What we learned today, Friday 7 July
It’s been a big day of news today, most of it about the long-awaited findings of the robodebt royal commission. It’s Friday night and it’s been a long week, so here’s a recap of some of the key things that happened today:
The robodebt royal commissioner, Catherine Holmes, condemned the scheme as “crude and cruel” and “neither fair nor legal” in her report, released today. She described the scandal as stemming from “venality, incompetence and cowardice”.
Holmes made referrals to four different unnamed authorities for further investigation. Holmes has deliberately not provided information about the referrals in her final report.
Holmes directly criticised the former prime minister Scott Morrison, saying he “allowed cabinet to be misled” by not making proper inquiries about why the Department of Social Services said its proposal to use income averaging required legislative change, but then backflipped on that.
The royal commission’s report was also scathing of the former government services minister Stuart Robert and former Department of Human Services secretary Kathryn Campbell.
Morrison said he “reject[ed] completely each of the findings which are critical of my involvement in authorising the scheme and are adverse to me”.
Holmes said some of the former human services minister Alan Tudge’s actions represented a “reprehensible” “abuse of power”. Tudge responded, strongly rejecting Holmes’ comments about his actions.
Christian Porter, Alan Tudge and Stuart Robert all said they had not received notice that they were included in the sealed referral section of the report.
Robodebt ended up costing taxpayers $565m, but delivered no savings, despite the scheme being intended to achieve approximately $4.7bn in savings.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, called the robodebt scheme “a gross betrayal and a human tragedy”, while the minister for government services, Bill Shorten, said “the previous government and senior public servants gaslighted the nation and its citizens for four and a half years”.
We’ll be following up on the fallout of the report later tonight and over the coming days at the Guardian so stay tuned. In the meantime, thanks so much for your company today. Look after yourselves.
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‘A moment of justice’: Victoria Legal Aid on robodebt report
Miles Browne, a managing lawyer at Victoria Legal Aid that launched a successful federal court challenge against robodebt, has responded to the royal commission’s findings today.
Browne says the report “represents a moment of justice and vindication for everyone who was harmed by this scheme”:
Accountability matters. People matter. Social security matters.
We’re proud of our clients and our role in helping end robodebt, but we hope never to be in that position again.
Robodebt ran for years and it took an immense effort from many individuals and organisations to bring it to heel.
We raised issues with its lawfulness from very early days. That the government had to be taken to court by our clients is a failure of administration and an indictment on all those who had the power to bring this scheme to a close.
We are pleased to see some accountability, given the unnecessary hurt caused.
Browne says it is “vital” that welfare recipients “have a say in shaping the system, so that it works for them, as it is meant to do” and echoed the commissioner’s call for an end to “anti-welfare rhetoric”:
People receiving social security support deserve to be heard, to understand and exercise their rights, and to have access to legal and non-legal help to do that – including from legal aid commissions, community legal centres and financial counsellors.
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Two men shot in Sydney, with one critically injured
There was a shooting in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville earlier this afternoon, across the road from the prime minister, Anthony Albanese’s electorate office.
Two men have been shot with one man critically injured, New South Wales police say.
Albanese tweeted this afternoon:
My thoughts are with my community after a shooting in Marrickville across the road from my electorate office. My team are all safe. NSW police are on the scene conducting an investigation.
You can read more about the story here:
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Timeframe for finding out Lowe’s fate at the RBA
More on Philip Lowe: as it happens, he is due to attend gatherings of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in India’s Ahmedabad later this month, as will Chalmers.
If Lowe is to get the nod from Chalmers, we’ll likely know before they head off in about a week’s time. If he’s to be replaced, as most expect, it would make more sense to announce the verdict after they return a few days later.
(Lowe may be a lame duck already but he does have a chance to quack twice more, at the 1 August and 5 September board meetings on rates.)
Separately, the energy and climate ministers have wound up their meeting in Devonport today, with a communique of their activities.
As reported by us earlier, the ACT’s Shane Rattenbury did get to propose changing the descriptor of “gas” in the national gas law, away from “natural gas” to either “methane” or “fossil gas” to more accurately reflect the fuel:
There was some support for the idea of using a different label in public remarks but a number of states opposed formally changing it in legislation.
We hear, though, the meeting was “very steady”, with the collegial mood of previous gathering since the Albanese government took office in May 2022 continuing.
Federal energy minister Chris Bowen said there was “no consensus” on altering the gas description:
“[S]tate jurisdictions and territory jurisdictions will refer to gas in ways which they choose. How gas is referred to in the law is a very different matter. And more complicated matter. It has legal ramifications, no doubt.
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Who will replace Philip Lowe at the RBA if his term is not extended?
Speculation has been feverish for a couple of weeks about when the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, will announce his decision on who will be the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
The verdict is likely to be made public in July, a month shortened a bit by Chalmers taking this week off, and hence limiting the declaration period.
We understand the person won’t be “anyone radical”. That seems to imply the list of names bandied about is just about right.
Assume for a minute that Philip Lowe is not given a second term or an extension to the seven-year term that ends in mid-September.
That leaves the likely to pick to be between:
Michele Bullock, the current RBA deputy governor
Steven Kennedy, a current RBA board member but more notably treasury secretary
Jenny Wilkinson, the current finance secretary
Her husband, David Gruen, the head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics
and Guy Debelle, the erstwhile RBA deputy governor who surprised many in March 2022 when he left to work for Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest
Most people (save the Liberals’ Jane Hume) don’t rate Lowe’s chances of an extension very highly, given the narrative that developed around his qualified comments in late 2021 that the official interest rate may not rise until 2024.
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Morrison’s rejects adverse findings as ‘based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of how government operates’
I need to give you Morrison’s statement in chunks because is so long. He says the adverse findings against him are “based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of how government operates”.
He also claims that “no departmental advice provided at the time of authorisation of the scheme identified risks about the potential hardship the scheme could cause”, because, he says, it involved the automation of an existing process.
The statement concludes:
There is also no evidence before the commission to the effect that I applied pressure to any person to push the NPP [New Policy Proposal] into the budget process either in a way that its implementation did not require legislation, or at all. This is an offensive and baseless assertion. The proposal was initiated within the public service and was not a government-initiated measure by ministers. It was initiated by departments before I became the minister for social services. It was initiated against a background of an entirely understandable and therefore unextraordinary government policy, to identify possible savings within the commonwealth’s largest portfolio in terms of expenditure and to prevent billions of dollars in overpayment of welfare benefits, in the interests of taxpayers.
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Morrison says ‘no evidence’ that he was responsible for lack of advice from departments
More from Scott Morrison’s statement: he hones in on the commission’s findings regarding him and the executive minute, which he signed, that outlined the scheme in its early stages.
He says:
There is no evidence before the commission which establishes that I was responsible for the departments ceasing in their duties to stop giving frank or candid advice to me regarding the need for legislative change, either by the simple act of me signing the executive minute and so agreeing to DHS pursuing something they had initiated, or otherwise. The department was simply authorised to conduct further work on these proposals before bringing back a final proposal that resolved any issues …
Regrettably the status of the executive minute has been mischaracterised by the royal commission, and in so doing, it is given weight it cannot bear. The executive minute did not have the significance which the commission seeks to attribute to it. The executive minute did not contain settled policy proposals, it contained options to pursue the development of incomplete proposals which had yet to be subjected to the rigorous cabinet processes and departmental due diligence assessment. A minister would not form understandings on the legality of a measure prior to the proposal being finalised via the rigorous cabinet process and presented in a new policy proposal.
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Scott Morrison rejects critical findings against him in robodebt report
Scott Morrison, who oversaw robodebt in numerous ministerial roles, has responded to the robodebt royal commission report with a three page statement.
Morrison says the commission made “no findings regarding my roles as treasurer or prime minister during the time in which the scheme operated”.
Of the “findings in relation to my role as minister for social services, where I served for nine months between December 2014 and September 2015”, Morrison says:
I reject completely each of the findings which are critical of my involvement in authorising the scheme and are adverse to me. They are wrong, unsubstantiated and contradicted by clear documentary evidence presented to the commission. It is unfortunate that these findings fail to acknowledge the proper functioning of government and cabinet processes in the face of not only my evidence as a former prime minister, and cabinet minister for almost nine years, but also the evidence of other cabinet ministers.
Morrison says he “acted in good faith and on clear and deliberate department advice” that it wasn’t necessary to legislate the scheme and “presented comprehensive evidence to support this position”.
He continues:
I note the evidence before the commission confirmed that the responsible departments maintained the position that the scheme was lawful in subsequent submissions prepared for cabinet, after I had left the social services portfolio. Any assertion to the contrary regarding the department’s position is completely wrong and without any evidentiary basis. I also note the evidence presented to and confirmed by departmental officials that the existence of departmental legal advice on this matter was inexplicably withheld from ministers.
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Alan Tudge 'strongly rejects' some of commissioner Holmes' comments about his actions during robodebt
Former MP Alan Tudge has released a long statement in response to the robodebt royal commission report.
A reminder, the report was scathing of Tudge, who was human services minister in 2017 when the robodebt scheme was facing national scrutiny.
Commissioner Catherine Holmes found that Tudge was “not open to considering any significant alteration, or cessation, of processes underlying those fundamental features”, despite myriad problems with the scheme and complaints about it.
She said some of his actions represented a “reprehensible” “abuse of power”, and that he used “information about social security recipients in the media to distract from and discourage commentary about the scheme’s problems represented an abuse of that power”.
Tudge says the report “made no finding that I had knowledge that the scheme was unlawful. It had not crossed my mind”. He says it wasn’t until 2019 that “the issue of lawfulness was brought to light for me”, by which time he’d ceased to be minister for human services.
