Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I can help the member out as to when this was raised and spoken about. It was every question time and most 90-seconders. I was elected to this place in 2019. I spoke about robodebt so many times. I spoke about Mel, a woman in my electorate who worked part time and who had a $5,000 debt raised against her—an unlawful robodebt that she didn't owe. I spoke about an email I received from Mel and her husband because they just couldn't get a review. They told me:

We have so little faith in the Department that we believe there is a strong possibility: no review will take place, they will ignore the evidence and claim money is owed regardless, that Mel's maternity payments will be taken, or all of the above. As a young family in the electorate of Dunkley, those payments will directly support and provide for our child.

This was raised over and over again in this parliament by the then opposition. It shouldn't have had to have been, but it was.

As Commissioner Holmes said, the beginning of 2017 was the point when robodebt's unfairness, probable illegality and cruelty became apparent. It should then have been abandoned or revised drastically. An enormous amount of hardship and misery, as well as the expense the government was so anxious to minimise, would have been averted. Instead, the path was taken to double down, to go on the attack in the media against those who complained and to maintain the falsehood that in fact the system had not changed at all. The government was, the DHS and DSS ministers maintained, acting righteously to recoup taxpayers' money from the undeserving. The member for Maribyrnong, Bill Shorten, prosecuted robodebt vociferously in this parliament. And no-one who sat here could possibly not know that he did that. But he shouldn't have had to. From 2017 onwards, the then government knew what was happening and turned a blind eye.

The member for Flinders gave a thoughtful speech, I would like to say, and acknowledged the problems with robodebt. One thing, though, that struck a bit of a chord with me was when she talked about the Liberal Party being the party of personal responsibility. I know that's something that the Liberal Party hold dear. But I just wonder how far that extends. It often seems to extend to the rhetoric about people receiving social security benefits who are unemployed and have issues in their lives. I think it extends to the member for Flinders. I think she does believe in personal responsibility and her speech showed that. But it certainly doesn't appear to extend to her colleagues who were in the cabinet of the former government when she wasn't here. Where's the personal responsibility having been taken by anyone in the cabinet who, from 2017 onwards, doubled down, went on the attack and continued robodebt? There has been none.

The commissioner says at page 102 that she 'rejects as untrue' Mr Morrison's evidence that he was told that income averaging as contemplated in the executive minutes was an established practice and a foundational way in which DHS worked. Where is the personal responsibility of the member for Cook? Where is the personal responsibility of the then Minister for Human Services, Senator Payne, whose evidence was described by the commissioner as 'a series of disparate and unsatisfactory answers' that 'would have the making of a child's nursery rhyme if it were not so serious'. Where was the personal responsibility of Mr Tudge, of whom the commissioner said:

Mr Tudge's use of information about social security recipients in the media to distract from and discourage commentary about the scheme's problems represented an abuse of that power.

Where was the personal responsibility of Christian Porter, who the commissioner said 'could not rationally have been satisfied of the legality' of the scheme, or of Stuart Robert, of whom the commissioner said it can't be accepted that the principles of cabinet solidarity required Mr Robert's to publicly support cabinet decisions whether he agreed with them or not because he knew they weren't true. There was no personal responsibility from anyone in that cabinet, including people who are still in this parliament today.

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