Robodebt royal commission told ‘frustrating’ public servants gave ‘untrue’ advice

Public servants tasked with implementing the controversial Robodebt scheme provided “untrue” advice and were generally “frustrating” to deal with a former minister has told a royal commission in Brisbane.

Public servants tasked with ­implementing the controversial Robodebt scheme provided “untrue” advice and were generally “frustrating” to deal with, former federal minister Christian Porter has told a royal commission.

The former social services minister appeared at the royal commission into the unlawful Centrelink debt recovery scheme, which ran from 2015-2019 and culminated with a $1.8bn settlement to hundreds of thousands of victims.

Mr Porter, who was responsible for the department that designed the Robodebt scheme between 2015 and 2017, faced a grilling at the Brisbane-based inquiry on Thursday immediately after former colleague and human services minister Alan Tudge.

The pair were probed on their knowledge of the fairness and ­legality of the automated welfare recovery scheme – which illegally garnished $720m from 380,000 victims – as the royal commission works to establish how and why the program and ensuing scandal came to be.

Former social services minister Christian Porter fronts the Robodebt Royal Commission. NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

Mr Porter confirmed that in 2019, as attorney-general, he had asked the Department of Human Services to provide legal advice on the Robodebt scheme, but never received any information.

Mr Porter said it wasn’t the first time he had been failed by the department, which he described as “frustrating” to deal with.

He said in hindsight, it was clear they had provided him “untrue” and “inaccurate” information when he filled in for Mr Tudge at the end of 2016 into the New Year.

But Mr Porter admitted that, at the time, he fundamentally did not understand “precisely” how debts were issued and completed under the scheme. Mr Porter, under ­questioning by Senior Counsel ­Assisting Justin Greggery KC, ­denied that pressure to provide savings for the budget made the program difficult to ditch.

Earlier in the day, Mr Tudge also denied he was “concerned about the dollars” the Robodebt scheme would rake in for the government, despite documents obtained by the inquiry revealing his office had queried the cost of ­cancelling the program.

Former minister for Human Services Alan Tudge fronts the Robodebt Royal Commission. NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

The royal commission was told that as the furore over the scheme hit an initial peak in 2017, Mr Tudge’s most senior political staffer asked the department what the impact of reverting to the old ­manual system of debt recovery would be to the budget.

Mr Tudge’s office was told the projected saving of $1.2bn to the budget that financial year would be cut to $150m.

It has been established that several welfare recipients caught up in the Robodebt scheme had died by suicide, with Mr Tudge confirming he had ordered investigations into the deaths of two people.

But his concern was around whether the wording of initial letters from the government was a factor of their distress, rather than the overarching anxieties and fears of being informed a sizeable debt was hanging over them.

Mr Greggery queried why Mr Tudge did not think a single case of someone taking their lives due to the stress of what was effectively just a “budget-saving measure” in the eyes of the government warranted a full investigation into the merits of the scheme.

The commission, helmed by Catherine Holmes AC SC, ends its third of four blocks of hearings on Friday.

Lifeline 13 11 14, Beyond Blue 1300 224 635, Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467