On the comments about his use of media, Tudge says:
I strongly reject the commission’s comments of the way I used the media and that I had abused my power in doing so. I reject that finding in the strongest term [sic].
At no stage did I seek to engage in a media strategy that would discourage legitimate criticism of the scheme.
It is part of a minister’s role to publicly defend government policy when that policy is subject to criticism …
Further, any releases of individual recipient information – which was generally de-identified, and in every single case approved by the Department of Human Services legal counsel – was intended only to correct the public record. In the single case where a person was identified, it was in response to the person’s 1,200 word opinion piece alleging she had been allegedly “terrorised” by Centrelink for a debt she said she didn’t owe. This person did owe a debt that had nothing to do with “robodebt”.
I strongly reject the observation that I was indifferent to suicides that were brought to my attention. It was standard practice to investigate every suicide that was said to be linked to Centrelink. Sadly, each year, social workers at Centrelink deal with about 5,000 referrals for customers at risk of suicide.
Tudge also says he has not received a notification that he has been referred for civil or criminal prosecution.
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Chris Ketter appointed Australia’s consul general in San Francisco
A former Labor senator turned adviser to the deputy prime minister has been appointed as Australia’s consul general in San Francisco.
Chris Ketter was a Labor senator for Queensland from 2013 to 2019 and prior to that was a senior official of the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association (SDA).
Ketter currently serves as a senior adviser to Richard Marles, the deputy prime minister and defence minister.
During a busy afternoon of news, the trade minister, Don Farrell, announced the appointment of Ketter along with two other appointments.
Farrell, whose background also includes senior SDA roles, said Ketter would take up the role of consul general and senior trade and investment commissioner in San Francisco:
He brings extensive experience across government, and in the defence industry and critical technologies sector, which will help bolster Australia’s Aukus objectives.
Farrell also announced that Bryony Hilless, who has served in senior executive roles at Trade and Investment Queensland, would take up the role of consul general and general manager, Middle East and Africa, based in the UAE. Farrell said Hilless previously led the Queensland agency’s business engagement with Dubai Expo and “her experience will be pivotal supporting the government’s trade diversification agenda in the Middle East”.
Kelly Matthews, currently a trade and investment commissioner in Abu Dhabi, will become the consul general and trade and investment commissioner in Frankfurt.
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Christian Porter responds to robodebt royal commission report
Christian Porter, one of a number of politicians who appeared, and came under scrutiny, at the robodebt royal commission, has released a statement via his lawyers in response to the report.
It says they – Porter and his lawyers – will continue to examine the report, but that:
At all relevant times the Honourable Christian Porter discharged his ministerial responsibilities acting in good faith based on direct advice that he received whilst acting minister for human services for a matter of weeks around early January 2017. There is nothing in the report of the royal commission that is contrary to this fundamental truth.
The statement contains reiterations of Porter’s statements at the commission that “he did not detect issues relating to the lawfulness of the robodebt scheme” while he was acting minister for social services.
The statement continues:
The evidence before the royal commission was also clear that Mr Porter was not informed at any stage whilst he was acting minister for human services or minister for social services that there was any issue as to the lawfulness of the robodebt scheme. Had he been informed of this he would have acted immediately to take steps to ensure that it was brought to an end, as he did upon receipt of the advice from the commonwealth solicitor general.
In fact the uncontested evidence demonstrated that he had been specifically assured in 2017 that the departments had been advised that there was a sound legislative underpinning for the scheme and accordingly, Mr Porter had a reasonable expectation that if any negative advice did exist inside the department, at any point in relation to the scheme, that it would be provided to the minister as a basic matter of course, not hidden from ministers.
Mr Porter has access to the same report of the commission that was released publicly today. Mr Porter has not received any notice of referral (or proposed referral) to any investigative body for civil action, criminal prosecution, or otherwise.
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Services Australia staff warned not to talk to media in wake of royal commission
Rebecca Skinner, the chief executive of Services Australia, has warned her staff not to talk to the media in the wake of the royal commission’s damning findings.
The report praised frontline Centrelink staff who had blown the whistle on the scheme’s flaws.
Skinner, in an all-staff email this afternoon, said staff who speak to the media may be in breach of the public service code of conduct. She told her staff:
There will be lots of media interest and public discussion on the commissioner’s findings. You may find some of this upsetting. Please be careful about being drawn into social media chatter or making unauthorised public comments.
We don’t want you reacting in a way that may be in breach of the APS code of conduct. All staff, including contractors, should comply with our social media policy. And if you are approached by the media, or see anything in media you want to question, please contact our media team.
Her email says: “Robodebt is one of the most challenging issues we’ve faced” and acknowledged that it caused hurt to customers and staff.
I know that you take great pride in serving Australia and making a difference in the community for those who need our support. The royal commission heard accounts from people who had poor experiences and we’ll now be working hard to restore their confidence.
My priority is continuing to support you through this process.
Over the coming months, senior leaders will work with you to understand what support you need and develop plans to better empower you to give feedback that helps us learn from your experiences.
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Clearing of woodlands near Darwin halted while emergency application for cultural heritage protection considered
Bulldozing of woodlands near Darwin has stopped while the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, considers an emergency application by traditional owners claiming the forest could be protected on cultural heritage grounds.
Video posted on social media shows a bulldozer knocking over trees at Lee Point, less than 20km from Darwin city, on Thursday. Plibersek last month approved the clearing of the savanna woodlands for a defence housing development.
As we reported last night, 10 people were arrested at a protest on Thursday. Dozens of scientists also attending the Ecological Society of Australia annual conference in the NT capital visited the site on Thursday night to lend their support.
Defence Housing Australia confirmed on Friday that it had stopped work while the minister considered the emergency application, made under section 18 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act.
A decision is expected next week.
Prof Martine Maron, from the University of Queensland’s school of environment, said the bulldozing was “really hard to watch”:
You can hear the bird calls just above the sound of bulldozers.
Maron said it was great that Plibersek had imposed some conditions on the development, including a 50-metre buffer around the known habitat of the endangered Gouldian finch next to a waterhole.
But she said the country badly needed the government to introduce the strong national environmental standards it had promised to guide what could be cleared.
It’s just such a shame that we can’t take a broader view … It feels like the old growth habitat usually draws the short straw.
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Bigger than the whole sky: Qantas schedules extra flights for Taylor Swift concerts
On a much lighter note: Qantas says it has added more than 60 additional flights to and from Sydney and Melbourne to cater for Taylor Swift fans going to and from the concerts next February.
They say 11,000 more seats will be available in seats between Sydney and Melbourne, as well as to and from Adelaide, Perth, Christchurch and Wellington.
Some trans-Tasman services have been upgraded from a 737 to a bigger A330 aircraft.
The new services are in response to a massive jump in demand, Qantas said, with a 1,500% increase in domestic bookings last week when pre-sale and general sale tickets went on sale compared to the same period last year.
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Current secretary of DSS: robodebt report ‘demands both deep reflection and action’
Ray Griggs, the secretary of the Department of Social Services since July 2021, has responded to the robodebt royal commission report.
In an email to all staff sent at 11:36am, just half an hour after the release of the report, Griggs said:
Today the report of the royal commission into the robodebt scheme was released. While I have only had the report for a few hours, it makes sobering reading. It lays bare the damage the robodebt scheme caused.
For all of us in the department, and the broader portfolio, the report’s content demands both deep reflection and action. We cannot shy away from or in any way try to diminish, the difficult truths about the scheme’s impact on our fellow citizens and our department’s role in its design and implementation.
It was a significant failure of public administration … We more so than many in the APS, by the nature of our work have a particular responsibility towards the most vulnerable Australians …
As I have highlighted previously there will be rightful criticism of the department in both the report and in subsequent media reporting.
Griggs said it was important to ensure “through our actions it becomes clear that we have learned the lessons” from robodebt.
He spoke about the need for curiosity, contestability, collaboration and courage “to point out things that are not right or raise issues that might be perceived as unwelcome” – that is – to offer frank and fearless advice to avoid another robodebt.
Griggs addressed staff today, mostly focusing on staff wellbeing.
The email also warns staff not to be drawn into public debate, particularly on social media:
The last thing any of us need is for anyone to breach the code of conduct.
In short: take care and log off, if necessary.
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Peg down your trampolines in NSW, folks
To weather now: the NSW State Emergency Service is encouraging people to peg down their trampolines as a blustery front approaches for the weekend.
The SES posted a tweet this afternoon saying:
Brace yourselves NSW, powerful winds on the horizon! Take necessary precautions and secure your surroundings before Saturday. Strong winds can pick up large items such as outdoor furniture, trampolines, and more.
The Bureau of Meteorology says that it will be:
Very windy across the southeast on Saturday. Damaging winds are possible for parts of the Illawarra, Blue Mountains, Southern Tablelands and Snowy Mountains. Blizzards are possible, with lots of snow and strong winds forecast for the Alps.
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Stuart Robert says he has not received a notice of inclusion from royal commission's report
The former government services minister, Stuart Robert, has responded to the robodebt royal commission report.
Robert said:
As the minister that worked hard to get the legal advice and close down the income compliance scheme I welcome the [royal commission] report and its sensible recommendations. I have NOT received a notice of inclusion in the ‘sealed section’ and I understand they have all gone out.
Important to note, though, that the commissioner credited departmental secretary Renee Leon, not Robert, for shutting the system down.
Commissioner Catherine Holmes said:
[T]he commission rejects Mr Robert’s claim to have acted to end the robodebt scheme quite as promptly as he professes. Ms Leon was in fact the first to take steps for that purpose. There is no reason to suppose, however, that had Ms Leon not taken the step she did, the government’s announcement of the cessation of the practice would have been far behind.
