On Friday the royal commission into robodebt handed down its damning findings into the scheme. Here’s what you need to know.
What was the royal commission investigating?
The commission was established last year to investigate the federal government scheme known as robodebt, which 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.
Catherine Holmes SC was asked to investigate how and why the scheme was created, designed and implemented, and who was responsible; how risks and concerns about it were dealt with and how complaints and challenges were managed by the government; the use of third-party debt collectors; and the human and economic impacts of the scheme.
There were 3,030 hours of hearings held with 115 witnesses, with more than 5,050 pages of transcripts. More than 10,000 exhibits were tendered.
What did it find?
The commission’s 900-page report released on Friday found the “cruel and crude” scheme was “devised without regard to the social security law” using an averaging process to estimate welfare recipients’ income in a manner that “was essentially unfair, treating many people as though they had received income at a time when they had not”.
Holmes accused the architects of robodebt of “an obliviousness to, or worse a callous disregard, of the fact that many welfare recipients had neither the means nor the ability to negotiate an online system” to provide evidence of their income dating back five years.
An unknown number of key figures have been referred for civil and criminal charges, although the names are in a sealed chapter of the report that has not been released publicly.
Robodebt had “disastrous effects” including “families struggling to make ends meet receiving a debt notice at Christmas, young people being driven to despair by demands for payment, and, horribly, an account of a young man’s suicide”, the report said.
Who has been implicated?
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. It also damns Alan Tudge, who was human services minister in 2017 when the robodebt scheme was under scrutiny.
Holmes directly criticised Morrison in her report for not making proper inquiries in his role as social services minister about why his department went back on its 2015 suggestion that income averaging required legislative change.
The commission all but rejected Robert’s evidence that he attempted to end the scheme as soon as possible and had serious concerns about income averaging.
It found 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.”
Holmes found that Tudge was “not open to considering any significant alteration, or cessation, of processes underlying those fundamental features” and 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”.
What did the report recommend?
There were 57 recommendations in the report.
These included that a body should be set up to monitor automatic decision-making processes, that Services Australia should establish a debt-recovery management policy, that the government should review the structure of the social services portfolio and the status of Services Australia, and changes to the Freedom of Information Act so that the description of a cabinet document can no longer justify it remaining confidential.
It also recommended that Services Australia should design policies with an emphasis on recipients, which also shouldn’t reinforce feelings of stigma associated with government support; that consideration should be given to the vulnerabilities of recipients who could be affected by compliance programs; and that a new legal framework is needed for the use of automation in government services, with a clear path for review by those affected by related decisions.
What happens next?
Some of the people criticised in the report are yet to comment publicly, so it is unclear if they dispute the findings.
Morrison rejected the findings and said 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”.
“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,” he said.
Robert says he has “not received a notice of inclusion in the ‘sealed section’ and I understand they have all gone out” meaning he is unlikely to be among the people referred for investigation.
Tudge has made similar comments, saying he had not received notification of any referral and “my legal team has not identified any basis of which any civil or criminal prosecution could successfully be made against me”.
Those who are criticised in the report will also not necessarily be subject to the civil and criminal referrals that are included in the sealed chapter.
Those referrals themselves could be expected to take months to investigate, and the nature of them may not be known until the individuals who have been implicated are charged, should such prosecutions occur.
But the report does note that “on the evidence before the commission, elements of the tort of misfeasance in public office appear to exist” which points to the possible nature of the referrals.
The report also noted that “where litigation is not available, the Commonwealth does have a “Scheme for Compensation for Detriment caused by Defective Administration” (which would be a very euphemistic way of describing what happened in the robodebt scheme) where a person has suffered from defective administration and there is no legal requirement to make a payment. It is not appropriate to say any more on that front.” This appears to suggest those affected by the scheme may be able to make further claims against the government (noting, however, the robodebt class action settlement).
Bill Shorten, the minister for government services, made clear that while he understood why people may be frustrated with the referrals remaining private, he did not wish anything to compromise possible prosecutions.
– Australian Associated Press contributed to this report
