Former ministers Alan Tudge, Christian Porter have fronted royal commission

Christian Porter says he wish he had acted on robodebt issues while he was the relevant minister.

Christian Porter says he takes responsibility for failures of the robodebt scheme when he was the minister in charge, while expressing his frustration at the actions of the relevant departments.

Mr Porter, who served as social services minister between 2015 and 2017, fronted the royal commission into the scheme in Brisbane on Thursday afternoon.

He said he was growing concerned about the scheme and was frustrated wanted answers from the departments.

Royal commissioner Catherine Holmes asked Mr Porter if he “took any responsibility for this?”

“I do. And I look back on this and I see myself through the correspondence getting quite close at points to taking the next step of inquiry,” he replied.

“I didn’t do that. I wish now that I had, but I also see the reasons why I didn’t do that.”

Mr Porter said he stopped being the social service minister before he could act further on his concerns. But he also took aim at the departments of social services and human services.

Former social services minister Christian Porter fronted the robodebt royal commission on Thursday. Picture: NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

Mr Porter said he was “frustrated with all of them”, blaming them for inaccurate talking points prepared for him before he fronted national media on the scheme and getting answers to questions.

Counsel assisting Justin Greggery KC asked about whether concerns flagging the scheme’s legality – which had been canvassed at a conference attended by departmental staff –should have been brought to his attention.

“I think that’s a fair proposition,” Mr Porter said.

Commissioner Holmes then asked if the situation warranted the paperwork being brought to Mr Porter’s “attention as social services minister specifically?”

“Short answer is I’d like to have seen it, yes. If it came up in the context of a brief and due diligence done by DHS, I think it gets my attention,” he said.

Mr Porter went on to express that he had full trust in his department’s handling of the scheme’s execution at the time.

“When advice was given with confidence and certainty, and there was a prospect of you necessarily investigating that further – much lower than when someone from your department expressed doubt equivocation on these issues – I can’t explain it these years later any better than that,” he said.

When asked by Ms Holmes whether suggestions the size of the proposed budget savings made it harder to stop the scheme, Mr Porter said this was “inaccurate”.

“My view about savings measures were that if they became untenable or were no longer effective, that they would be paused or reviewed. I didn’t feel personally any pressure at all,” he said.

Mr Porter had issues with the management of the debt collection processes. NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

Mr Porter said he was also concerned about the scheme’s debt letter operations, which did not include being assured that the letter had been received before debt collection was implemented.

“It’s incumbent on you, in recovering a debt, to at least have some assurance someone has received a notice,” he told the commission.

Mr Porter’s latest comments came after former coalition minister Alan Tudge continued on Thursday to slap down claims his approach to robodebt was blase as its shortcomings came to light.

Mr Tudge served as human services minister from 2016 to 2017.

In response to earlier claims that he acted indifferently about the legality of robodebt, Mr Tudge said that prospect didn’t occur to him.

“My mind was not acting as a lawyer; it was acting as an implementer of the policy,” he said.

“I’d understood that (income averaging) had always been used for decades and so it had not crossed my mind that it could possibly be unlawful.”

But Commissioner Holmes took aim at Mr Tudge’s approach, which she claimed showed he was indifferent to the intricacies of the scheme.

Former human services minister Alan Tudge told the commission it was not his responsibility to check whether the robodebt scheme was lawful.

“It seems a fairly blithe approach for a minister, particularly in the light of controversy, to assume that because it’s happened before for a long time it must be fine,” she said.

To this, Mr Tudge doubled down and said the prospect had “not crossed his mind”.

Mr Tudge on Wednesday told the commission it was not his responsibility to check whether the robodebt scheme was lawful, despite his portfolio.

Mr Tudge said he was responsible for the scheme’s “lawful implementation”, although questions were at times raised about its fairness.

He told the commission he assumed it was lawful and had never been shown legal advice to suggest otherwise.

“It is unfathomable for a (department) secretary to be implementing a program which he or she would know to be unlawful. It is unfathomable,” he said about the scheme.

Mr Tudge went on to say the legality “had not crossed my mind until I read about it in the newspaper, I think, following the Federal Court case”.

He also said the scheme had gone through a rigorous cabinet process “which always has a legal overlay”.

The robodebt scheme was deemed unlawful in 2019. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

The automated welfare recovery scheme, which used income averages, unlawfully took $720m from 381,000 Australians.

The practice was ruled unlawful by the Federal Court in 2019.

The royal commission is investigating how Australians’ annual tax information was used to determine average fortnightly earnings and automatically establish welfare debts.

Submissions to the royal commission will close on Friday, 3 February.