We’re also seeking clarification from Robert about what he means about not having received a “notice of inclusion in the sealed section” – this may amount to a denial of having received a notice of potential referral, but we have asked him to clarify.
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NSW health workers may pause industrial action after new pay offer
In non-robodebt news: New South Wales health workers may pause threatened industrial action on Monday after the state government put forward a new pay offer.
The government has offered members of the Health Services Union – which covers hospital and ambulance staff, and aged care and disability services workers – a $3,500 increase to the base salary for all workers, and an increase of salary packaging from 50% to 60%.
It comes after the union sought a better deal following the Minns government offering a 4% pay rise for public sector workers as part of its election promise to abolish wage caps set by the previous government.
The union’s secretary, Gerard Hayes, said the salary bump would see 60% of their members better off, and result in an 8.5% pay increase for the union’s members earning between $50,000-$55,000.
Hayes said he would be recommending members vote to pause the threatened industrial action while they consider the offer, and implored the unions higher paid members – who would be worse off under the offer than the 6.5% pay increase the union was seeking – to think of its lower paid members:
Some of our members who are paid in the mid-$100,000 range, I’m asking them to do me a favour; help me look after these people who are struggling. I know we’re all struggling, but some of these people are struggling more than others, so I’m asking our membership for some compassion.
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‘It is wrong for people on low incomes to be used for political ends’, says Acoss chief executive
Goldie targets the culture of demonising welfare recipients in Australia’s political sphere:
I’m very struck that one of the first comments from the commissioner on the front page of this report is to acknowledge that this scheme was allowed to happen because of the way in which politicians have been prepared to treat people on low incomes, people who are relying on income support, as if they are not worthy of being treated with dignity and respect.
The reality is that needing to rely on income support can happen to any of us. The reality is that income support is there to help you when you’re doing it tough. The commissioner has issued a very important warning to all of us today, that it is wrong for people on low incomes to be used for political ends. For far too long, we’ve had a culture in Australia which has allowed us to talk about “the taxpayers and the welfare recipients”. This commissioner’s report is very clear - that culture in Australia must stop.
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‘Vital’ that schemes such as robodebt ‘never allowed to happen again’: Acoss
Goldie thanks and acknowledges the people who spoke out about the system and what they were experiencing, “who pursued their own truth in the face of this aggressive abuse of government power.”
She says:
It is really vital that the government responds, takes onboard all of these recommendations, and works closely with people directly affected, those with the deep experience of what it’s like dealing with government when you’re on a very low income to make sure that this kind of scheme is never allowed to happen again. We should have a system in Australia that supports people when they’re doing it tough.
Instead, what we had what was the commissioner found to be, clearly, a gross abuse of government power, and it was perpetrated at a whole range of levels across government.
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Robodebt victims ‘came to government for help’ and instead ‘faced terror of being pursued’: Acoss chief executive
The chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, Cassandra Goldie, is speaking in Sydney now about robodebt.
Goldie says:
This is a very hard, but important, day for the hundreds of thousands of people who faced the aggressive abuse of government power under the robodebt scheme. There is no question that, from the very first days that this scheme was unleashed, we knew that it was wrong. The level of distress that was expressed by hundreds of thousands of people in the face of this scheme were ignored by the government.
Governments have extraordinary power over people’s lives. And this abuse of power hit people at a time when they were facing their hardest reality. Some had lost family. They’d been hit by a disaster. They’d lost a job. They came to government for help. And instead, what they faced was the terror of being pursued, in some cases relentlessly, for debts that they clearly did not owe.
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Dutton continues criticism on corporate support for voice to parliament
Stepping away from robodebt for a bit now to the Indigenous voice to parliament.
Earlier today, Peter Dutton continued his criticism of corporate Australia’s support for the voice, seemingly annoyed that such businesses didn’t get behind his calls for tighter gambling ad rules – and claiming the money big business has given to the referendum should have been given to pensioners instead.
Dutton told a Q&A session after giving a speech to the Institute of Public Affairs:
Where were these CEOs when we started the debate in relation to gambling issues? … these companies haven’t been out there on that issue.
They’ve signed up and given millions of dollars of shareholder money that should be given to pensioners and self-funded retirees … in dividends.
Dutton and the no campaign on the voice have turned their ire on businesses in recent days, with the opposition claiming – without providing any evidence – that corporate leaders had told him they don’t support the Indigenous voice, even if their companies had publicly backed it.
There are more than 500 organisations publicly backing the voice, across major sporting codes, charities, church groups, and major businesses. Largely alienated in the public sphere with their opposition to the voice, the no campaign and Coalition have begun heavily criticising business leaders, making contentious and strained claims that consumer prices would be lower if big firms like Bunnings didn’t support for the voice.
Elsewhere in the Q&A, Dutton hit on familiar conservative talking points about alleged “left-wing” people “masquerading as teachers” and business leaders being “worried about Twitter”.
In the speech, Dutton again called for Australia to start building nuclear power plants.
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Chief executive of Acoss responding to robodebt report at 2pm
And on that, Cassandra Goldie, chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service is due to hold a press conference at 2pm about the robodebt royal commission report. We’ll bring you details as they come to hand.
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Structural problems ‘continue to this day’: Antipoverty Centre calls for pause on current Centrelink debt collection
We’re expecting more reactions to the royal commission’s robodebt report from community groups, activists and non-government organisations involved in the welfare space as the afternoon goes on and they have time to digest the findings.
One of those organisations, the Antipoverty Centre, has just issued a statement in response, calling on the government to immediately pause current Centrelink debt collection activity until the recommended reforms are made, saying the debt collection processes in place even now “are causing further harm despite being lawful.”
‘The root of the problem with robodebt was not the algorithm, data matching or income averaging, but the human toll of receiving a debt on people living in poverty,” the statement says.
From Antipoverty Centre spokesperson and welfare recipient Kristin O’Connell:
We extend our solidarity to every robodebt victim and everyone whose life has been affected by Centrelink recouping funds from those of us who can least afford it.
The structural problems that enabled robodebt continue to this day under policies supported by both Labor and the Coalition.
There is no humane way to extract money from people living in poverty who cannot afford the basics. So-called debts are often the result of administrative errors and confusing or unfair rules. … Issuing debts to poor people is dangerous and harmful, accurate or otherwise. It only brings more of the horrifying outcomes already produced by abhorrently low payment levels: distress, hunger, homelessness and suicide.
We call on the government to urgently pause Centrelink debt collection and work with us to implement meaningful changes that would genuinely protect people in poverty from harm caused by the current approach to overpayments.
Every person affected by robodebt, no matter the sum they were pursued over, deserves justice. And so does everyone else who’s been issued with a debt notice they couldn’t afford to pay.
They urge anyone who receives a debt notice from Centrelink to contact a welfare rights community legal centre.
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Robodebt class action lawyers release statement on ‘atrocious’ scheme
Peter Gordon, senior partner at Gordon Legal, which was involved in the robodebt victims’ class action, has issued a statement about the royal commission’s findings today.
Gordon says the findings have been “a long time coming”:
Hundreds of thousands of everyday Australians’ lives were stuck by this unlawful scheme. They should hopefully feel a sense of justice.
As we have long known, and the findings today have confirmed, robodebt is a shameful chapter in the history of the previous Morrison government.
Gordon Legal was proud to achieve a strong outcome in the class action. But that was just the first step.
This royal commission was vital in understanding how something so atrocious could occur and, ultimately, who was responsible.
We are grateful to all those who contributed to bringing this unlawful system down, including minister Shorten and the lead applicants in the class action: Kathy, Felicity, Elyane, Shannon and Stephen.
We have supported this royal commission from its inception. We will review this thoughtful and detailed report with the time and consideration it deserves – including whether further claims or actions can be brought on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of victims.
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Findings on key figures from the robodebt royal commission
The royal commission’s report is scathing of the former prime minister Scott Morrison, former government services minister Stuart Robert and former Department of Human Services secretary Kathryn Campbell.
Here are the key criticisms made in the report about each of the key government figures in the robodebt scheme, courtesy of my colleague Christopher Knaus:
Morrison, Robert and Campbell have all been approached for comment on these criticisms.
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What we’ve learned so far: robodebt royal commission summarised
My colleague Paul Karp has wrapped together the main things we’ve learned so far about the royal commission’s findings into robodebt. If you’re just joining us, you can catch up on the key details here:
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Tudge’s robodebt media strategy examined by commissioner’s report
The royal commission report goes into substantial detail about how the then minister Alan Tudge used the media to counteract reporting about robodebt.
As the commission heard from Tudge’s former media advisor, Rachelle Miller, the strategy was to counter coverage in “more friendly media”, typically News Corp, in January 2017.
One such method was that Tudge authorised the release of case study information to a journalist at the Australian, Simon Benson, who then wrote a story with the headline “Debt scare backfires on Labor” on 26 January where it was described as an “embarrassing blunder” and called people who had spoken publicly about debts as “so-called victims”.
Tudge later went on 2GB radio and when asked whether he was happy that Benson had written the article, did not reveal his office was the source.
The report is scathing of Tudge’s media strategy around robodebt and attempt to silence those speaking out:
As a minister, Mr Tudge was invested with a significant amount of public power. Mr Tudge’s use of information about social security recipients in the media to distract from and discourage commentary about the scheme’s problems represented an abuse of that power. It was all the more reprehensible in view of the power imbalance between the minister and the cohort of people upon whom it would reasonably be expected to have the most impact, many of whom were vulnerable and dependent on the department, and its minister, for their livelihood.
