Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

RTEN (—) (): In just under two weeks of hearings in the royal commission into robodebt, we've learned several facts. First, the previous government received departmental and external legal advice that robodebt was unlawful from its start. We've also learned that a top-tier law firm, Clayton Utz, provided legal advice to the former government that the scheme was not able to be justified, prompting internal emails noting that this particular draft view was catastrophic. We've also learned that the former director of Payments and Integrity at the Department of Social Services and his team saw the income averaging and what became robodebt as unethical from the beginning. The initial legal advice warning that this was unlawful was black and white, and that should have been the end of the proposal.

As to who was responsible for the unlawful robodebt scheme, I draw the attention of the House to a speech concerning the demarcation between ministerial responsibility and the Public Service given by the former Prime Minister on 19 August 2019 at the Institute of Public Administration Australia, outlining his key six guideposts underpinning the approach in government. The then Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, said:

… responsibility for setting policy, for making those calls and decisions lies with the elected representatives of the people …

He continued:

… at the end of the day our ministers, I, my colleagues, have got to look constituents in the eye, face the public, look them in the eye, and be responsible for those decisions.

He then shared that memorable farmyard anecdote:

When I played Rugby, my coach used to describe this difference as the bacon and eggs principle, the chicken is involved, but the pig is absolutely committed to the task.

He further explained his analogy:

That is why under our system of government it must be ministers who set that policy direction.

He added:

It's important not only to establish clear lines of accountability. It is also fundamental to ensure our democracy keeps faith with the Australian people.

We do not yet know if or when the member for Cook or the other former ministers responsible for the unlawful operation of the robodebt scheme—those ones sitting opposite—will be called to give evidence to the royal commission. But we do know this: applying the former Prime Minister's principles—the leader of the former government—they cannot simply pass the buck onto the Public Service for their almost five-year illegal, unlawful shakedown of hundreds of thousands of Australia's most vulnerable citizens. I table the former Prime Minister's speech about ministerial responsibility for government policy.

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