Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison faced a long stint in the witness box before the Robodebt Royal Commission this week over his involvement in the disastrous scheme and any pressure he exerted to stop public servants coming forward with appropriate legal advice. Callum Foote reports.
The Royal Commission was established to investigate the Centrelink “Robodebt” scheme, an automated debt recovery program that was established in 2015 and ran until November 2019 when the Attorney-General advised it was unlawful.
It is attributed to more than 2000 people taking their own lives and resulted in a $1.8 billion settlement to hundreds of thousands of victims who were forced to pay illegitimate debts.
Morrison was compelled to appear at yesterday’s commission hearing as he was the Social Services Minister when the scheme first went live, then subsequently Treasurer and Prime Minister throughout the life of the scheme.
Don’t interrupt!
Both the Commissioner and counsel assisting tried for hours over the course of yesterday afternoon to wrangle straight answers from the former PM, who continually ducked, weaved and waffled his way through the examination.
At one point Morrison tried to reveal to the commission documents which are under parliamentary privilege. He was stopped by the Commissioner with Holmes asking “Mr Morrison, you do understand parliamentary privilege do you?” and again that “One might have thought as a parliamentarian you would appreciate the importance of parliamentary privilege.”
If only we could have had former Queensland Chief Justice Catherine Holmes or Justin Greggery KC at a few Scott Morrison press conferences over the years. #RobodebtRC #auspol pic.twitter.com/tXTYfRkHXG
— David Marler (@Qldaah) December 14, 2022
Morrison tried his best to obfuscate his answers but was pulled up multiple times “”I do understand that you come from a background where rhetoric is important”. Holmes advised him to stick to answering the question “without unnecessary detail”.
To one of his long-winded answers Holmes told the former Prime Minister that “Mr Morrison, this has got nothing to do with the question that you were asked” and at one point when Morrison tried waffling around the issue: “Oh, please don’t give us an example,” and an exasperated, “Look, can we just have your evidence Mr Morrison”.
The former PM was also asked a number of times not to interrupt by senior counsel Justin Greggery.
Much of the questioning surrounded why he didn’t seek additional legal advice as to the lawfulness of the program after his department originally flagged that legislative changes might be required in February 2015.
I didn’t know, it’s disappointing
“The critical failure in the system … was that this advice, which had been sought prior to my turning up, was not brought to the attention of ministers, and I believe there was an obligation and duty to do so,” Morrison said.
“The idea that I would have assumed they had advice and weren’t giving it to me is inconceivable,” he said, “Which is why the non-coming forward with the advice is so disappointing. If they came forward with the advice we would not be sitting here today.”
The illegality of the scheme surrounds the practice of the Robodebt scheme to average Centrelink participants income over the year and imposing a debt if their annual income was greater than the cutoff for welfare payments. “Data matching”, it was called.
However, many Centrelink participants are in unstable, seasonal or intermittent work which means they must rely on the payments during some parts of the year and not others.
Fatal flaws
The legislation only provides a legal basis to look at participant incomes on a fortnightly basis and to only thirteen weeks retrospectively. The plan that Morrison approved would take years retrospectively and average out the incomes of participants for the whole year.
“The legislation says you can go back thirteen weeks prior. But that wasn’t going to be the position in this matter was it?” asked Commissioner Catherine Holmes AC SC.
Morrison claimed that this was not a new process and had been undertaken for up to 20 years.
Holmes said “I am dubious of you saying that it is a regular practice”. Morrison was only able to reference the use of the term ‘income matching’ not ‘income averaging’. He has been invited to provide evidence to back up these claims.
Counsel for the Commission Justin Greggery summarised Morrison’s evidence that he couldn’t recall the source of his belief that the department already used income averaging as: “Someone who you can’t identify gave you advice at a time that you can’t identify that the only thing new about this proposal was the scale?”
“Trusted the department”
Morrison answered yes, and acknowledged that he couldn’t point to a written document to back this up.
Nor could the former PM explain why advice from his department in February that the scheme would require legislative changes was jettisoned in a later March proposal despite not being able to identify a significant difference between the two plans.
“You seem to be quite familiar with the legislation. So why were you not interested in what legislative change was required? Because you must have wondered, didn’t you, about the power to do these things?” Holmes asked.
Morrison’s response was simply that he trusted his department.
He also denied that the “cumulative” impact of a number of pressures contributed to public servants not being able to provide him with the appropriate legal advice.
This included his insistence in setting up a “Welfare cop” in SkyNews interviews well before he received advice on the legality of the scheme in 2015, as well as the time pressure public servants were put under to prepare their advice.
These are the sentiments the Australians people are hoping are now being directed to Scott Morrison and Alan Tudge… “We will find you, we will track you down and you will have to repay those debts and you may end up in prison.” #RobodebtRC #auspol https://t.co/plCIOgUpUI
— 💧Terry Serio 🕯 (@TerrySerio) December 13, 2022
As little as two weeks passed from Scott Morrison telling his department to pursue the development of the policy and its announcement in the 2015 budget.
The Royal Commission continues.
Callum Foote was a reporter for Michael West Media for four years.