiny over the validity of social services payments and an ongoing process to identify instances of overpayment, whether innocent or fraudulent. 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.

This is a proposition that the member for Maribyrnong is on the record as agreeing with. Let's not forget that in June 2011, when he was Assistant Treasurer, the member for Maribyrnong issued a media release with the then Minister for Human Services titled 'Welfare debt recovery process to be automated'. In that release it was announced that the Labor government within which he was a senior minister would automatically match data from Centrelink and the Australian Taxation Office to 'claw back millions of dollars from welfare recipients who have debts with the Australian government'.

Of course, close observers of the career of the member for Maribyrnong will know that it would be naive to expect any consistency of approach from him, particularly if that consistency stands in the way of a potential political opportunity he sniffs out. Let us remember that the Labor Party supported the income compliance program at two elections. For the 2016 and 2019 elections, with the member for Maribyrnong as its leader, the Labor Party submitted policy costings that presumed the continuing existence of the income compliance program. It was only after the 2019 election defeat, as part of the member for Maribyrnong's search for continuing relevance, that he reversed his position and began campaigning against the compliance program, resulting in the Labor Party promising to hold a royal commission.

The motion moved by the member for Maribyrnong is objectionable, then, because rather than being a careful weighing up of the complex issues considered by the royal commission it is at its core simply an exercise in political pointscoring. And it is objectionable for another reason. There is an appropriate process and there are appropriate next steps in relation to the individuals, both politicians and public servants, about whom the royal commissioner draws particular conclusions. There is a clear process set down by the royal commission and by the government itself in terms of the considered next steps that should be taken to respond to the royal commission. The government has said that former Public Service Commissioner Mr Stephen Sedgwick will carry out an independent review of the adverse findings.

The royal commissioner has obviously given very careful thought as to how individuals should be dealt with, and she has prepared a separate sealed section of her report which is understood to contain materials specifically in relation to specific individuals and recommendations for actions against those individuals. Of course, members of this parliament have not seen this sealed section, yet the motion from the member for Maribyrnong is asking members to reach a conclusion about specified individuals.

The broader point is that any individual, whether a politician or a public servant, is entitled to procedural fairness. There may be proceedings against individuals in the future. I do not know, and the parliament does not know, but there may be. And there is a serious risk that the passing of this motion could compromise the rights of particular individuals who become the subject of proceedings in the future. If the royal commissioner is recommending future processes, these should be carried out in a way that allows those accused to have the benefits of all the usual safeguards that the law in Australia allows.

It is deeply unfortunate that the Prime Minister and the member for Maribyrnong have sought to politicise this royal commission, given the serious nature of the issues it raised. I conclude by reaffirming that the opposition is focused on learning the lessons from the royal commission.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the motion moved by the member for Maribyrnong. The report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme is the culmination of years of fighting, advocacy and bravery from thousands of victims and their families, who were indiscriminately targeted and traumatised by the callous and illegal scheme. But justice is far from done. The member for Maribyrnong knows his government needs to do more. There are other recommendations that need urgent attention.

Last week the Greens introduced an amendment to implement a robodebt royal commission recommendation to reinstate the six-year limit on social security debt recovery so that people aren't yet again hounded by debt collectors in perpetuity and so that robodebt isn't repeated. Labor voted against it. We've had 20 years of unfair Centrelink debts raised against people living in poverty. As well as failing to raise the rate, one of the member for Maribyrnong's first actions this term was to announce that the Labor government would recommence targeting jobseekers with more aggressive debt collection.

These are political choices. Labor are choosing to make life harder and more stressful for people on poverty payments, all the while claiming they're championing victims of automated debt collection. The fact that the member for Maribyrnong can't see the hypocrisy is surprising. Imagine if as much effort went into making sure big corporations and billionaires paid their fair share of taxes. Imagine if we helped people in need of government support instead of hounding and shaming them. Labor must act on all the elements of the royal commission recommendations without delay. The government cannot keep failing people on income support. We've had one horrific robodebt scheme; we must not repeat it, or the member for Maribyrnong will be just as complicit as the member for Cook.