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Kathryn Campbell ‘did nothing of substance’ when exposed to information about illegality of robodebt
The royal commission said:
Ms Campbell had been responsible for a department that had established, implemented and maintained an unlawful program. When exposed to information that brought to light the illegality of income averaging, she did nothing of substance. When presented with opportunities to obtain advice on the lawfulness of that practice, she failed to act.
It also found that she knew her statements that there had “been no change to how we assess income or calculate and recover debts”, a key deflection used to defend the scheme, were false.
She knew that because Colleen Taylor, a frontline Centrelink staffer, had told her in forensic detail why it was wrong and expressed concerns she was “being misled”:
When Ms Taylor expressly brought the falsity of that statement to her attention on 7 February 2017, Ms Campbell took no steps to correct it. Ms Campbell accepted that the persons to whom she had delegated the review of Ms Taylor’s complaints had not followed up and addressed them in any systematic way. The responsibility was hers, but she took no further action.
Campbell’s conduct scathingly examined by royal commission
More on Kathryn Campbell: the royal commission was scathing of the way she handled a request for legal advice about robodebt, made by the acting secretary, Barry Jackson, while she was on leave in early 2017, during the initial furore about robodebt.
Campbell returned from leave and “instructed DHS officers” to cease responding to Jackson’s request for legal advice:
The commission finds that Ms Campbell instructed DHS officers to cease the process of responding to Mr Jackson’s request for advice, motivated by a concern that the unlawfulness of the scheme might be exposed to the ombudsman in the course of its investigation.
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Defence contacted for comment regarding Kathryn Campbell’s position
We have asked Defence for comment regarding Kathryn Campbell, who currently holds a senior Aukus-related position.
My colleague Paul Karp asked the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, earlier about any consequences for public servants, including Campbell.
Albanese said it was “not appropriate to comment on individual cases” regarding public servants but added a general comment that agency heads were “empowered to take immediate action, pending further investigations and I am confident that they will”.
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Alan Tudge's actions 'reprehensible' and an 'abuse of power': commissioner
Alan Tudge was human services minister in 2017 when the robodebt scheme was facing national scrutiny.
Despite myriad problems with the scheme and complaints from welfare recipients and their advocates, Holmes found that Tudge was “not open to considering any significant alteration, or cessation, of processes underlying those fundamental features”.
She says some of his actions represented a “reprehensible” “abuse of power”.
Holmes found Tudge used “information about social security recipients in the media to distract from and discourage commentary about the scheme’s problems represented an abuse of that power”.
She writes:
As a minister, Mr Tudge was invested with a significant amount of public power. Mr Tudge’s use of information about social security recipients in the media to distract from and discourage commentary about the scheme’s problems represented an abuse of that power. It was all the more reprehensible in view of the power imbalance between the minister and the cohort of people upon whom it would reasonably be expected to have the most impact, many of whom were vulnerable and dependent on the department, and its minister, for their livelihood.
Holmes accepted that Tudge believed he was “bound by the cabinet decision to implement them, but that did not mean he could not have investigated the problems with them and raised any concerns with the appropriate senior minister”.
She added that Tudge was aware of two people who had died by suicide and that their families had linked their deaths to the scheme by July 2017, but did not review the scheme:
Nonetheless, Mr Tudge failed to undertake a comprehensive review into the scheme, including its fundamental features, or to consider whether its impacts were so harmful to vulnerable recipients that it should cease.
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Kathryn Campbell knew of ‘misleading effect’ of robodebt proposal but ‘chose to stay silent’
The royal commission report is scathing of then Department of Human Services secretary Kathryn Campbell’s handling of the policy proposal for robodebt that went to cabinet’s powerful expenditure review committee in 2015.
The policy proposal said nothing of income averaging or of the need for legislative change, despite prior advice from the Department of Social Services that such change would be needed.
The report found Campbell knew of both the intended use of income averaging and the DSS advice that legislative change was needed, but did nothing to change the policy proposal that went to government.
It found she did so because she knew Scott Morrison wanted to “pursue the proposal and that the government could not achieve the savings” that were promised without income averaging:
In oral evidence, Ms Campbell accepted that the [New Policy Proposal] was apt to mislead cabinet. She contended that her failure to eliminate its misleading effect was an “oversight.” That would be an extraordinary oversight for someone of Ms Campbell’s seniority and experience. The weight of the evidence instead leads to the conclusion that Ms Campbell knew of the misleading effect of the NPP but chose to stay silent, knowing that Mr Morrison wanted to pursue the proposal and that the government could not achieve the savings which the NPP promised without income averaging.
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DSS and Services Australia structure should be reviewed: commissioner
Further to the below on the royal commission’s recommendations, commissioner Catherine Holmes says the government should review the structure of the Department of Social Services and Services Australia.
She also wants greater accountability for former public servants, writing that the act should be:
…amended to make it clear that the Australian Public Service Commissioner can inquire into the conduct of former agency heads. Also, the Public Service Act should be amended to allow for a disciplinary declaration to be made against former APS employees and former agency heads.
As far as legal advice goes, policy proposals created for the budget process should be included, and lawyers within the public service should have to document the reasons why any draft legal advice is not finalised. In several cases lawyers simply left damning robodebt legal advice in “draft” form.
Holmes also calls for the Freedom of Information Act to be changed to allow greater access to cabinet documents:
The amendment should make clear that confidentiality should only be maintained over any cabinet documents or parts of cabinet documents where it is reasonably justified for an identifiable public interest reason.
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57 recommendations of report include raising social security benefits instead of compensation scheme
My colleagues have been trawling through the report itself as this press conference has been going. I’ll keep an ear on it and bring you the highlights as we go, but here’s some more about what the report says.
What does commissioner Holmes recommend?
Holmes does not recommend a redress scheme for compensation, but says:
A better use of the money would be to lift the rate at which social security benefits are paid, to help recipients achieve some semblance of the “security” element of that term; because with financial security comes the dignity to which social security recipients are entitled and to which the Scheme was so damaging.
Holmes’ 57 recommendations includes advice on the public service, government, budget process, watchdogs including the commonwealth ombudsman, freedom of information laws and social security policy.
She says the government should reinstate a six-year limit on debt recovery. Centrelink processes should be improved to identify when people are vulnerable and should be excluded from compliance action, which was another cause of significant failures with robodebt.
Holmes wants the government to consider legislation to provide transparency on the use of algorithms in government programs and a body to audit automated decision making.
She says the commonwealth ombudsman should have more powers and government bureaucrats should have a statutory duty to assist the watchdog in its investigations.
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PM says Morrison’s continued presence in parliament ‘a matter for him’
More on Scott Morrison: Albanese is asked if he thinks it is appropriate that Morrison continues to sit in parliament?
Albanese:
That is a matter for him. I am not here to make commentary on individual members. I do think that members of parliament have a responsibility to turn up to parliament unless there is a very good excuse.
I think that the findings I have read out in the public domain make it clear that Scott Morrison’s defence of this scheme and of the government’s actions over such a long period of time were, to quote the report, based upon a falsehood. That is a damning finding. People will make their own judgements about this.
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Government has not yet received legal advice on royal commission report
Albanese says they have not had time to get the appropriate legal advice about the contents of the report and as a result of it, as they received it at the same time as everyone else – including the public.
This is a common theme in both Shorten and Albanese’s answers here, and they’re leaning on it as evidence of the Labor government being more transparent than their predecessors.
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Secrecy around who is being referred for criminal prosecution reasonable to avoid prejudice: Albanese
A question now on accountability and transparency: is it fair that the public won’t be told who is being referred for criminal prosecution?
Albanese defers to the commissioner’s decision to seal that section of the report:
This is a decision taken by the royal commission. The royal commissioner made it clear why she has made that decision. In the letter that was forwarded, what she says is, ‘I recommend that this additional chapter remain sealed and not be tabled with the rest of the report so as not to prejudice the conduct of any future civil action or criminal prosecution.’ She is not saying that it will not occur. In fact, she is saying the opposite is why that has occurred. That is the decision that has been made.
We have made the decision here, to be very clear, I received the report at the same time that you did today, as did the minister. We cannot have been more transparent, holding a press conference immediately. We gave you the same time that we had to go through. That is why I have got a document here with little quotes marked out. We are being as transparent as possible. We need to make sure as well that you do not prejudice action, and I think people want action as a result of this. We would take the appropriate legal advice there as well.
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‘Very different' approach from Labor government: Albanese
The prime minister now attempting to differentiate the Labor government from the Coalition, here, in response to a question about the report shows the “remarkable” the lengths to which the public service would go to oblige ministers; how will he ensure the public service has confidence to give his government advice that they do not want to hear?
Albanese:
If you look at our approach towards the public service, it is very different. It is very different. One of the things that I have made very clear, and is made by changing some of the culture as well: I lead a government that has proper orderly processes. That has cabinet meetings where you have [comments] from departments, where ministers go and visit the departments and talk, not just to their departmental secretaries, but right throughout their departments as well.
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What repercussions will flow from the commissioner’s report?
Throwing to questions now, and Guardian Australia’s chief political correspondent, Paul Karp, straight out of the boat here asking whether Scott Morrison ought to resign and what the repercussions for other public servants should be?
Albanese:
Scott Morrison, of course, is mentioned countless times in this report. It is a matter for him what action he takes in response, but I make this point. The royal commission has comprehensively rejected the Liberal party talking points that the system had not changed at all, and called that a falsehood.
With regard to public servants, of course it is not appropriate to comment on individual cases. As the commissioner has made clear, there is a sealed section of the report with referrals for, to quote the report, “civil action or criminal prosecution”. The agencies of course are empowered to take immediate action, pending further investigations and I am confident that they will.
