What sort of government sets out to penalise hundreds of thousands of its citizens, many already financially disadvantaged, without a single line of supporting legal advice?
The answer, as spelt out on the first day of the robodebt royal commission, is a government we no longer have.
We can only await eagerly to hear how Scott Morrison, one of the ministers involved for the scheme, and his acolyte Stuart Robert (who succeeded him) explain it away. If they can.
The commission, presided over by former Queensland chief justice Catherine Holmes, will sit through until the end of the year and report by April.
Yesterday’s hearings started with the advice, previously privileged, prepared by the solicitor-general in 2019 when it was clear the robodebt scheme was flailing.
In short, as outlined by counsel assisting Justin Greggery KC, the solicitor-general’s opinion was consistent with advice prepared internally by the departments of human services and social security that robodebt was legally fraught.
Greggery has tantalised with the promise of getting to the bottom of the political and administrative pressures to push on with the scheme despite years of advice about its risks.
At the heart of this is the decision to use algorithms to determine (but really guess) if hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients had understated their income to maximise their benefits. The basis of this was a pairing of social security data with Australian Tax Office data.
But in doing so, the department of human services in its various forms between 2014 and 2019 averaged an annual income to determine if a recipient had understated what they earned in any particular fortnight.
Over coming days and weeks we will hear how this impacted individuals — truly dreadful stories about the pressure that goes with being billed thousands and thousands of dollars with no apparent means of responding.
This promises to be a morality tale about how government operates in the era of high-tech. It may be that we find that the determination to push on with robodebt was pure ideological bastardry.
This may also be a classic tech overreach in which the algorithms overrode basic common sense to indiscriminately make citizens liable for debts they did not owe. And that is where the lessons may lie.
Robodebt has already been expensive for the Australian taxpayer. Not only has it not raised the promised amounts, but it has also added to administrative costs and created a compensation liability for the Commonwealth.
Whatever the reasoning Holmes accepts, she will undoubtedly produce a case study that should be a roadmap for how future governments should tackle some of the difficult and divisive decisions involved in managing the budget.
She might have in mind, as governments should have in mind, the advice another royal commissioner gave the financial services industry five years ago: “obey the law”.
In the case of robodebt, it’s already clear from the advice of the solicitor-general that the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments were reckless in ignoring advice about the law.
In this instance at least, they have set a low hurdle for the Albanese government to jump.
Does a royal commission have any chance of fixing the root causes of a problem like robodebt? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
I don’t think anyone ever thought it was anything but ideological bastardry, its the same reason we keep those poor bastards locked up indefinitely as political prisoners on desert islands at HUGE cost to the taxpayer
In many professional roles and in public service there is indemnity for the actions someone takes even if the results cause serious injury to others, but only when the actions are undertaken in accordance with some recognised procedures and standards and are not deliberately or wilfully illegal. Here the inquiry appears already to be confirming what everyone was fairly sure happened: the ministers recklessly disregarded advice that the policy was not legally sound and would do great harm to many. There could not be a clearer case for ministers being personally liable for what they did. But of course they will not be.
“Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” – Thucydides
Exactly. The perpetrators should be held directly liable as they acted against all legal advice. It is wrong for the populace to be damaged by political ideological bastardry and then have to pay to right the wrongs.
The perpetrators did not act against all legal advice. That would have been more honest than what they actually did. They went the full John Howard ‘weasel route’ (i.e. maintain a buffer of advisors to make sure that you don’t hear unwelcome advice and thus maintain deniability) and, once they got enough advice indicating that the plot was likely to be illegal, made sure that they received no further legal advice.
Think back to the time immediately after Morrison had slimed his way to the Liberal Party leadership. The great ‘Christian’ aka ‘fool in a baseball cap’ sought to explain the guiding star he and his government would follow that is, ‘fairness’. Remember the fine words of the ‘daggy dad’ when asked to explain what fairness meant to him? Here is a brief refresher course.
Morrison espoused that “I believe in a fair go for those who have a go …under our policies, if you’re having a go you’ll get a go’ Morrison continued ‘…and that involves an obligation on all of us to be able to bring what we have to the table’ (notice the deep thinking that has gone into this piece of twaddle).
