Malarndirri McCarthy (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to take this opportunity to speak to the Senate Community Affairs References Committee report entitled Centrelink's Compliance Program Interim Report. This interim report has been delivered to expose the ongoing cover-up of the robodebt scandal by this government. It informs the Senate of an assertion made by the Minister for Government Services for a claim of public interest immunity on grounds of legal professional privilege set out in a letter sent to the committee on 24 January. The committee voted to make this letter public because it grossly mischaracterises the mechanism of public interest immunity and represents the continuing prerogative of the Liberals to avoid scrutiny, shirk responsibility and cover up their unlawful ideological motivated war waged on social security recipients.

The committee also resolved to make public answers to questions on notice, including an email exchange between departmental council which proves that this government knows the robodebt scheme was illegal. These prove government knowledge of robodebt's illegality. It is impossible that the Morrison government could not be aware their robodebt scheme is illegal because the Federal Court last year handed down orders from the government in the matter of Amato, conceding there was no legal basis in the Social Security Act for income averaging to be used as the sole proof to raise a debt. The government also know it is illegal because, in a knee-jerk response to these developments, last year they pulled the plug on the use of averaging and froze debts already tainted by the algorithm. Although Minister Stuart Robert would have you call it a 'refinement' of the scheme. Removing averaging as the sole proof point effectively ended robodebt as we know it, and it's a clear concession they were caught red-handed targeting vulnerable Australians without legal mandate.

In response to the report findings, Labor is calling on this government to come clean that a mistake was made, and admit it acted unlawfully, apologise to those affected by this harsh and inaccurate program, pay back the money to people from whom it unjustly enriched itself and detail the program for repayment.

The committee report also recommends that the Senate adopt the following resolution requiring the production of documents: that there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Government Services no later than 10 am on 24 February 2020 responses to all questions placed on notice by my colleague Senator O'Neill and also by Senator Siewert relating to legal advice and Centrelink's compliance program. This includes but is not limited to questions about meetings and/or briefings between the minister and Services Australia in relation to the current legal proceedings regarding Centrelink's compliance program; frequency and dates of legal advice obtained by Services Australia from the Solicitor-General, the Australian Government Solicitor, departmental lawyers and external counsel and all solicitors in relation to any aspect of the compliance program; specifically, whether a debt or debt components are able to be founded on extrapolations from Australian Taxation Office records; legal advice about the lawfulness of debt or debt components solely based on the extrapolations from Australian Taxation Office records; legal advice in relation to liability for the death of any Australian who received a debt notice under the compliance program; and the cost of legal advice in relation to the compliance program.

These documents must be made available so the Australian public can learn the truth about the robodebt scandal, which has so far inflicted untold harm on struggling Australians, including 2,000 people dying after receiving a robodebt notice. It also includes taking money from 73 estates of people who had died, totalling $225,000; a systemic culture of cover-up with Centrelink never appealing judgements at AAT level 2 where the reasons for a decisions are public; taking up to 553 days to settle a decision at the tribunal and allegedly intimidating robodebt victims out of appealing their cases; using a company owned by debt collection agency Panthera, which was pursued by the ACCC, for unduly harassing consumers over electricity and phone company debts they did not owe; targeting disability support pensioners with robodebts to the value of $7.7 million throughout 2018-19, up from $2.3 million in 2017-18, an increase of 230 per cent; and considering a proposal to expand the scheme to pensioners and people with vulnerability indicators to fill a $600 million shortfall in the government's surplus savings target.

The government clearly knows the scheme was illegal, so why does it continue to spend taxpayers' money fighting litigation against Gordon Legal in the Federal Court? The matter of Amato had interest applied to the repayment of her illegally recouped debt. How much will the government run up the interest bill on the thousands of other robodebts while they try and run out the clock on the class action? Australians have had enough of mopping up the Liberals' mistakes. They should just admit they were wrong, pay the money back to people and apologise.