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Shorten expresses sympathy with the victims of robodebt, saying “they were literally shaken down by their own government”, “they had the onus of proof reversed and were treated as guilty until proven innocent.”
For those who had the temerity to complain, they were subject to vile political tactics.
Today is about these victims. Today is about the front-line staff of Services Australia, who were forced to implement unconscionable propositions. It is about Colleen Taylor, who, I am pleased to note, commissioner Holmes has said that her evidence as a front-line worker in the system and her evidence and speaking up to the then Secretary of human services, as the Commissioner said, restored some faith.
Thank you Colleen and all the others we do not know about, who spoke up into the union representatives as well.
It is also about the welfare advocates, who raise the uncomfortable truths long before this royal commission.
Updated
Robodebt 'gaslighted the nation': Bill Shorten
We’re hearing from government services minister Bill Shorten now. He comes out swinging:
Commissioner Holmes has given us a report, a royal commission report into the robodebt scandal, which I think, in summary, said that the previous government and senior public servants gaslighted the nation and its citizens for four and a half years. They betrayed the trust of the nation and its citizens for four anda half years with an unlawful scheme which the federal court has called the worst chapter of public administration.
[The royal commission report] fundamentally says that it has broken the sacred trust, that when citizens give some of their power to the government, that the government will make sure that it helps, not hurt, citizens. This is a report that shows how the previous government and senior public servants hurt, not helped, citizens.
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Section of report recommending civil or criminal prosecution to remain sealed
Albanese mentions the sealed section of the report, which he says the commissioner described as follows:
I have provided to you an additional chapter which has not been included in the bound report and is sealed. It recommends the referrals of individuals for civil action or criminal prosecution. I recommend this additional chapter remain sealed and not be tabled with the rest of the report so as to not prejudice the conduct of any future civil action or criminal prosecution.
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Albanese focuses on Morrison’s evidence to royal commission
The prime minister is essentially reading sections of the report – many of which we have already noted for you below – now, in particular, regarding each of the Liberal party ministers that have had some responsibility for robodebt over the scheme.
To note, the only one of those ministers still serving is Scott Morrison.
Albanese homes in on this line, from the report:
The commission rejects as untrue [Scott] Morrison’s evidence that he was told that income averaging as contemplated in the executive minute was an established practice and a ‘foundational way’ in which DHS worked.
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PM criticises Coalition ministers who ‘dismissed or ignored … significant concerns’
Albanese takes aim at the Coalition government ministers who had carriage of the robodebt scheme, which he is calling a “tragedy” that “caused stress, anxiety, financial destitution and, sadly, had a very real human toll”.
For more than four years, Liberal ministers dismissed or ignored the significant concerns that were raised over and over again, including in the parliament, but also by victims, by public servants, by community organisations and of course legal experts.
The royal commission has found that the Liberal party’s robodebt scheme was to quote, “a crude and cruel mechanism … and it made many people feel like criminals”.
In essence, people were traumatised on the off-chance they might owe money. It was a costly failure of public administration in both human and economic terms.
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PM: robodebt was 'a gross betrayal and a human tragedy'
Anthony Albanese says the robodebt scheme was a “a gross betrayal and a human tragedy”.
He’s speaking in Canberra now. He says:
I particularly want to acknowledge the many thousands of individuals who were harmed by the robodebt scheme and thank those who bravely share their stories with the commission. You ensured the voices of those affected and their families were heard.
We have arrived at the truth because of the courage of some of the most vulnerable Australians, people who have shown bravery in the face of injustice, hardship and sometimes terrible grief.
The courage stands in stark contrast to those who sought to shift the blame, bury the truth and carry on justifying the shocking harm. The robodebt scheme was a gross betrayal and a human tragedy.
It pursued debt recovery against Australians who in many cases had no debt to pay. It was wrong. It was illegal. It should never have happened and it should never happen again.
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Robodebt scheme harmed ‘well-being and morale’ of staff: report
The report found the robodebt scheme had a “deleterious impact on the well-being and morale of some of the employees who were involved in its implementation and operation”.
A number of staff gave evidence to the royal commission about the trauma they suffered as a result of pursuing the scheme and the failure of their attempts to warn senior departmental figures about its impact on vulnerable Australians.
The royal commission found their stress would have been exacerbated by an increased workload, an increase in recipient distress, inadequate training, a rise in labour hire arrangements, and a failure to consult staff at the inception of the scheme:
The commonwealth has told the commission that since the conclusion of the scheme, Services Australia has made some improvements, including by looking to focus on customer-centred design; reducing the use of labour hire staff; improving agency culture and leadership, including by the implementation of leadership sessions and training on escalating issues; and introducing internal mechanisms for making and resolving complaints.
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Robodebt ended up costing taxpayers $565m, delivered no savings
The robodebt scheme was intended to achieve savings of $4.7bn. It delivered a saving of about $406m.
But the government spent $971m implementing, administering, suspending and winding back the scheme.
That leaves a net cost of $565m, the royal commission has found.
Advocacy groups ‘ignored’ by Coalition ministers, department: report
Advocacy groups including the Australian Council of Social Service, #NotMyDebt, Economic Justice Australia, Council of Single Mothers and their Children and Victoria Legal Aid were ignored when raising serious concerns about the impact of the scheme, the report finds.
The report says:
Once the scheme was operational, and problems with the scheme were becoming increasingly apparent, advocacy groups began to direct feedback and complaints about the scheme to ministers and senior officers at DHS. Those complaints fell on deaf ears. The commission heard from a number of advocacy organisations and groups about how they had tried to be heard and were ignored or dismissed … To the dismay of advocates, despite their efforts to highlight the mounting problems it was causing, the scheme marched on.
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Commissioner rejects some of Stuart Robert’s claims around steps he took to end robodebt
The former government services minister Stuart Robert is criticised by Holmes in her report.
Robert was responsible for robodebt through 2019, when it was facing a federal court legal challenge. In evidence to the commission, Robert suggested he had developed concerns about robodebt and was a driving force in ending the program. This was at odds with public statements he made at the time defending the scheme. Robert told the commission he accepted making false statements due to cabinet solidarity.
Holmes writes in her report:
It can be accepted that the principles of cabinet solidarity required Mr Robert to publicly support cabinet decisions, whether he agreed with them or not. But Mr Robert was not expounding any legal position, and he was going well beyond supporting government policy. He was making statements of fact as to the accuracy of debts, citing statistics which he knew could not be right. Nothing compels ministers to knowingly make false statements, or statements which they have good reason to suspect are untrue, in the course of publicly supporting any decision or program.
Holmes also rejected some of Robert’s claims around steps he took to end the program. She wrote: “… the Commission rejects Mr Robert’s claim to have acted to end the robodebt scheme quite as promptly as he professes.”
She found that:
[The] weight of the evidence is strongly against Mr Robert’s having given any instruction to [secretary of human services] Ms Leon on 7 or 8 November 2019 to cease income averaging as a sole or partial basis for debt raising. What seems to have happened at the meeting on 8 November 2019 was a canvassing of options. It is reasonable to suppose that Mr Robert still hoped to salvage the robodebt scheme in some respects.”
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Scott Morrison 'allowed cabinet to be misled': commissioner
Holmes has directly criticised former prime minister Scott Morrison, saying he “allowed cabinet to be misled” by not making proper inquiries about why the Department of Social Services said its proposal to use income averaging required legislative change, but then backflipped on that:
The proper administration of [Morrison’s] department required him to make inquiries about why, in the absence of any explanation, DSS appeared to have reversed its position on the need for legislative change. If he had asked Ms Wilson, she would have told him that it was because DHS had (ostensibly) reversed its position on using income averaging. He chose not to inquire.
Mr Morrison allowed cabinet to be misled because he did not make that obvious inquiry. He took the proposal to cabinet without necessary information as to what it actually entailed and without the caveat that it required legislative and policy change to permit the use of the ATO PAYG data in the way proposed in circumstances where: he knew that the proposal still involved income averaging; only a few weeks previously he had been told of that caveat; nothing had changed in the proposal; and he had done nothing to ascertain why the caveat no longer applied. 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.
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Suicides lay bare robodebt’s ‘inept’ and ‘harmful’ failings
The report discusses the tragic suicides of Rhys Cauzzo and Jarrad Madgwick, who were caught up in robodebt.
It says the deaths show the scheme’s inability to deal with people with vulnerabilities:
What happened to Mr Cauzzo and Mr Madgwick lays bare the question of how government should deal with vulnerable people. The harmful effects of the scheme were not confined to the raising of inaccurate or non-existent debts. The blunt instrument of automation used to identify and communicate the possibility of overpayment was inept at determining vulnerability. Empathy could not be programmed into the scheme.
The report concludes the scheme had “little to no regard … to the individuals and vulnerable cohorts that it would affect”.
The ill-effects of the scheme were varied, extensive, devastating and continuing.
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Royal commission says it is ‘confident’ more than three suicides were a result of scheme
The royal commission’s report says that it is aware of a third “tragic death which appears to have resulted from a discrepancy letter issued under the scheme in 2017”. It had already heard evidence from the mothers of two young men who died by suicide after being caught up in the scheme.
The report says the scheme caused despair, heartbreak and harm. It says it is confident there were more than three deaths associated with the scheme, but that data is extremely difficult to find.
The commission is confident that these were not the only tragedies of the kind. Services Australia could not provide figures for the numbers of people who committed suicide as a result of the scheme. To be fair, it is difficult to see how such information could be reliably gathered. In any case, it does little for the families of those who have died to speak of their loss in terms of numbers. What is certain is that the scheme was responsible for heartbreak and harm to family members of those who took their own lives because of the despair the scheme caused them. It extends from those recipients who felt that their only option was to take their own life, to their family members who must live without them.
Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636
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Robodebt stemmed from 'venality, incompetence and cowardice': commissioner
We will bring you specific details about the report’s factual findings and recommendations as we go through the report.
But Holmes’ choice of words in her concluding remarks is striking. She describes the scandal as stemming from “venality, incompetence and cowardice”.
She writes:
The recommendations made are collected at the beginning of this report. I hope that they are of use.
At the least, I am confident that the commission has served the purpose of bringing into the open an extraordinary saga, illustrating a myriad of ways that things can go wrong through venality, incompetence and cowardice.
In addition to the recommendations, I have made referrals of information in respect of a number of individuals to four different authorities for further investigation. I do not propose to name the entities to which I have made referrals, because it would only lead to speculation about who had been referred where, which would almost certainly be wrong.
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Robodebt’s ‘unfairness, probable illegality and cruelty’ was apparent from early 2017: commissioner
Holmes says in the report that the “disastrous” robodebt scheme should have been apparent from early 2017 – and it should have been “abandoned or revised drastically” at that point. Here’s the full passage:
The beginning of 2017 was the point at which robodebt’s unfairness, probable illegality and cruelty became apparent. It should then have been abandoned or revised drastically, and an enormous amount of hardship and misery (as well as the expense the government was so anxious to minimise) would have been averted. Instead the path taken was to double down, to go on the attack in the media against those who complained and to maintain the falsehood that in fact the system had not changed at all. The government was, the DHS and DSS ministers maintained, acting righteously to recoup taxpayers’ money from the undeserving.
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Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese to speak at 11.45am AEST
We were expecting to hear from the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the government services minister, Bill Shorten, today in response to the robodebt royal commission report.
We’ve just had confirmation they will hold their press conference in Canberra at 11.45am AEST. We’ll bring you that live as it happens.
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Royal commission refers individuals to four entities for further investigation
Holmes has made referrals to four different unnamed authorities for further investigation. Holmes has deliberately not provided information about the referrals in her final report.
In her report, she said:
In addition to the recommendations, I have made referrals of information in respect of a number of individuals to four different authorities for further investigation. I do not propose to name the entities to which I have made referrals, because it would only lead to speculation about who had been referred where, which would almost certainly be wrong.
In her letter to the governor general, submitting the report to him, she said information about the referrals was in a sealed section. That sealed section has been provided to the new anti-corruption commission, the Australian federal police, the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, and the Australian public service commissioner.
I have provided to you an additional chapter of the report which has not been included in the bound report and is sealed. It recommends the referral of individuals for civil action or criminal prosecution. I recommend that this additional chapter remain sealed and not be tabled with the rest of the report so as not to prejudice the conduct of any future civil action or criminal prosecution. I am also submitting relevant parts of the additional chapter of the report to heads of various commonwealth agencies; the Australian Public Service Commissioner, the National Anti-Corruption Commissioner, the President of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory and the Australian federal police.
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'Crude and cruel'
The robodebt royal commissioner, Catherine Holmes, has condemned the robodebt scheme as “crude and cruel” and “neither fair nor legal” in her report:
Robodebt was a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals. In essence, people were traumatised on the off-chance they might owe money. It was a costly failure of public administration, in both human and economic terms.
She has criticised what she called the “truly dismaying … revelation of dishonesty and collusion”, that she has found prevented the program’s “lack of legal foundation coming to light”.
In her preface to the lengthy report, she wrote:
Equally disheartening was the ineffectiveness of what one might consider institutional checks and balances – the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s Office, the Office of Legal Services Coordination, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal – in presenting any hindrance to the scheme’s continuance.
Holmes wrote that it was “startling” that the commission had uncovered myriad ways the scheme “failed the public interest”:
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.
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Robodebt royal commission report released
Commissioner Catherine Holmes has released her report into the botched and illegal robodebt scheme.
We’ll have more on what it says very shortly.
Robodebt hearings were marked by moments of high emotion as victims told their stories
The robodebt royal commission was a forensic and often law-focused investigation into the failures of the program – but there were also numerous moments of high emotion.
This was particularly the case when victims and their relatives took to the stand to share their stories.
Jennifer Miller told the commission about the suicide of her son Rhys, which came after he was pursued over unlawful debts worth about $17,000.
Sandra Bevan, a single mother who works in aged care and disability support, was pursued for $3,000 she did not owe:
They may as well have been asking for a million dollars really, there was no way I could pay that amount.
I remember driving home at night beside myself with worry about this money. And I thought I could just drive my car into a tree to make it stop.
But my kids needed me.
But it was not just victims who provided emotional testimony. Louise McLeod, a former official at the commonwealth ombudsman, cried as she told the commission she felt like a failure after her report investigating the scheme did not identify legal issues with the scheme.
And Centrelink worker Jeannie Marie Blake told the commission through tears:
All the management … that I’ve sat and listened to through this, who can’t remember, can’t recall, can’t recollect, ‘couldn’t put your mind to it’ – I can’t forget. And I know there are many more staff like me, who can’t forget what happened and what we were forced to deliver to customers.
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Crisis support services
Today is going to be rough for a lot of people, as robodebt was hugely traumatic for many people who received debt notices, and those who knew and loved people who did.
Please take note of the crisis support services below and reach out if you are struggling:
• Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636
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Who’s who from the public service?
While we wait for the report to be released, here are some of the key people who appeared during the commission’s hearings, whose names you may see later today.
Kathryn Campbell, former secretary of departments of human services and social services
Campbell acknowledged a “significant oversight” that the unlawful scheme had been established and continued but denied she or other officials had known of its legal problems. The government has faced questions in Senate estimates about her $900,000-a-year role as an Aukus adviser.
Serena Wilson, former deputy secretary of the Department of Social Services
Wilson made an emotional admission under sustained questioning that she had known the scheme was unlawful but lacked the “courage” to stop it. She was in a senior role responsible for social security policy during the scandal.
In a later appearance Wilson walked back her evidence, saying she’d been assured by another official who is now deceased that the scheme was legally sound.
Annette Musolino, former chief counsel and senior executive at the Department of Human Services
Musolino oversaw a legal team that received several warnings in the administrative appeals tribunal that robodebt could be unlawful. Over several appearances, Musolino faced questions that she did nothing to address doubts; she maintained she’d always believed it was legally sound.
Scott Britton, Mark Withnell and Jason Ryman, former mid-level officials at the Department of Human Services
The trio worked on the initial robodebt budget proposal in 2015 and helped oversee the program. All three denied knowing that the scheme was unlawful.
Renée Leon, former secretary of the Department of Human Services
Leon was head of the department when the robodebt scheme was wound up in late 2019. In her appearance at the commission, Leon was highly critical of Campbell, Robert and the culture of the public service.
Dutton accuses Labor of trying to ‘smear’ Coalition chances in Fadden byelection with robodebt report release
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has accused the government of politicising the robodebt report release.
“There is no question about why it’s being dropped today,” he told Nine’s Today program:
We are a week out from the byelection in Fadden, so the government is trying to squeeze every political drop out of it.
If there are breakdowns in the system, which clearly there were, then we will look at the recommendations, but don’t lose sight of the fact the government politicised this big time and are dropping it now as a way to try and smear our candidates and our chances in Fadden in the byelection which is next weekend.
The NDIS minister, Bill Shorten, rejected the claim on ABC RN this morning, after Patricia Karvelas asked:
Is there a political dimension here, Bill Shorten? There is the Fadden byelection in a week.
Shorten’s response:
I don’t know why journalists would say that. I had a look at several key royal commissions in recent times and they’ve all been released on the day.
I think it would be inappropriate of the government to get a royal commission report and sit on it.
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Robodebt commission recap
Good morning, folks. As Rafqa mentioned, my name is Stephanie Convery and I’m Guardian Australia’s inequality reporter. I’ll be taking you through the robodebt royal commission coverage for the rest of the day.
As noted below, commissioner Catherine Holmes has submitted her report to the governor general and it’s been revealed already that the report includes a “sealed chapter” that “recommends referrals of individuals for civil and criminal prosecution”.
To recap: the commission had to consider whether senior public servants from two departments knowingly implemented the unlawful program targeting hundreds of thousands of people, including some of the most vulnerable in the country – and if so, whether they did so by collusion or because one department deceived another.
She needed to evaluate the role – if any – of implied pressure by ministers, and the possibility of a public service cover-up to protect the reputations of those initially involved.
She also needed to consider whether, as lawyers assisting the commission have suggested, public servants were “recklessly indifferent” given the countless legal warnings they received. Reckless indifference is a key feature of the civil tort of misfeasance in public office.
You can read more about what we expect to see in the report here:
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I’ll be handing the blog over to Stephanie Convery now, to take you through breaking news on the robodebt royal commission report – which is about to be released to the public.
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Warrandyte byelection confirmed for 26 August
The byelection for the Victorian state seat of Warrandyte will be held on 26 August, the speaker, Maree Edwards, has confirmed.
Edwards said she formally received the resignation of the current member, Ryan Smith, who in May announced he would be stepping down from parliament after 16 years:
I thank Mr Smith for his contribution to the parliament over the past 16 years and wish him well with his next steps. I advise that pursuant to section 61(2) of the Electoral Act 2002 I intend to issue a writ for a by-election to be held for the seat of Warrandyte on 26 August 2023. I will issue the writ next Thursday.
She said the new member will be sworn in during the first sitting week of October.
The Liberals have preselected their former Box Hill candidate, Nicole Werner, for the seat, in Melbourne’s northeast, while the Greens are running the deputy mayor of Manningham City council, Tomas Lightbody.
