Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a statement in regard to the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, and, in some ways, the finalisation of what has been a truly harrowing process for individuals involved in this. The country really saw a situation where a government conducted an illegal enterprise. There is no other way to describe what they did other than 'illegal'. In fact, the royal commission found that robodebt was a cruel and crude mechanism that was neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals.

In essence, people were traumatised on the off chance that they might owe money. It was a costly failure of public administration in both human and economic terms. It was something that I was involved with at the time, prior to being elected to here. Even though I like to remind people that I had a life outside of politics, being a station hand and working construction, I did work for a senator for a few years before I got elected, just as the robodebt enterprise was starting to have its effects felt out in the community. It was something that I was trying to help people with as an electorate officer through a very complicated process where we were just stonewalled by the department and the government at the time.

Some of the human consequences of that are what need to be kept in mind when we talk about this. It's something that I was familiar with, and I just went back to the royal commission itself and came across a statement of a woman who I haven't met before but who would be well-known to the community: Kathleen Madgwick. She has turned tragedy into purpose and has fought hard for vulnerable people as they come up against government departments, particularly Centrelink. The tragedy was the worst kind. It involved the suicide of her 23-year-old son, Jarrad. These two Queenslanders, who were originally from Victoria, settled in Tin Can Bay and Mackay.

I'll read out a bit of Kathleen's testimony, which she gave to royal commission. She provided a written submission to the royal commission. Jarrad had been through a lot. He'd been through a lot with Centrelink, I should say, trying to sort out a payment. He'd worked a bit on and off. It got to the point where she thought that it had finally been resolved and he was going to get a payment. They were living together at this time. Here's a bit of the letter I will quote: 'It was that in one afternoon in May 2019, Jarrad seemed happier. He was in his bedroom listening to music, and I remember him talking about joining the Army, which was a plan he had for his future. At about 4.45 that same afternoon, I remember that Jarrad came out of his room and said to me something like, "I'm not going to get paid, because I owe them $2,000, and I'll never get out of debt." He was very upset. He was talking about a debt that he had to DHS. This was the first time that I'd heard him say anything about a debt to DHS. At around 5 pm that same evening, Jarrad came out of his room. He'd been working on a cover letter for a job application at a meatworks. He asked me what I thought about his cover letter, and, as I read it, I saw he'd written something that I thought wasn't really appropriate for the job. I gave him some feedback, knowing that he'd written it in the afternoon while he was frustrated with DHS, but he started swearing at me, saying—and I won't quote the full thing—"What the F do you know?" We exchanged words and he went back to his room. It was not usual for him to swear at me like that, and I was annoyed by it. I thought I'd let him cool down, so I left him alone. When we went out that night, at around 6.45 pm, I believed he was going for a walk to clear his head. At around 7.30 pm that night, I got a text from Jarrad saying, "I love you." I was glad to receive this text, as I thought it had meant he had calmed down. The next morning I woke up and saw that Jarrad wasn't home. I sent him a text, rang him, and sent him a message on social media, but I received no response. I was starting to get worried, as it was not like him to not respond for an extended period of time. I called Queensland police on 31 May, and they said they'd start looking for him. I took some comfort from that and resigned myself to waiting to hear from Jarrad. Queensland police rang me at around 6.45 am the next day, and I jumped at the phone call, but they were only calling to say they hadn't started looking for Jarrad yet. I told QPS that I couldn't wait because I was really concerned now. It had been a whole day and night since I'd heard from him. I set off walking shortly after that phone call. I remember thinking that I would go over to the park, thinking that he might be hiding out there. I took Jarrad's dog, Cooper, with me on my walk. As I went down into the bushes and into the park, I saw in the corner of my eye what I thought was a jumper in a tree. As I got closer, I saw that it was Jarrad. He had hung himself. In the days following Jarrad's death, I tormented myself thinking about the fight we'd had about his cover letter. I felt like a bad mother. As time went by, I came to realise that his suicide was not because of our argument. We disagreed in the past over minor things and this was one such disagreement. While Jarrad had been struggling with money and felt the pressure of bills that he had to pay, I do not believe he had been living with suicidal intent for an extended period of time. We had been at the beach a day before his death and he had been caught in a rip while out swimming. When he had saved himself and got back to shore, he expressed to me how disappointed he was at his level of fitness and spoke about how keen he was to get fit again as part of his plan for the future. I believe that the pressure of Jarrad's financial situation and going from thinking he was getting a payment after initially being rejected to believing that he was not going to receive any money for some time flipped a switch for him. I do not believe that his debt was the only thing that bothered him. It was a confluence of factors, with the debt from Centrelink being the final thing that made him feel like he couldn't go on.'

In some ways, I feel like I should sit down now, because no message is as powerful as Kathleen Madgwick, a one-time resident of Mackay. But I think that the work that she's doing needs to be acknowledged along with how important it is that government services are there to do the job which they're supposed to do. One thing that this government has done over the last almost four years that we've been in government is restore integrity and capacity to the Public Service. It is something which is not abstract at all when you think about Kathleen and Jarrad. It's about something which has a vitally significant impact on individuals' lives, whether it is the 41,000 veterans who are waiting for their claims to be assessed, the mess that we were left with in the NDIS or the Public Service that was run down and, I think, resulted in the death of Jarrad and resulted in the underselling of so many Australians and their abilities.

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