Scott Morrison will be quizzed today over his role in creating the unlawful robodebt scheme that wrongfully claimed nearly $2 billion in payments from hundreds of thousands of people.
The former prime minister’s appearance before the royal commission into the scheme comes a day after another former Coalition minister, Senator Marise Payne, gave evidence.
Payne failed to recall much about how robodebt came to be created and could not explain why advice from the Human Services Department that legal changes might be necessary was later left off a cabinet subcommittee submission.
Handwritten notes taken by Payne and shown to the commission showed she was personally involved in crafting the scheme, including pondering during a 2015 meeting about the government’s “cracking down — what can we do w/o having to legislate”.
Robodebt used annual Tax Office income data averaged over 26 fortnights to falsely claim many recipients had received too much Centrelink money and put the onus on the individuals to prove the authorities wrong. Payne suggested that because she was a junior human service minister at the time, she wasn’t high enough up the food chain to be responsible.
“The senior minister in the portfolio is the minister charged with taking matters to the [expenditure review committee],” she said on Tuesday.
That senior minister was Morrison.
The commission heard that Morrison, as social services minister, told staff in his department to pursue the concept that became known as robodebt in order to protect the “integrity” of the welfare system.
“Compliance and integrity were the core business of the department … to ensure that the right people were being paid the right amount, [and to make sure] people were not able to defraud the Commonwealth if they set out to do so,” Payne said.
Towards the end of her evidence, Payne was taken to task by commissioner Catherine Holmes over several media releases issued by her office that linked the proposed robodebt scheme to criminal fraudsters who had been caught stealing money from the government.
“Is this putting the measure in a context which would suggest to the public at large that this is really the pursuit of criminals?” she asked.
Payne explained that a press release was not a “broad and expansive thesis” but a “brief and concise way of sending a clear message”.
“Fraud within the payments system, which I saw up close for a period of time, is certainly a very legitimate area for government to pursue,” she said. “I think the briefs we’ve discussed at length today go to the [breadth] of the response to Mr Morrison’s request for a range of initiatives in this area, which certainly include fraud.”
She added that “most people who receive welfare payments are honest and do the right thing”.
Holmes pressed her again: “This kind of use of the media was really designed to give the impression that the people who were subject to the budget measure deserved no sympathy at all, because they were really criminals.”
“That was not my intention, not my thinking, not my approach,” Payne said.
I’ve been watching Morrison give his version of evidence today. He is desperately trying to handle Justin Greggery KC who is showing extraordinary patience (I would have throttled Morrison by now). Commissioner Catherine Holmes has repeatedly asked Morrison to answer the question being asked not his interpretation of it. Overall it is typical Morrison BS. He has no intention of taking any responsibility, he is doing everything in his power to distract the KC. I hope in the end he sinks himself.
He is an embarrassment and a disgrace.
We expected nothing less – but can he avoid incriminating himself is the big question, and how likely is the laying of charges. Not knowing the law is no excuse, he ought to have known and is directly responsible.
Of course he’s responsible, he just won’t admit it. I’d be inclined to lock him up for wasting the Commission’s time. His behaviour today is reprehensible and disrespectful.
I hope in the end he sinks himself.
In my view of him there is not much further for him to sink – he is already at absolute bed rock bottom.
He has sunk through bed rock and is now flailing around in the upper mantle. ; )
Yeah. He is right down there now. I am not watching so I do not know if Commissioner Holmes is doing a Grace Tame eye roll but her responses suggest her patience is diminishing fast.
Such bloviation.
Not only her patience! I’ve had my fill of him. He is the most disrespectful and frankly dishonest (allegedly) person I’ve ever come across. I’m assuming he won’t emerge from this RC with a silver lining, so that’s a win.
The way he tells it, public servants do all the work, he never questions anything they put forward and he has no responsibility whatsoever over “their” policy suggestions, so there is nothing to see here. Best look into them, it’s not my fault.
