The consulting firm PwC will repay more than $800,000 it pocketed for work it completed on the robodebt scheme and has confirmed a partner involved in the work is no longer employed by the embattled company.
The firm’s acting CEO, Kristin Stubbins, confirmed that it would repay the $853,859 it was paid by the Department of Human Services to review the scheme.
Robodebt was designed to recover supposed overpayments from welfare recipients going back to the financial year 2010-11.
The scheme relied heavily on a process known as “income averaging” to assess income and a person’s entitlement to a benefit.
According to findings of a royal commission into the scheme delivered on Friday, it was “cruel and crude” and “essentially unfair, treating many people as though they had received income at a time when they had not”.
Stubbins said in a statement: “Following the findings of the Royal Commission review into the Robodebt scheme, we do not feel it would be appropriate to retain the $853,859 fee for work carried out for the DHS on this matter.
“We have made representations with the Minister’s Office and will take the necessary steps for these fees to be returned.”
The planned repayment was first reported by Nine newspapers.
The commission found PwC was contacted in January 2017 by Kathryn Campbell, the then secretary of the department, as she had concerns about the delivery of targets under the scheme, and wanted an external review of its processes.
An engagement letter prepared the following month noted that PwC would provide the department with a final report regarding the scheme and would conduct “an independent review of the compliance and fraud activities of … DHS, culminating in identification of areas for improvement, together with a high-level implementation plan”.
But while it provided the department with an eight-slide PowerPoint presentation, it never provided it with the 100-page report, which the commission found “identified, in detail, problems with the system that were not, or at least not in the same level of detail, contained in the presentation” and “confirmed, in writing, that the Scheme as it existed was a failure”.
Jason McNamara, who worked in senior DHS roles including acting deputy secretary, accepted before the commission that had the report found its way into the public domain, it would have led to adverse media attention.
“Well, I think at the time we were the story in the news,” he told the commission. “This would have just poured a whole heap of petrol on it.”
The commission noted that “the lack of contemporaneous records about how this aspect of the engagement came to an end is concerning” but noted that it had received evidence Campbell spoke to a member of the firm and informed them that the presentation would satisfy the “report” aspect of their contract.
Stubbins said in a statement that a partner who had provided evidence to the commission no longer worked at the firm, but did not identify them.
“Like all Australians, we have found the contents of this report deeply distressing,” she said.
“For PwC’s part, we acknowledge the findings of the commission in relation to PwC’s work for the DHS in relation to Robodebt.
“A PwC partner who gave oral evidence to the Royal Commission was asked to exit the partnership and is no longer with the firm.”
The implication of the firm in the robodebt saga comes amid ongoing concerns regarding its government consulting business.
