When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese officially announced a royal commission into the former government’s robodebt debt recovery program, there were mixed reactions from some who had been subjected to the unlawful scheme.
Phoebe is a trans woman from Western Australia and says she’s glad the government is willing to investigate the scheme and the previous government’s involvement. But she’s sceptical of what will come out of it.
“I’ve already been burnt by a class action that didn’t seek justice for us” she tells Crikey in a message. “It could just be an exercise in putting the matter to bed without actually reforming things.”
Last year a Federal Court judge awarded $1.8 billion to those who were wrongly pursued by the robodebt scheme. The government agreed to pay the compensation and return wrongly raised debts — but it did not admit liability.
More than $1.7 billion had been recovered from 433,000 people between 2015 and 2019 in a scheme that Justice Bernard Murphy labelled a “shameful chapter in the administration” of Australian welfare history.
The royal commission will report back in April 2023 about how the scheme was designed and implemented, who was responsible for it, and when concerns were raised.
A disability support pension recipient affected by the scheme, who asked to remain anonymous, echoes Phoebe’s cynicism. She doubts the royal commission will go beyond a robodebt post-mortem and create safeguards against similar treatment of vulnerable Australians in future.
“I’d like to hope but I just don’t expect justice, consequences or meaningful change is going to come out of this,” she says.
While Phoebe received her robodebt under the Liberal government, she points out that Labor implemented a digital matching process while in government and has resumed debt collection activities: “It’s clear this isn’t a move to ‘lay off the poors’ at all.”
Unemployment think tank the Antipoverty Centre welcomed the royal commission as a way to record and understand the experiences of those hurt by the scheme. But spokeswoman and welfare recipient Kristin O’Connell says, the retrospective shouldn’t distract from the “human tragedy” of the government’s welfare obligation system.
“People hurt by robodebt deserve a chance to be heard, to find out how this happened. But we can’t eat a royal commission,” she says. “The royal commission is an easy win for them, but they need to stop these harmful policies now, not just look at what happened in the past.”