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seconded the Manager of Opposition Business's amendment to this motion. His amendment, in a very calm and rational way, went through exactly why the motion moved by the member for Maribyrnong is nothing more than politics. Let's be frank: there's nothing subtle or sincere about this motion from the member for Maribyrnong. Subtlety is certainly not his strong suit—trying to politicise this for every single drop of political advantage possible. Anybody watching this broadcast would not have seen the sincerity dripping off him.

This motion is about one thing: the member for Maribyrnong. The member for Maribyrnong is just trying to exploit this for political purposes—nothing else. No-one out there seriously believes that the member for Maribyrnong is here fighting for the interests of those who were victims of robodebt. No-one believes that! No-one in this House—not even those opposite, on the government benches—believes that the abiding motivation of this motion is to defend the interests of those Australians. This is about one thing: politics. There's no sincerity; there's no subtlety. That's why we have moved the amendments to this motion.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's very clear that the Labor government, including the backbenchers who are interjecting right now, have very little interest in the issues impacting Australians around their kitchen tables today.

Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Where you've politicised it! That's outrageous!

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On cue: an interjection that highlights that exact point. Parliamentary time in this chamber today should be spent on trying to hold the government to account on what on earth they are doing for the millions of Australians who are struggling today, who will get home tonight, open their emails—or some, those with snail mail, will go to their letterbox and get the bill in the mail—and wonder, 'How on earth am I going to pay this bill?' That is what they will be doing today.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Deakin, if I could just—

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And instead—

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Deakin, there has been a point of order called. I would ask you to take your seat.

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

The point of order is on relevance. This debate has to be on the motion before the House, and he is straying far from the motion before the House.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question before the House, which he is speaking to, is the amendment put forward by the opposition. Thank you for your interjection. The member for Deakin has the call.

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. That's a very confused backbencher there. It's not question time yet. Those standing orders don't apply.

We've got millions of Australians who will get home today and have that bill in the mail, and they'll be wondering, 'How on earth do I pay it?' It could be a gas bill. It could be an electricity bill. Many of them will have voted for the Labor Party on the basis that its leader promised them he would reduce their power prices by $275 a year. Many Australians, honest people, would have thought that was an honest commitment from the Prime Minister. Every single person opposite who is interjecting had that on brochures that went out into people's letterboxes: 'We promise a $275 reduction.' People are today dealing with the consequences, and they would rightly expect that the government was focused on that. Instead, what we've got is a vindictive and politically motivated stunt from the government.

Where on earth is the government's response to the royal commission? Where is it? I would say, with something that's 900 pages long, I can understand why the government would still be considering all of those recommendations. I understand that, which is why this motion today is so obviously politically motivated. How on earth could the government be moving this motion before they had considered and responded to the recommendations by their hand-picked commissioner? It's very clear—

Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Now you're questioning the independence of the commissioner. Wow!

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely hand-picked commissioner. And if you are not willing, as a government, to respond to those recommendations then what on earth is this motion about? It's about politics. As I've said—and I've said it many, many times—the member for Maribyrnong is trying to squeeze every single drop of political advantage out of this. The reality is that people see that for what it is. Australians know that this now is being cynically used by the Labor Party, and I think, to be frank, that ruins your credibility on this issue. Sure, you don't have the 'sincere in chief' minister pushing this, but the utter lack of subtlety and sincerity, I think, is atrocious. That's why the very sensible amendment moved by the Manager of Opposition Business should be supported by those who are sitting opposite me.

The reality is that there have been many times in political history when the House has apologised, and often there has been a willingness to apologise for the deeds of others. We very rarely see governments—or members of parliament, quite frankly—willing to apologise for things that they've done. They're always very willing to apologise for the sins of the past of others. But—to come to sincerity—you can only be sincere if you're willing to apologise for your own misjudgements and your own failures.

Governmen t members interjecting—

Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Have you apologised?