Labor is yet to announce if they will be fielding a candidate, though several MPs have told Guardian Australia it is unlikely they will.
The Liberals hold the seat, which takes in the suburbs of Warrandyte as well as Donvale, Warranwood, Ringwood North and parts of Doncaster East, by a 4.2% margin, after Smith had a slight swing towards him at the November election.
Warrandyte has only been won by Labor on two occasions since it was created in 1976: at the 1982 and 1985 elections.
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Here is a video from a few months ago, when former government services minister Stuart Robert said he made “untrue” statements about robodebt in TV interviews because of cabinet solidarity.
Questioned by royal commissioner Catherine Holmes about departmental figures given to the media that “you knew they couldn’t be right”, Robert responded: “I had a massive personal misgiving, yes. But I am still a cabinet minister”.
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Robodebt royal commission final report confirms referrals for prosecution
The Robodebt Royal Commission has confirmed it recommends referrals for prosecution.
Here is the statement:
The report, in three volumes, is over 990 pages and includes 57 recommendations. There is also an additional sealed chapter that is not part of the bound report. It recommends referrals of individuals for civil and criminal prosecution.
In the course of its inquiries, the Commission has issued 200 notices to give information and 180 notices to produce documents. In response the commonwealth produced over 958,000 documents. The commission has held 303 hours of hearings with 115 witnesses, recording 5,050 pages of transcript. More than 10,000 exhibits have been tendered. The commission’s video livestream of its hearings attracted 686,161 total viewers, and 1,099 submissions were received.
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Stuart Robert: robodebt defender or the minister who finally stopped it?
The outgoing Fadden MP’s appearance at the royal commission in March generated significant attention. Stuart Robert flipped the script on the previous week’s evidence and broader public perception by telling the commission he had serious concerns about robodebt and had sought to have the scheme shut down.
That was despite his repeated and strident public defences of the scheme, which continued well into 2021.
Robert told the commission he accepted he had made false statements when defending robodebt in 2019. But he said he was bound to support it in public due to cabinet solidarity.
Robert’s testimony followed evidence from two public servants who said the then government services minister had fought their efforts to stop the scheme. They claimed Robert had dismissed the solicitor general’s damning legal opinion as just one opinion and alleged he’d refused to apologise to victims. Robert denied this.
We unpicked one of the more extraordinary days at the royal commission here:
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Hydrogen and the ‘naturalness’ of gas to feature at energy ministers’ gathering
Energy and climate ministers are meeting in Devonport on the northern Tassie coast today in their regular chinwag.
As we close in on halfway through winter, they will be getting an update on market conditions. Thankfully, we haven’t seen anything like last winter’s energy crisis, and as days lengthen and typically windier spring months approach we might well avoid a repeat (even with the loss of Liddell power station in April).
Anyway, ministers will consider the review of Australia’s hydrogen strategy, a plan launched in 2019 by then energy minister Angus Taylor and led by the then chief scientist Alan Finkel.
The federal energy minister, Chris Bowen, has released the “Hydrogen geadstart” consultation paper this morning. As we already know, there is no support for hydrogen to be created from fossil fuels, and it’s likely that the beneficiaries of the government’s $2bn will be a couple of big projects. (See more here on the industry’s prospects.)
“The $2bn hydrogen headstart program puts Australia on course for up to a 1,000MW of electrolyser capacity by 2030,” Bowen said, noting the largest electrolyser projects reaching final investment decision so far are just one to 10MW in scale.
“Hydrogen headstart is a key step towards unlocking an estimated $300bn private investment in Australian renewable hydrogen,” he said in a statement this morning.
As we reported, ministers will be asked by the ACT’s Shane Rattenbury to consider ditching “natural” from how it describes methane in the national energy law.
We’ll see how that change goes down in gas producing states, but it is fair to say the most natural thing about gas would be to leave it in the ground. Methane often flies under the radar compared with carbon dioxide but its short-term global heating potential isn’t far behind CO2, as the IPCC notes:
According to @IPCC_CH, methane's contribution to global heating over the decade to 2019 was more than half that of carbon dioxide. pic.twitter.com/xV1xpqtm6v
— @phannam@mastodon.green (@p_hannam) July 6, 2023
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The costs for legal representation at the robodebt royal commission:
$795,053 for Christian Porter, the social services minister from 2015 to 2017.
$518,064 for Michael Keenan, the human services minister from December 2017 to May 2019.
$477,528 for Scott Morrison, the social services minister in 2014 and 2015.
$240,520 for Marise Payne, the human services minister from September 2013 to September 2015.
$183,835 for Stuart Robert, the human services minister from September 2015 to February 2016, then government services minister from 2019 to 2021.
$112,696 for Dan Tehan, the former social services minister.
$98,935 for Malcolm Turnbull, the former prime minister.
$5,626 for Anne Ruston, the minister for families and social services from 2019 to 2022.
Taxpayers forked out $2.5m in legal expenses for eight former Coalition ministers.
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Taxpayers paid $2.5m in legal expenses for Coalition representation at robodebt commission
Taxpayers forked out $2.5m in legal expenses for eight former Coalition ministers, including two prime ministers, to be represented in the robodebt royal commission, with almost half a million for Scott Morrison.
Ahead of the release of the royal commission report on Friday, the Attorney General’s Department has revealed the cost of legal assistance as of 24 May this year, including that the former attorney general and social services minister Christian Porter incurred legal bills totalling $795,053.
The figures do not include any costs from the final month and a half of the commission, meaning the final bill is likely to exceed $2.5m. Former ministers are eligible for the cost of responding to notices of potential adverse findings or referrals, if any were received by them.
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Robodebt royal commission report handed to governor general
Commissioner Catherine Holmes has just handed over the 900-page robodebt royal commission report to the governor general, David Hurley, at Parliament House in Canberra.
That report will be tabled in parliament before it is released to the public later today.
More to come.
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International passenger processing system outage fixed, ABF says
The system outage at international airport check-in points across the nation that caused delays for passengers has been fixed, AAP reports.
The provider of the Australian Border Force’s advanced passenger processing systems across all major city airports experienced an IT outage yesterday. Border force officials had to manually check in passengers during the outage, lengthening wait times at Melbourne and Sydney airports.
Today, an ABF spokesperson confirmed the outage had been resolved and the service provider would monitor the system’s stability.
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Scott Morrison: welfare cop
While the robodebt royal commission is yet to hand down its findings, former prime minister Scott Morrison has been a central figure in the story so far.
In 2015, Morrison was social services minister and encouraged public servants to develop the program. He was treasurer when the program was expanded and prime minister when it faced a legal challenge in 2019. Morrison told the royal commission officials never warned him the scheme was unlawful, which he said was “distressing”.
Morrison was also asked in hearings about describing himself as the “welfare cop” in early 2015, rhetoric which some claimed in commission hearings may have influenced the public service to go ahead with the robodebt proposal.
You can read more about that here:
Queensland bans mobile phones in state schools
The Queensland government has banned mobile phones from all state schools, starting from next year. The state’s education minister, Grace Grace, is asked why the ban has taken so long on ABC TV this morning.
“95% of our schools have already got restrictions or ban in place,” she says. “18% of those don’t cover the lunchtime periods.”
From term one in 2024, the ban will be consistent, covering lunch periods as well. The guidelines to be set are being worked on with the NSW education minister, Prue Car.
… you want to make sure that [mobile phones] are [put] away for the day and I think that makes it easy. Once you store them away, they are away for the day now and we want to make sure it is a uniform approach. Sometimes on break times we want kids to enjoy physical activity, each other’s company. Sometimes mobile phones can be an issue there.
It is consistent now across the states and territories … I always call for a consistent national approach, and we were able to agree on that yesterday.
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Robodebt: the anatomy of a five-year, billion-dollar scandal
Over 46 days of hearings, the robodebt royal commission heard from politicians, public servants, whistleblowers, advocates and victims about what a judge had already called a “shameful chapter”.
Victims told of financial suffering, mental health effects, and the frustration, anger and hopelessness of coming up against an opaque government system designed for budget savings, not fairness.
The evidence pointed to serious failings and the commission heard claims of possible deception, collusion and cover up within the public service.
When the commission ended its public hearings after five months, Guardian Australia prepared this long-read on how the scandal came to be:
Many of the questions posed here will likely be answered in commissioner Catherine Holmes’s report, delivered this morning.
We’ll have more on this as it unfolds over the course of the day.
Bill Shorten confirms reason royal commission sought reporting extension
Earlier this morning the NDIS minister, Bill Shorten, confirmed the robodebt royal commission’s Justice Catherine Holmes sought an extension to her reporting deadline so she could potentially refer cases to the federal anti-corruption watchdog, which was established a day after the initial reporting deadline of 31 June.
Shorten was asked on ABC TV: “Is it your understanding [that] Commissioner Holmes sought an extension to her reporting deadlines, so she could report once the national anticorruption body was set up and then should have the avenue of potentially referring cases to the anticorruption commission?”
He confirmed: “That is correct, for my understanding.”
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Bill Shorten: robodebt commission report will be a ‘vindication’ for victims and their families
The NDIS minister, Bill Shorten, says today “is a vindication” for victims of the robodebt scandal with the royal commission report being handed down. He told ABC’s RN this morning:
The heart of this story today is the fact that real people unlawfully had debt notices … raised against them by the most powerful institution in Australia, the commonwealth government.
Some people “were very vulnerable already,” and the debt was “a major triggering event in their lives,” Shorten says.
Two of these people, after receiving robodebt notices, subsequently took their own lives that I’m aware of.
