Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hopes to be able to release names in sealed chapter of robodebt report
Legal advice is being sought about publicly identifying the people caught up in the illegal and “disastrous” robodebt scheme.
The federal government is seeking legal advice as to whether it can name the individuals referenced for civil and criminal prosecution in a sealed chapter of the report into the robodebt scheme.
Royal commissioner Catherine Holmes delivered her report and the recommendations to the Governor-General on Friday after previously extending the reporting deadline to coincide with the newly minted federal corruption watchdog.
The report, now tabled online, is the culmination of nine weeks of public hearings, involving hundreds of witnesses and thousands of tendered statements.
In three volumes and totalling 990 pages, the report includes 57 recommendations separate to the bound report.
Ms Holmes was due to hand her submissions to that government one week earlier, but Government Services Minister Bill Shorten said it was his understanding that she had sought an extension to coincide with the opening of the National Anti Corruption Commission, which launched on July 1.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government was getting the “proper legal advice” as to whether the sealed section of the report could be made public.
“It would certainly be my preference unless there is some legal impediment to it, but I’ll seek proper advice on that,” Mr Albanese said.
“I haven’t yet received advice from the Attorney-General’s Department, from the appropriate authorities on that.
“It’s pretty clear that the correspondence from the royal commissioner, Catherine Holmes, makes it clear in her wording of her letter to the government, it’s not about people being in the sealed section remaining sealed forever.
“In her words to read from the letter, ‘I recommend that this additional chapter remain sealed and not be tabled with the rest of the report so as not to prejudice the conduct of any future civil action or criminal prosecutions’.
“My view is that that clearly is saying that is the period in which this information is being kept for the purpose of not prejudicing that action.”
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.
After four years of operating, robodebt was discontinued in 2019 after being found to be unlawful. By this point, it had unlawfully claimed nearly $2bn from more than 400,000 people and had been linked to several suicides.
Former prime minister Scott Morrison is under the microscope for his role in implementing the scheme as social services minister at the time.
Mr Morrison is holidaying with his family in Europe and was pictured outside a restaurant on July 4.
Criminal and civil referrals’
In the report, Ms Holmes said she had made referrals of information in respect to “a number of individuals to four different authorities”, but would not name them.
“I do not propose to name the entities to which I have made referrals because it would only lead to speculation about who had been referred where, which would almost certainly be wrong,” she wrote.
In her letter to the Governor-General earlier, she said the sealed section had been provided to the NACC, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Public Service commissioner, and the Law Society of the ACT.
Mr Albanese said he had not seen the sealed section of the report, but the head of his department had a copy, and he would make further assessments as to the next step in dealing with potential staff disciplinary actions.
“They are empowered, of course, to take action, including the potential suspension as an act to ensure proper processes,” he said.
“But you wouldn’t want conclusions to not be able to be reached because of trying to get something in a five-minute timeframe.
“This has gone on for a very long period of time.
“My government, just as the whole robodebt lesson I think is, proper processes and procedures matter and it matters to my government.
Social Services Minister Bill Shorten added that the due process must occur and legal advice must be sought before the government could take the next step.
“There are bodies who are now being asked with a brief of evidence to look at these matters,” Mr Shorten said.
“There will be accountability.
“But I have to say one of the big lessons of robodebt is if you do things without proper process, you might end up inadvertently letting off some of the very people for whom we want accountability.”
Mr Shorten said the government would assess whether it was possible to set up a taskforce to handle the recommendations.
“That’s crucial. Accountability is very much on the mind of the Albanese government,” he said.
“We want to do it the right way so there is real accountability, not the wrong way.”
Questions that ‘need answering’
The report will seek to answer key questions of victims and the Labor government as to why legal advice was ignored; whether there was a cover up or a mistake; why the Coalition didn’t act earlier; and whether there would be any referrals to the National Anti Corruption Commission.
Mr Shorten said he hoped Friday was a day of “vindication” for the victims, and the families of victims who had taken their lives as a result of the unlawful automated debt collecting system.
“For those (mothers) and others who were not able to get jobs, for people under stress of having to fight their own government in court, for the advocates who fought so hard, for the lawyers in Victorian legal aid and the class action who were the heart and soul in overturning this bad system … today is hopefully some vindication,” Mr Shorten told ABC News.
“And I think everyone who watched the royal commission – the families and victims – have universally expressed their support for commissioner Catherine Holmes, her no-nonsense approach in getting to the heart of matters … her intolerance for rubbish and spin has been of great comfort to people put through an unlawful scheme by the previous government.”
Mr Shorten said there should be accountability for any person found to be responsible for playing a part in the scheme.
Mr Shorten said without wanting to prejudice any “subsequent court actions or criminal matters” that may arise out of the findings, the Coalition had “kept the freight train of misery going” and “somebody has got to be responsible”.
“I was appalled as I listened to evidence, the number of times Coalition ministers said ‘I don’t know, I can’t remember’. This is government – it was exposed at its worst.”
Former government in the headlights
Ministers responsible for the scheme at the time – Alan Tudge, Christian Porter and Stuart Robert – have all quit parliament, while Mr Morrison, who was briefly the minister responsible, is still an MP.
Mr Morrison will not be in the country as the report is handed down, as he is travelling in Europe with his family after appearing at a series of engagements around the AUKUS submarine deal in the UK in late June.
“Following his formal visit to the UK, Mr Morrison will be taking some time to spend with his family, who will accompany him to the UK, on a private vacation overseas during the parliamentary break and school holiday period,” his office said in a statement ahead of the trip.
Earlier, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said he would “wait and see” what the report had to say but accused the government of politicising the release of the report to coincide with the Fadden by-election next weekend, triggered by Mr Robert’s resignation.
“We’re a week out from the by-election, and the government is trying to squeeze every political drop,” he told Channel 9 on Friday.
The final July 7 reporting date for the commission was set on May 11, a week before Mr Robert resigned.
Pressed further on whether the Coalition was prepared for the “ugly” findings anticipated, Mr Dutton conceded there were problems but wouldn’t pre-empt the report.
Instead, he sought to justify the processes in place in the welfare system during the tense interview, where he was reminded that people had taken their lives as a result of robodebt.
“The objective of any government is to make sure that people who have been overpaid through the payment system reclaim that money, that happens every day in the welfare system,” he said.
“If there are breakdowns in the system, which clearly there were, then we will look at the recommendations.
“There’s no question there were problems. We will wait to see what the inquiry has to say.”
‘Never again’: PM’s pledge
Mr Albanese said the government wanted the details of how the “disastrous scheme” was allowed to not just be created but continued “after it was known to be illegal for some period of time”.
“It was wrong, it was illegal, it should never have happened,” he told ABC Radio.
“And the important thing is that it never happens again. This was a human tragedy with real consequences for people over a long period of time.”
Mr Albanese said it was open to the royal commission to recommend action, including potential referrals to the NACC.
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