Such reasoning makes Robo-debt totally logical because ‘everyone’ knows about those nasty welfare cheats that is. the ones that Joe Hockey’s referred to as ‘leaners’ as opposed to the lifters. The ‘lifters’ are the ones who have a go, generate wealth and growth and hence deserve a reward such as tax breaks.
Morrison continued ’…and what that means is part of the promise that we all keep as Australians is that we make a contribution (that is be a lifter) and don’t seek to take one (that is don’t be a leaner)’., As we know all leaners cheat on their claims and so the government has to do everything – including the illegal Robo-debt, to protect the lifters.
Hence the leaners don’t deserve a fair go and so bullying, extortion, intimidation, being set upon by debt collectors are all ‘fair’ options because such people have forfeited any rights they have to just or ‘fair’ treatment.
Now such an approach has great advantages in terms of raising revenue for the budget deficit and best of all it impacts heaviest upon the most vulnerable in society the very people most likely to least fight back against the power of the tax office. But then that is how bully boys work – they always go for those least able to fight back and this is especially important when you know what you are doing is illegal. All involved are complicit and believe they are above the law and rules of common decency and for whom a concept such as social justice is like garlic is to a vampire which come to think about it is not a bad analogy – a gang of bloodsuckers.
The bottom line here is that this is such a gross crime – that any attempt to minimize it by saying it didn’t affect that many people is totally irrelevant. That it could impact on just one person is sufficient to cause one almighty stench over the whole affair.
Hockey for example is a Big Leaner, at best a mediocre minister, rewarded for his mediocrity and mendacity with a taxpayer funded sinecure. And so it goes.
So, cheating on your expenses, living in your wife’s house while claiming allowances, claiming $300 per day for food, claiming that holidays were work related in order to claim travel and hotel costs etc are these pollies lifters or leaners? I’d say leaners who help themselves to our taxes, or should that be lifters of money they’re not entitled to?
Anyone who still denies that the Liberals waged a deliberate war on the poor is an idiot.
The Department of Social Security, which preceeded Centrelink had always done data matching between fortnightly payments and annual tax returns but they understood that you cant average an annual tax return and compare it to fortnightly income as robodebt did.
This was not only cruel but also evil and showed that the coalition had no understanding at all of how a financial system works. Thank god they are gone, but will they get the jail time they deserve, very much doubt it.
I agree and then they split the poor into groups (Racism) so we never join together.
Have you not noticed that institutional racism does not affect anyone with money irrespective of their skin colour.
However all poor people know that justice is not available to them.
I was on the dole when that policy came in, and it was obviously, punitively, wilfully ignorant of the most basic parameters pertinent to its implementation. It was just a massive F U to the poor.
In the times since, when I’ve been entitled to Centrelink payments, I haven’t bothered enduring the Kafkaesque ‘mutual obligations’ and obligatory string of time-devouring stuff-ups on their part, not to mention the risk of a fraudulent debt.
The traditional wolves at the door vastly preferable.
Don’t for a moment think that things have changed.
You can still be hit with a debt, not be given any real details about it, then you will have to fight tooth and nail, getting both the Ombudsman and Local Members involved to help resolve it.
I would like to see Scommo and and his god bothering mate Stui in stocks in Martin Place where they can explain their thinking behind this appalling thing. That pic of those grinning bastardsmakes my blood boil.
Don’t forget Tudge!
Or Porter.
Tudge to robodebt victims …. “We will find you and put you in jail.” He has slipped through to the keeper in media terms. This commission should humiliate him and the other ministers.
Wasn’t Marise Payne, as minister for Human Services, also irresponsible in this? Disappointed that this article omitted her and Tudge?
I wonder how the 4 of them sleep at night, awaiting the royal commission findings. Three remain in parliament, and the findings should be hung around their neck forever and ruin their political career…. but our media may focus elsewhere on the day if there’s a more ‘newsworthy’ story breaking somewhere, anywhere?
Correction – Morrison, Robert, Porter, Payne, Tudge and Teehan all had ministerial responsibility for DSS & DHS during this scheme of bastardry. SIX LNP politicians, 5 remaining in parliament.
This article mentions 2. Not good enough.