Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in this place to call for a royal commission into the government's robodebt scandal. I do so because of the number of people in my electorate who were impacted by this diabolical system. It was sending out 20,000 notices a week at its height and had real impacts and unfair impacts on people's lives. I sat with a resident locally who had finished university and qualified as a teacher. She was unable to find work in that first six months, which is not unusual, and was therefore getting support. This young person went on to find a permanent job in January. Years later, in her recess time, she was desperately trying to get on to Centrelink to talk about the debt they had issued to her—cramming it into her day. She was triggered, because she'd had a tough year mentally that year being unemployment benefits and trying to find work. She'd had an incredibly tough year. She had just purchased a house. She had a mortgage. And now she had a Dun & Bradstreet letter to say that she owed thousands and thousands of dollars. We know now that this was unlawful. This was intolerable, and we should have a royal commission to hear every story. (Time expired)