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To the members who are interjecting who perhaps weren't in the chamber: the Manager of Opposition Business, in the amendment which has been circulated—and perhaps you should read that before you interject—has that as an opening line. I would encourage those who are interjecting to educate themselves and read the amendment before they vote. I know those opposite, in a lemming-like fashion, will do what the minister tells them to do with their vote, but I am saying quite clearly that, as an opposition, we've made our position clear. We closed down the scheme.

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

You had to!

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Maribyrnong was a minister in a government with a litany of issues. We all remember the devastating consequences of pink batts, which led to four deaths. It would be very disingenuous for any politician to come in and say, 'We are going to ascribe responsibility for that to everybody on that side of politics.' Of course we wouldn't do that. That's why this lack of sincerity from the government is turning Australians off what is a very political approach.

I support the Manager of Opposition Business's amendment. I note his third point, and I reiterate it:

… debate on this motion moved by the Member for Maribyrnong is diverting parliamentary time from the pressing challenges … eleven consecutive mortgage interest rate increases—

I wish the members opposite would get as animated on behalf of their constituents about that—

… gas and electricity prices increasing dramatically in the face of the government's inability to deliver the … $275 … and soaring inflation which is creating a cost of living challenge for Australians—

Including their promise, before the last election, to deliver cheaper mortgages. We often ask, 'Where on earth are those cheaper mortgages?'

I would say to those opposite: if you want to be sincere, reflect on promises you've made and broken; come into this House and apologise to the Australian people for what you have done. It's very easy to apologise for the sins of the past or the sins of others, but it's not so easy to reflect on your own actions—the mistruths that were told before last election. To now double down on that and divert parliamentary time away from the things that will be concerning, stressing and worrying families around their kitchen tables tonight is a shame.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion put by the member for Maribyrnong. I think it is a serious issue that we should be debating. We should be clearing everything on this particular issue because it is a shameful stain on this House and on Australian democracy. It is one thing to talk about policies on electricity prices and the cost of living, which are very important, but it's another thing to talk about a government ripping off its own citizens, and that's what the previous government did.

Around 2017, people started coming to my office or ringing or emailing about debts that they were receiving—not one or two but quite a few. For each and every one, as I do for every single constituent, I would write to the minister and ask him to investigate. We did a survey of the results of those investigations in my office, and 70 per cent were either reduced or dropped altogether. In any business or association, if you had a 70 per cent error rate in a particular area, you would investigate and see what was going wrong. Those opposite were told by many backbenchers, by shadow ministers and by the current minister, and what did they do? They did nothing. All they did was pursue the poorest of the poor to try and get a few dollars out of them. That was wrong.

In Holland we saw a similar case a couple of years ago. They were taking back money that they'd paid out to particular constituents, and the entire cabinet and government resigned over it because it was wrong. This lot, when they were sitting on this side of the chamber, kept on covering up. Yet only yesterday we saw a debate on transparency for multinationals and they voted against it. They voted against transparency for multinationals but were quite happy to pursue the poorest of the poor, pensioners, our part-time workers, students and the unemployed. They were quite happy to squeeze as much as they could out of them, to squeeze every single cent out of those people. But yesterday they were quite happy to vote against the transparency bill on the multinationals.

They heard, over and over again, that this was wrong. I had people ringing me from the department, whistleblowers, telling me they were told not to speak to any client that had a robodebt. I even had one say to me, 'We could tell that they were wrong, and we knew that there was something wrong with it, but we were told to leave them as they were.' This was not happening by a small business out there trying to rip money off people, this was the government of Australia. And to say that we're wasting time in this place discussing it or moving this motion is absolutely wrong. The Australian public needs an unequivocal apology—not an apology with why and what they did and cover-ups but an unequivocal apology.

The royal commissioner himself said that this was wrong, that it was basically a criminal act that shouldn't have taken place. Any other government in the world would have hung their heads in shame and resigned. We're here to look after those people—our pensioners, our part-time workers, our unemployed—to try and assist them. What the former government did was try to chop them at the knees and bury them. In fact, they did do that to some of them.

I support the member for Maribyrnong's motion. They should be supporting it as well, unequivocally.

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

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question before the House is that the amendment moved by the honourable member for Bradfield be agreed to.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion be agreed to.