The criminality of the Robodebt scheme relied on venal politicians, a weaponised public service and a complicit media, to hound the weakest and poorest welfare recipients, some of whom killed themselves.
Anyone who works in employment services knows the myth of the dole bludger was created by the media in the mid 1970s and has been perpetuated by the ‘shock/horror’ tactics of TV current affair shows ever since.
The Robodebt tragedy will be remembered as a time when the Federal Government turned against its own citizens – and the punishment for those who perpetrated and insitigated this fiasco – must be harsh.
Commissioner Catherine Holmes branded the scheme an “extraordinary saga” of “venality, incompetence and cowardice”. “Culture is set from the top down,” she wrote.
“It is 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 welfare recipients and the lengths to which public servants were prepared to go to oblige ministers on a quest for savings.”
Mr Albanese condemned the Robodebt scheme, calling it a “gross betrayal and a human tragedy”.
“Four hundred and forty three thousand vulnerable Australians who were identified in the federal court and tens of thousands of others … were literally shaken down by their own government,” he said.
“They had the onus of proof reversed, they were treated as guilty until proven innocent and for those who had the temerity to complain they were subjected to vile political tactics.”
The report states that Mr Morrison misled cabinet by not providing all the relevant information.
“He failed to meet his ministerial responsibility to ensure that cabinet was properly informed about what the proposal actually entailed and to ensure that it was lawful,” it said.
The report branded anti-welfare rhetoric “easy populism, useful for campaign purposes”. As the social services minister at the time Robodebt was hatched, Mr Morrison trumpeted himself as a “welfare cop”.
Mr Morrison clearly communicated to the public and departmental bosses that his approach to the portfolio was to “crack down” on welfare cheats “rorting” the system.
The report recommended ending the government’s “blanket approach” to the confidentiality of cabinet documents by repealing a section of the Commonwealth Freedom of Information Act. This would mean the term “cabinet document” would no longer itself justify keeping the document secret.
It recommends that the Commonwealth seeks legal advice about the data exchange processes between Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to ensure they are legal.
The coalition government’s unlawful debt recovery program ran from 2015 to 2019, with hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients wrongly accused of owing money to Centrelink. It culminated in a $1.8 billion settlement between the Commonwealth and victims, with a federal court judge ruling Robodebt was a “massive failure in public administration”.