Former Coalition Minister Stuart Robert fronts robodebt royal commission

A former minister who played a key role in the illegal robodebt scheme has made several bombshell revelations, including that he made false statements on TV.

Ex-Coalition minister Stuart Robert has admitted he knowingly misrepresented robodebt despite his personal misgivings about the illegal debt recovery program, claiming he had “no choice” but to defend government policy.

The former government services minister fronted the royal commission into the botched Centrelink compliance scheme on Thursday, where he revealed he had gone on television to defend the program in 2019 despite believing it could be unlawful.

Mr Robert said he took “absolute responsibility” for the illegal scheme, conceding he had made false statements about robodebt in the past, including that the debt calculated in more than 99 per cent of cases was correct.

He said he made the claims about the program having such a small margin of error because he was “a cabinet minister” and “that’s what we do”, even though he had “a massive personal misgiving” about the use of income averaging to calculate alleged welfare debts.

“Having come from tax, tax says black is white all the time; I’ve watched governments do extraordinary things,” Mr Robert told the hearing in Brisbane.

Ex-Minister Stuart Robert has fronted the robodebt royal commission in Brisbane. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

Mr Robert is considered a key player in the robodebt policy, which was introduced in 2015 and discontinued in 2019 after it was found to be unlawful.

Robodebt was an automated method of calculating welfare recipients’ alleged debts by matching their reported pay with their supposed annual incomes, which were estimated by averaging data from the Australian Taxation Office.

The program falsely accused thousands of people of owing the government money and ended up costing the commonwealth nearly $1.8bn in written-off debts and compensation paid to victims who mounted a class-action lawsuit.

Mr Robert took over the human services portfolio in 2019 as robodebt victims launched their class-action against the federal government.

He announced in November of that year the program would be “refined”, but he did not apologise and claimed only a “small cohort” of people were affected by it.

Mr Robert told the royal commission on Thursday he rejected in the “strongest possible terms” earlier testimony from a top public servant that he didn’t take legal advice on the robodebt scheme seriously.

Former human services department secretary Renee Leon told the commission on Tuesday Mr Robert dismissed the advice the solicitor-general prepared in 2019 during the class-action lawsuit that found robodebt was unlawful.

The program falsely accused thousands of people of owing the government money and ended up costing the commonwealth nearly $1.8bn in written-off debts and compensation paid to victims who mounted a class-action lawsuit. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

Prof Leon remembered Mr Robert telling her: “Well, secretary, legal advice is just advice” and that the department should “double down” instead of apologising to customers and admitting the errors.

But Mr Robert rejected this and claimed he took the solicitor-general’s advice to then-prime minister Scott Morrison “within hours” of receiving it in November 2019.

Mr Robert also said his department did not provide him with earlier advice from the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) highlighting problems with robodebt when he became Minister in May 2019.

He sensationally suggested if his secretary knew the department had that advice and hadn’t told him, then she may have committed an offence.

He claimed the first he heard of the AGS advice was in a meeting with his department in July of that year.

Former human services Minister Marise Payne is expected to appear before the commission for a second time later on Thursday.