Morrison ‘has to live with robodebt impact’: Clare

Andrew Brown | July 9, 2023

Former prime minister Scott Morrison will have to live with the impacts of robodebt on his conscience, Education Minister Jason Clare claims.

As the fallout from the royal commission report continues, federal police and the national anti-corruption commission are considering evidence against unnamed individuals in relation to the debt recovery scheme.

The report, which was handed down on Friday, found former coalition ministers, including Mr Morrison, dismissed or ignored concerns about the legality of the scheme.

Mr Morrison has rejected suggestions of wrongdoing or that he misled cabinet, saying the report’s findings were “based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of how government operates”.

Mr Clare said robodebt could have been avoided if officials and ministers had asked for legal advice.

“Scott Morrison and all of these ministers and bureaucrats are going to have to live with this on their conscience for the rest of their lives,” he told Sky News on Sunday.

“This wasn’t just one or two cases, this was half a million Australians who got a bill that they didn’t owe…taxpayers had to fork out over a billion dollars to fix this mess.”

The comments follow Prime Minister Anthony Albanese saying on Saturday that Mr Morrison had lacked contrition over robodebt.

Mr Clare said Opposition Leader Peter Dutton had also not expressed enough concern for the victims of robodebt.

“All you got from Peter Dutton the other day was all the empathy of a rock,” he said.

The opposition leader had accused Government Services Minister Bill Shorten of trying to politicise the release of the royal commission report.

“He’s a political animal and he’s used every opportunity to milk out whatever political advantage there is to the Labor Party out of this particular issue and the prime minister’s doing the same,” Mr Dutton told reporters on Saturday.

Nationals leader David Littleproud rejected calls that Mr Morrison should step away from federal parliament in the wake of the commission’s report.

“He’s the member for Cook, and unless he’s broken the law, and there are strict rules around this, that if a federal politician is potentially convicted of a crime of more than 12 months in jail, then that’s the only time that you can be removed from parliament,” he told Nine’s Today program.

“(Robodebt) wasn’t executed appropriately, it was appalling the way they’ve done it, and the commission of inquiry, i think now, should be something we learn from, but to make sure that this sort of public policy doesn’t happen again.”

The report contained a sealed section not publicly released, which recommended senior figures behind the scheme be referred for civil and criminal prosecution.

Mr Clare said while the list of names in the sealed section would be known eventually, the proper process needed to take place.

“You don’t want to do anything which is going to prejudice a criminal proceeding or prejudice civil action,” he said.

Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather said the robodebt scheme was shocking and disgraceful.

“What we know, as a lot of people have pointed out now, it’s destroyed lives and taken lives,” he told Sky News.

“It also speaks to a broader problem though around the way often welfare recipients are treated by federal governments.”

Federal minister Linda Burney, who was previously an opposition human services spokeswoman, said there needed to be consequences for the people involved in robodebt.

“The commissioner has said that this was cruel, it was unlawful and it made innocent people feel like criminals,” she told ABC’s Insiders program.

“We knew the algorithm was unjust and unfair, and that there was no human involvement in it. This is a shocking indictment of it not being stopped.”

Lifeline 13 11 14

beyondblue 1300 22 4636