Victim details time as ‘test case’ to robodebt royal commission

Five years after she’d received Centrelink payments, a woman had her entire tax return taken, but won it back, helping to bring down robodebt.

The woman who helped bring down the robodebt scheme has shared insights into the anxiety and stress she felt when she became a “test case”.

Deanna Amato contacted Victoria Legal Aid in early 2019 after she discovered her tax return had been garnisheed due to an alleged debt of approximately $3000.

On the fifth day of its fourth block, the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme heard Ms Amato had accessed Centrelink payments while studying, five years before she discovered the alleged debt.

She said the garnishing of her tax return indicated to her that she owed more, but that she knew that to be false.

She went on to become a “test case” against the Commonwealth government in the federal court in June 2019. Ultimately, later that year it was found the government had acted unlawfully when it raised her robodebt.

She had her debt wiped and not long after the scheme was disbanded.

It’s a decision Ms Amato said she has never regretted.

“I was very scared,” she said. “It gave me a bit of anxiety. It wasn’t an easy decision, but seeing the documents for myself, it seemed really obvious where the mistake happened, and I just felt like I was in the right place to do it because it was just so obvious.”

Deanna Amato – a victim of robodebt – appeared at the royal commission into the scheme on Friday.

Asked what was so obvious, Ms Amato said it had clearly been “averaged over the whole financial year”.

“Study usually starts at the beginning of the calendar year. I had been working for the first six months of that (financial) year, and then I’d stopped working full time to study,” she said.

“So it was really obvious that they’d averaged out over the whole year, rather than the six months I was actually only claiming Ausstudy.”

Ms Amato told the royal commission she had been privileged to be the test case, acknowledging that for some other victims of the robodebt scheme, things had been “much worse”.

In being a test case, Ms Amato became a benchmark against which the scheme’s unlawfulness was assessed.

She was recognised as such by Commissioner Catherine Holmes, who congratulated her on the “role you’ve played here”.

Rowan McRae from Victoria Legal Aid appeared on a panel with Ms Amato.

Acting chief executive of Victoria Legal Aid, Rowan McRae, said her department wasn’t aware of the true impact of the robodebt scheme until late 2016 and early 2017.

“And that was through clients coming to us for assistance with their robodebt matters; we saw a sharp increase in demand for our social security legal assistance service,” she told the royal commission.

“I think in January 2017 we saw a 500 per cent increase in the number of people accessing our web page on social security information.

“I think in the first seven working days of January, we had as many people coming through for advice on social security matters as in the whole of January the previous year.”

The fully automated system of sending out Centrelink letters had begun just months earlier, yet it took until 2019 for a “test case” to be put through the courts.

Ms Amato, who was a test case for the VLA, led the Australian government to admit its robodebt scheme was unlawful. Picture: Victoria Legal Aid

Ms McRae told the royal commission how VLA had first emailed then-human services minister Alan Tudge in late January 2017. When they hadn’t received a response two months later, they contacted department secretary Kathryn Campbell.

VLA had requested the data-matching protocol, under which the ATO PAYG data was being used for robodebt.

They received a response from Ms Campbell in May who told them the documents were not “publicly available”.

The scheme was not scrapped until 2019, after Ms Amato had her day in court – and won.

Ms McRae said the oversight mechanisms had clearly failed in “the fact that the scheme was able to continue for such a long time, until Ms Amato’s matter was finalised”.

Miles Browne from Victoria Legal Aid was also on Friday’s panel.

Miles Browne, also from the VLA, used his final few minutes at the royal commission on Friday to detail the plight of another woman who had used their service after being impacted by robodebt.

Quoting the woman, he read: “I was grappling with homelessness, severe trauma and couldn’t work. Taking money out of my payment was the straw that broke the camel’s back”.

“This all happened at a time I needed support. I was trying to connect with housing and mental health services.

“Instead, I was treated like a criminal. It felt like no one in government wanted to help me and instead I had to fight them in circumstances where I had no power, no control, and no ability to fight back.”

The Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme continues.

Originally published as Victim details time as ‘test case’ to robodebt royal commission