Today is not the day [their mothers] want. What they really want is their sons to be alive.
But as people who have followed the royal commission, they’ve been so impressed by [Commissioner] Justice Holmes … she has rebuilt their trust in institutions, they found her processes … [and] her demeanor to be forensic.
So for them today is a vindication, because essentially they were gaslighted by the previous leadership and so it is vindication.
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There isn’t a problem with the quality of teachers, but with a tougher teaching environment and lack of adequate support, says professor Mark Scott on ABC RN this morning:
“It’s a very demanding and challenging job … If you talk to teachers as I do they’ll say it’s never been more demanding, it’s never been tougher,” Scott says. He is the University of Sydney vice-chancellor and chair of the Teacher Education Expert Panel.
“And so when we think about initial teacher education, we’ve got to think about how do we lay the best foundation possible for graduating teachers.”
One of the challenges we’re seeing across the country is great teacher shortages … COVID brought that timetable forward.
Classrooms are more complex, there is a great diversity of needs across the classroom, and as society changes a lot of teachers and education ministers are testifying about the impact of technology in classrooms.
There’s some evidence that those people doing courses don’t feel as equipped as they need to be to deal with the complexity in the classroom.
I think it is a more demanding and more complex job than ever before … We need to do a better job at helping teachers.
Labor rejects opposition demands to consider nuclear power
The opposition demands the federal government consider establishing a nuclear power network, again – and the federal government rejects the prospect, again.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, is due to make a speech today that will reportedly say the government is “mesmerised” by alternative energy sources such as solar panels, and should consider building small nuclear reactors, AAP reports.
“If nuclear power is so prohibitively expensive, why are more than 50 countries investing in it, including those with smaller economies than Australia?” Dutton will say, according to the Australian Financial Review.
Conveniently, the energy minister is reluctant to mention the costs of storage and transmission when he talks about renewables being cheaper.
Labor frontbencher Jason Clare said the government does not support nuclear power.
“They cost about $400bn bucks and take years and years to build,” he told Nine’s Today Show.
Follow the money … you can see what’s needed here – as all the old coal-fired power stations shut down, they need to be replaced by something and what the private sector’s doing is investing in the cleanest form of new energy and that’s renewable energy.
You can read more from our foreign affairs and defence correspondent Daniel Hurst:
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Education ministers agree in principle to reform teacher training
Education ministers have agreed in principle to major reforms to how teachers are trained, following the release of the report of the teacher education expert panel.
The panel, led by Prof Mark Scott of the University of Sydney, found that:
Too many beginning teachers have reported that they felt they needed to be better equipped for the challenges they faced in the classroom on starting their teaching careers. Sadly, too many fail to complete their studies or stay in the profession long enough to flourish. Nearly four in 10 [initial teacher education] students leave their course within six years of commencing their degree and around one in five beginning teachers leaves within the first three years of entering the teaching profession.
Federal, state and territory education ministers met on Thursday and agreed to:
Develop national practical teaching guidelines, and amend accreditation standards and procedures by the end of 2023.
Ensure core content is embedded in all programs before the end of 2025.
The report made other recommendations including:
Drawing a stronger link between performance and funding of initial teacher education, including establishing an ITE quality assurance board to monitor the quality and consistency of ITE programs and their outcomes.
Enhancing postgraduate teacher education for mid-career entrants, including developing and scaling high-quality mid-career programs, such as paid, employment-based pathways
The education minister, Jason Clare, said:
A lot of teachers tell me they did not feel like they were prepared for the classroom when they finished university. That their university course didn’t prepare them well enough to teach things like literacy and numeracy and manage classroom behaviour, and that prac wasn’t up to scratch. This report is about fixing that.”
Scott said:
Teachers have the biggest impact on student learning in the classroom. We want to make sure that all beginning teachers learn and can apply the teaching practices which work best.
The panel’s recommendations will support beginning teachers to successfully transition into the profession and will make them more likely to stay in teaching. The recommendations will make a crucial contribution to addressing workforce shortages.
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Why did Australian marsupials never fully cross over into Asia?
Here is why Australia’s marsupials (like the koala and kangaroo) never made it to Asia, from AAP.
An invisible boundary exists separating Australia, New Guinea and parts of Indonesia from continental South-East Asia – called Wallace’s Line. It marks an uneven distribution of Australian and Asian creatures.
“If you travel to Borneo, you won’t see any marsupial mammals, but if you go to the neighbouring island of Sulawesi you will,” says Alex Skeels from the Australian National University, investigating this in an ANU and ETH Zurich study.
Australia, on the other hand, lacks mammals typical of Asia, such as bears, tigers or rhinos.
45m years ago, a change in ancient plate tectonics led to a continental collision – causing an uneven distribution of animal species.
At some point in earth’s timeline, Australia broke away from Antarctica and over millions of years drifted north, causing it to crash into Asia.
That collision gave birth to the volcanic islands that we now know as Indonesia.
The islands of Indonesia were like “stepping stones” for animals and plants that originated in Asia to reach New Guinea and northern Australia, and vice versa.
But when the great southern land made its break from Antarctica, there was a climatic shift – global cooling and drying of the continents resulted in mass extinction events around the world.
The climate on the Indonesian islands remained relatively warm, wet and tropical. Asian animals were already comfortable with such conditions, which helped them settle in Australia.
The same couldn’t be said for Australia’s wildlife.
They had evolved in a cooler and increasingly drier climate over time and were therefore less successful in gaining a foothold on the tropical islands compared to the creatures migrating from Asia.
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Psychologists warn halving of Medicare sessions has left people struggling
The Australian Association of Psychologists (AAPi) has warned that cuts to the number of subsidised psychology sessions has led to some psychologists reducing the number of Medicare-related clients, despite long waiting lists.
In a statement published on Friday, AAPi said in the six months since the Medicare sessions were reduced from 20 to 10, psychologists are increasingly reporting their clients are struggling.
Gold Coast psychologist and member of AAPi, Dr Leanne McGregor, works with Indigenous and marginalised young mothers who often cannot afford to pay for sessions and said spacing the 10 sessions out over a year was proving challenging.
She has a waiting list of 10 weeks for her next available appointment and 32 people on her books in line for an earlier appointment.
I sometimes offer my services for free if they are in crisis and at risk.
As a result of the session cuts and the Medicare rebate remaining low, I am now no longer able to take on as many clients.
AAPi executive director Tegan Carrison said the federal government had not provided adequate alternatives since the Better Access psychology sessions were cut. AAPi is urging people to write to their local MP about the issue.
“Alongside the ongoing cost of living crisis, the situation is not going to improve,” Carrison said.
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Happy Friday – and thank you to Martin Farrer for manning the blog.
I’m Rafqa Touma, and I’ll be with you on the blog this morning. If you see anything you don’t want us to miss, let me know on Twitter or Threads.
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Global shares rattled over fears of higher rates
It could be a choppy day on the ASX today after shares on global markets took a bit of a dive on concerns about more rate hikes.
The ASX is currently tracking for a fall of 2.55% according to the futures market.
Overnight the FTSE100 index fell to its lowest point of the year.
Here’s our full story:
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City of Sydney tops NSW Homelessness table
A recent rise in evictions is sending more people on to the streets, as data from NSW Homelessness reveals the councils struggling the most with the housing crisis across the state.
The interactive Homelessness NSW dashboard is the first of its kind and pulls together 50 data sources, including Corelogic and ABS data, to map localised statistics on homelessness, housing supply, income support payments and domestic violence rates.
It shows the City of Sydney has the most people experiencing homelessness (3,598), followed by Canterbury-Bankstown (2,696) and the Inner West Council (2,551).
The proportion of renter households in rental stress – defined as paying more than 30% of income in rent – is highest in Fairfield (48.2 %), followed by Byron Shire (47.9%), Tweed Shire (45.4%), and Nambucca and Bellingen on the mid-north coast (both 45%).
And the major driver of homelessness has become the housing crisis. Out of the 24,700 clients who accessed specialist homeless services in March, 9,500 listed evictions, followed by 8,000 listing domestic violence and 7,000 listing housing stress as the top reasons they were now homeless.
Homelessness NSW boss Trina Jones said:
This tool does not just show the extent of the state’s homelessness; it shows exactly how much public housing is needed and where and the risk in those areas.
We have the data and solutions; now, we need to act together across all levels of government, community and business to ensure everyone has a safe home and the support they need.
This is the first time these available data sources have been brought together to show the drivers and experiences of homelessness at the local level.
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Welcome
Good morning and welcome to the live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer here to ease you into the swing of things before my colleague Rafqa Touma grabs the controls.
The big event today will be the release of the robodebt royal commission report at 11am, followed by a media conference at noon and a chance to ask questions. We’ll have full coverage. We’ll hear from victims for whom today will be at least partly about closure and vindication, and while it could be a day to make former prime minister Scott Morrison squirm, the public service whistleblower who exposed the scheme just wants to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And if you want to refresh your memory, here are six things to watch out for today.
State and territory energy ministers are meeting in Tasmania today to discuss an overhaul of the country’s hydrogen strategy, the treatment of emissions from the Beetaloo gas field and whether to change the treatment of “natural gas” in the national gas law. The ACT energy minister, Shane Rattenbury, will propose the gas law be updated to replace “natural gas” with “fossil gas” or “methane” to more accurately reflect the environmental impact of the fuel. We’ll have more on this story as it happens.
We’ll also be hearing today from our Queensland team at the LNP’s annual conference in Brisbane. One of the main issues expected to be resolved today is the political future of the renegade Liberal senator Gerard Rennick amid a push to remove him from a winnable spot on the party’s Senate ticket.
