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

Two points seem to have come through in Senator Stoker's five minutes regarding obligations: what were the government's obligations, and what are the government's obligations in dealing with this matter immediately? They have their heads in the sand. I would suggest that perhaps those opposite need to have a good look at what that actually means. It seems the inability to say sorry and to mean it runs deep in the coalition's DNA. We've heard, and we continue to hear, heartbreaking evidence about the impact of the government's damaging and, as it turns out, illegal scheme. So why not apologise to the people for imposing this terrible scheme on them?

We've heard evidence that it has cost some people their livelihoods, homes, families, peace of mind and even their lives. It is shameful. It's unconscionable that not a single person in the government's ranks can say the word 'sorry'. You cannot admit you were wrong to hound the families of deceased people demanding payment. You cannot admit you were wrong to inflict a bureaucratic nightmare on people and try and force them into repaying money they didn't have for debts they did not incur.

The government expected people in trauma to answer questions about circumstances from years ago and threatened them with debt recovery—action, straightaway, if they didn't answer immediately. Yet this government, the minister and the Prime Minister will not even answer the most basic questions about how this illegal robodebt scheme was designed and implemented. The minister has dodged and ducked, thrown up flimsy claims of public interest immunity and just plain refused to answer questions about robodebt. Have a look at the transcripts of Senate estimates of the many times we have tried to pursue this line of questioning. Have a look at the transcripts of our community affairs inquiries and you will see that this line of questioning is never answered.

The Prime Minister does need to step up and answer the questions about how robodebt came into being and when the government was first made aware that what they were doing was illegal. The Prime Minister does need to answer the questions about how much this botched robodebt scheme is going to cost Australians in reality. It's now been suggested that the true value of all the debt notices unlawfully issued under this scheme will exceed $1 billion, not the $720 million the government promised last month it would repay to the 373,000 welfare recipients that received the unlawful demands for money. Since 2015, a total of $2.1 billion is estimated to have been raised through the robodebt program. So what about those gaps between what the government says it will repay, what we now learn it will probably end up repaying and how much it's actually raked in under this unlawful scheme? What exactly does the government consider as lawful and unlawful debts, and how is it deciding this? The government won't answer any of these questions.

Let's make it clear what is happening here. The government hounded and harassed Australians for debts that they had not lawfully incurred, and they will now repay some of the money they gouged from people. They will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on this exercise. I'm not talking about even the potential fees—the legal fees and damages payments that may arise from ongoing legal action against robodebt. I'm also not adding onto this what the government has paid out to the debt collection firms for hounding and harassing Australians into paying these false debts. The previous senator, Senator Stoker, spoke about how these debt collection firms weren't knocking on doors. Well, there are different stories out there from Australians who've got their own way of telling how they were made to repay these debts. It has been a complete fiasco, and the depths of this fiasco have yet to be thoroughly examined. It seems every day there are more and more revelations about the complete and utter disaster of robodebt, and the government knew this. It knew robodebt was wrong. It knew it was disastrous. It knew it was harming vulnerable people and families, yet it kept on trying to shake them down.