It makes you wonder why we need a Minister at all, seeing as ‘they’ don’t actually do anything…according to Morrison…it’s everyone else’s fault.
Accurate description of Morrison’s performance. It is a valuable illustration of the huge difference between forensic questioning of a politician and the usual pointless theatre. For years Morrison has been able to control who asks the questions and to get away with any answers he is inclined to offer. Whether it is parliamentary questions, press conferences or broadcast interviews he has always been able to use his lies and BS to avoid any accountability. Now, at last, he has nowhere to hide. Sure enough, it is still like pulling teeth to get any sense out him, but if it can be done it will be done by this commission, at least as far as its remit goes.
This is why we absolutely need public hearings whenever that is in the public interest at the proposed federal integrity commission. And this is also why we will never get them. Dreyfus, Albanese, Leeser and Dutton will be looking at today’s proceedings with pure horror, and will be all the more determined to stop it happening to anyone else.
Morrison has certainly met his match in this inquiry.
Justin Greggery KC is like a polite, carefully measured mongoose eyeing a wily snake. Under threat in this forum Morrison’s waffle, constant self-justification & avoidance of the question as he slithers sideways doesn’t work. He’s used to playing to a generally dumbed down & undemanding Oz media… & on his terms. Today he does not have the option to declare the session finished & curtly turn on his heel. Alas, News Corp offers no protection. Where are the emperor’s clothes…?
I agree. Public hearings are vitally important. We get to witness in real time witnesses called to front a Commission. We can’t trust most msm in this country to report testimony without it being modified to fit their agenda or their allegiance to a particular political party.
Ignorance of the law has never been a defence. Someone who has embezzled large sums of money from thousands of people would normally spend many years in prison. We all know that won’t happen – after all, we live in a democracy, where the rule of law prevails to keep us all safe – not.
“Funny” how Payne bragged from the box about how thorough she is at anything else – but not when it came to Robodebt : as she recalls?
When it comes to human nature I’ve long ascribed to the theory that “To be a good liar, one must first have a good memory, relying on the ‘mark’ either being without a reliable memory, or not being in possession of contradictory facts to the liar’s. And don’t do it too often as to become an obvious habit.”
So it’s interesting how “plausible deniability” is supposed to ‘work’ :-
When exponents can remember other things on a particular day/occasion (such as what they had for breakfast, certain “other” conversations during a particular day, what they were wearing and other “meetings” etc – for “whatever” quirk of memory);
but they can’t remember/recall something as ‘trivial’, as say, “intercourse re a system of persecution brought against some of the most vulnerable in society; where the onus of proof of innocence outweighs the burden of proof of an alleged crime”? It’s as though such “gamers(?)” will play on, just to see how much their questioner knows, thus “jogging” their memory?
And that’s what makes the likes of Morrison such a crap liar – he does it so often, and to the face of those with more accurate recall, or in possession of more accurate facts.
There’s a certain gene particular to Liberal ministers which affects memory on any contentious matter. Downer at the Oil for Wheat inquiry being the most outstanding example.
Scott Morrison seems to be one of those people who has an over-abundance of confidence combined with a near extreme lack of real ability. He picked up the ‘spin speech’ of marketing and perhaps used it to talk his way into his various positions. Positions that required increasingly more ability than he possessed. The gift of the gab is useless if one can’t follow through.
His self-belief is exceeded only by his ineptitudes.
And the willingness of those around him to go along with his lack of ethics, viz the then-government, including Payne.
This tells us the automatic assumption by the LNP is that all welfare recipients are assumed to be thieves and scammers. Which is pretty funny consiering the rorts, fraud, pork barrelling and generally illegal activities perpetrated by the LNP.
But hang on, they are crooks…. and so they assume everyone else are crooks. Perfectly logical.
When Payne said that a press release was a “brief and concise way of sending a clear message”, did they ask her to explain in her own words what the message was, that she was trying to get across?
I’d like to see the original press release. Did it, for example, include her words “most people who receive welfare payments are honest and do the right thing”?