Stuart Robert confirms 7000 Australians will get robodebt refunds in multiple instalments, payments capped at $6999

Thousands of Australians owed a refund under the illegal robodebt scheme will not receive the full amount straight away.

Stuart Robert has urged those owed a robodebt refund to lodge their bank details with myGov. Picture: AAP

Thousands of Australians owed a refund under the illegal robodebt scheme will not receive the full amount straight away because the government’s system cannot repay more than $6999 at a time.

The revelation from Stuart Robert, who pledged that repayments would begin from July 13, came as the Government Services Minister conceded he made several mistakes in recent months as the COVID-19 crisis unfolded.

About 373,000 Australians are due to receive a robodebt refund, with the average repayment $1900.

The total to be refunded is $720m, after the Federal Court found a debt raised under the program was not lawful because it ­relied on income averaging.

Some 7000 Australians owed an amount more than $6999 will receive their refunds in multiple instalments.

Government sources said instalments would be paid on consecutive days, so someone owed $16,000 would be repaid the amount over three days.

“The system can’t pay out any more than $6999 in one instance as a check and balance,” Mr Robert told the National Press Club in Canberra.

“(Labor senator) Kim Carr was the minister when a human ser­vices staff … rather than putting in the amounts to be paid, put in the date, and $4m was sent to an individual. That was considered by the government of the day probably not the right thing. The Labor government of the day put in the check at that $6999.”

The government has identified 190,000 Australians who are owed a robodebt refund but still needs the details of a further 180,000 people before they will receive their money.

“We’ll reach out to say ‘Hey, come into myGov, update your bank details and as soon as they’re updated, we’ll pay you’,” Mr Robert said.

“We suspect it will take through to November for all those Australians to update their details. If they all update their details in one go, great, we could pay them progressively over a number of weeks.

“Our experience indicates that won’t be the case but Australians will take time and update their details progressively.”

Mr Robert acknowledged using a welfare recipient’s average income to identify debts was ­“insufficient” and “not helpful, ­respectful or transparent”. 

He pledged that people would know exactly how a debt they owed had been raised in future.

The Government Services and National Disability Insurance Scheme Minister listed several mistakes he had made in recent months, saying he should have better prepared the myGov website before hundreds of ­thousands of Australians lost their jobs overnight from the ­coronavirus pandemic.

The website continually crashed when it was faced with unprecedented demand, with Mr Robert saying he should have prepared for 300,000 concurrent users instead of 50,000.

At the time, he said it was “my bad” for failing to realise the sheer scale of job losses overnight created from decisions made by ­national cabinet.

Mr Robert said Australians should have been able to lodge an intent to claim JobSeeker days earlier than they could, and that he should have investigated before declaring the problems with myGov were because of a distributed denial of service attack.

“Investigating is always wise,” he said.

“Where we did make errors, we acknowledged them and fixed them very quickly.”