Shorten pushes Robodebt class action

Bill Shorten is championing a Labor push for a “Robodebt” class action against the Morrison government for thousands of Centrelink recipients.

Gordon Legal Senior Partner Peter Gordon and Shadow Minister for Government Services Bill Shorten. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

Bill Shorten is championing a Labor push for a “robodebt” class action against the Morrison government for thousands of Centrelink recipients who have been wrongly pursued for the recovery of past payments.

In his first key initiative from the opposition benches since the shock May 18 election defeat, Mr Shorten has enlisted Gordon Legal to challenge the legality of the government’s actions in the High Court. The High Court finding legal problems with the scheme could pave the way for compensation.

“We say today that robodebt is both unlawful and unethical in the way that it seeks to recover debts from people by requiring supposed debtors to disprove a data-matched debt,” Mr Shorten said.

“There is no lawful basis for the government to just assert debt on the part of citizens with a cursory algorithm and data matching and then say it’s up to the citizen.

“This will be a David and Goliath fight but the Labor Party fundamentally stands up for the underdog against the excesses and harm caused.”

Gordon Legal senior partner Peter Gordon said the legal basis for the challenge was the government gained financial benefit by wrongfully taking money from people: “Investigations reveal between $2m-$3m has been wrongly taken from people and, making it even worse, many were hit with penalties of 10 per cent on those amounts. These people are the least able to afford heavy-handed actions based on a system that used ATO averages that didn’t take into account individual circumstances. They have been unfairly disadvantaged and must be repaid with interest, penalties dropped and damages.”

NDIS Minister Stuart Robert said it was a political stunt: “If you are going to launch a class action before question time and you are serious about it, why wouldn’t you ask a single question of the government minister during question time?”