Scott Morrison and the other ministers and bureaucrats responsible for the illegal robodebt scheme will “have to live with this on their conscience for the rest of their lives”, a senior Labor Minister says.
Education Minister Jason Clare said the robodebt royal commission had made it clear that as far back as late 2016, the former Coalition government and its senior public servants knew the system was wrong, “and yet they kept going”.
He also hit out at Peter Dutton for his lack of empathy in light of the findings, saying the Opposition Leader had “all the empathy of a rock”.
Commissioner Catherine Holmes handed down her findings on Friday, describing the scheme – which sent out incorrect automated debt notices based on income averaging to hundreds of thousands of Australians – as “a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals”.
In addition to her 57 recommendations in the nearly 1000 word report is a sealed section she handed directly to criminal and civil authorities, which recommends further action against some individuals.
She did not table it so as to not prejudice any matters, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was seeking legal advice as to whether it could ever be released.
In her public report, Ms Holmes was scathing of former ministers Scott Morrison, Stuart Robert, Alan Tudge and Christian Porter who all, at some point, had oversight of the scheme.
Mr Morrison, Mr Robert and Mr Tudge all issued statements after the findings were made public.
Mr Morrison – formerly social services minister – said in his statement he strongly rejected each of the findings “critical of my involvement in authorising the scheme and are adverse to me”.
“They are wrong, unsubstantiated and contradicted by clear documentary evidence presented to the Commission,” Mr Morrison said.
Mr Clare told Sky News Mr Morrison would never be able to escape the impact his actions had on people involved in the scheme.
“This wasn’t just one or two cases, this was half a million Australians,” Mr Clare said.
“Taxpayers had to fork out over a billion dollars to fix this mess. All of this could have been avoided if they’d asked for legal advice, or if they’d started to act in a human way once they were sending out bills to people that they didn’t know.
“All you got from Peter Dutton the other day was all the empathy of a rock.”
Mr Dutton on Saturday conceded that “mistakes” were made by “individuals” involved in the scheme, but warned against a “trial by media” on the royal commission’s findings.
“I’ve got to caution the glee of the prime minister and of Bill Shorten. Bill Shorten in question time has sought to politicise this issue and … he’s a political animal. He’s used every opportunity to (politicise) this issue,” Mr Dutton told the LNP state conference in Brisbane on Saturday.
Mr Clare on Sunday rejected claims the government had politicised the scandal.
“People died. People had their lives ruined … I think this is the appropriate use of a Royal Commission. It’s identified that this was wrong. It’s identified that the government broke the law for four and a half years. They treated Australians like they were crooks, it turned out that it was the government that was breaking the law.”
Greens Housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said Friday’s report spoke to a “broader problem around the way often welfare recipients are treated by federal governments”.
“I think going forward, hopefully some of the structural change that comes out of this is recognising the role of government in this situation for people living in desperate poverty is to provide them with a good safety net, not treat them like criminals,” he told Sky News.
“Going forward we need to look at raising the income support above the poverty line. We need to relax some of the aggressive debt collection procedures and give people the benefit of the doubt.”