This zombie scandal will haunt the Libs, unless they eject Morrison

There’s one gesture that might restore broad public faith in the Liberal Party, according to a member of the Libs’ “family”.

“I cannot take them seriously as a political party until they expel Scott Morrison and Alan Tudge over robo-debt,” he told me.

These were not the words of a casual, disenchanted Liberal. They came from Rob Carlton, now a writer and actor, whose father Jim was a Fraser government minister, party general secretary and 17-year federal MP. Jim Carlton was not from a silver-spoon background; he was an Australian for whom Liberal values represented opportunity and fairness. Rob is not party political, but he believes strongly that a functioning democracy needs a functioning opposition.

Illustration by Dionne GainCredit:

For true Liberals as much as anyone else, whose hearts respond to Robert Menzies’ words at the first meeting of a party “of liberal thought which will work for social justice and security, for national power and national progress, and for the full development of the individual citizen”, robo-debt is the grossest betrayal. It was an illegal offence against its 400,000 direct victims, and an act of self-mutilation by the party.

The scheme, by which the Department of Human Services used “income averaging” obtained from Australian Taxation Office data to automate, impose and garnishee fictitious debts from welfare recipients between 2016 and 2020, is back in the news thanks to the SBS documentary The People vs Robodebt. Journalist Rick Morton’s book Mean Streak: A moral vacuum, a dodgy debt generator and a multi-billion-dollar government shakedown is also on the shortlist for this week’s Prime Minister’s Literary Award.

The harrowing evidence attempts to address what Michael Cordell, the producer of the documentary, described as a failure of the scandal to fully capture the public imagination. “Perhaps there’s an empathy deficit for people on welfare,” he said.

While the quest for justice remains unfinished and the scheme’s architects and executors are still to be held to account, robo-debt is a zombie scandal. It won’t go away. Last year, more than 1200 complaints forced the new National Anti-Corruption Commission to reverse course and investigate the six names kept secret in Justice Catherine Holmes’ royal commission report.

Alan Tudge and then-prime minister Scott Morrison at Parliament House in 2020. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Morrison was the social services minister who started the scheme, declaring himself “the new welfare cop on the beat” in 2015. Carriage for robo-debt was taken over with unconcealed vigour by Christian Porter, Alan Tudge and finally the keystone cop on the beat, Stuart Robert, who was pushed to close it down while Morrison was his party leader and prime minister. In 2020, Morrison offered an apology in conditional language – “I would apologise for any hurt or harm in the way that the government has dealt with that issue” – but it wasn’t until 2023 that the federal government passed a formal apology. After a royal commission, numerous other inquiries and legal cases, the government has offered a record $1.8 billion settlement, which may yet grow as more evidence surfaces in inquiries by the National Anti-Corruption Commission and the Australian Public Service Commission.

The saga is better told in books and documentaries than here, but as the Liberal Party wanders the wilderness in search of its soul, it might recognise the dark stain that robo-debt has left. Even if the party put its most favourable spin on Morrison’s slippery appearance at the Holmes royal commission, it must accept his admission of a lack of interest in whether robo-debt was legal. In an iteration of “I don’t hold a hose, mate”, Morrison said he relied on public servants to tell him whether it was illegal, and if they didn’t, inquiring about it wasn’t his business.

Whether Morrison and others acted criminally is yet to be determined, but the sheer immorality and cruelty of the scheme was in direct proportion to the enthusiasm of Morrison, Tudge and others in promoting it.

Former Centrelink compliance officer Colleen Taylor told the robo-debt royal commission that her agency was “stealing from its customers”.Credit:

Some Liberals might imagine how robo-debt might express their party’s values. At a stretch, “fiscal responsibility” is a Liberal selling point, and the scheme was sold as an on-brand action to safeguard taxpayer money. If that had actually happened, robo-debt might have some imaginable justification.

But it didn’t. Robo-debt was a spivvy, slick, slogan-driven lazy shortcut. It was illegal; it ignored due process; and it didn’t save money. Its costs are still growing. It spat on Australians. As The People vs Robodebt and much excellent journalism and whistleblower testimony have shown, it was those heroic government workers like Colleen Taylor, whose job it was to protect the public purse, who raised alarms about the illegality and inhumanity of the scheme. It did nothing but harm. And – if this is what mattered to those who supported it – it was a colossal waste of money. The new welfare cop beat up everyone it saw, rorted the payroll, cost billions in compo and left its own unpaid debts.

In no way did it express conservative or Menzies’ values. Right now, the Liberal Party’s attitude to robo-debt is to wait for it to disappear from memory. Similarly, its parliamentary party’s strategy is to hope to live long enough for the country to forget the Morrison government. Forgetting the past is a self-driven dagger into a conservative political party. Principal among the values of conservatism is continuity with the past. Today’s Liberal Party promotes connection only with an instantly confected nostalgia, a flag-waving emptiness. The actual past, it prefers to forget. Robo-debt, like the Morrison years in general, is treated like an embarrassing relative.

Expelling members from a political party is not difficult. The Liberal Party’s constitution details the powers and processes for expulsion, and the actions of Morrison and Tudge meet any standard required. Only a complaint is required to set the procedure in motion. Members have been forced to leave the party for offences that don’t bear comparison, in seriousness or scale, with what Holmes called the “crude and cruel mechanism” that was robo-debt.

Understandably, a party buried in personal and policy civil wars isn’t looking for another internal fight. But sooner or later, the Liberals will have to raise their eyes and see what Australia values. It might see a temperamentally conservative country that prizes its self-image of decency. As long as the Liberals ignore their complicity in robo-debt, they cannot be associated with decency in government, and they will be alienated from their own core values.

It’s hard, maybe impossible, to see the Liberals holding Morrison to account for robo-debt. A characteristic of their crisis is an absence of courage. To expel a former leader would be an act of unlikely bravery. But if prosecutions do follow the NACC and APSC inquiries, the Liberals may be pushed into expelling him anyway. To take the initiative and disassociate themselves from this disgraceful act, on the other hand, would signal widely and powerfully that they are a party to take seriously again. Outside their squalling bubble, it would be seen as a bold act of renewal and a reconnection with those of Menzies’ values that still resonate with, and appeal to, Australians. Only then, in the case of The People v Robo-debt, can the Liberals be on the side of the people.

Malcolm Knox is an author and a columnist.