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

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and congratulations on your election. Just for the benefit of the House, when talking about the robodebt royal commission, I might remind members that robodebt is the colloquial term that has been used to describe the automated debt collection system which was introduced by the previous government in July of 2015 until it was ceased in November of 2019. It was a system which was designed so the Commonwealth could say it was chasing payments that it was allegedly owed by social security recipients. But in about April of 2021, at the door of the Federal Court, on the day that ministers and senior public servants might have had to give evidence in the trial of the class action, the Commonwealth finally admitted that it had no legal basis to raise these debts and that, in fact, it unlawfully raised $1.7 billion of debt against 433,000 vulnerable Australians. It was described by the court as a shameful chapter in Commonwealth public administration and that it should have been obvious to the senior public servants and responsible ministers at different points who designed it, oversaw it and boasted about it in the media that it was an illegal scheme. Advocates, citizens, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, MPs and the media all campaigned on this. Great harm was caused by the robodebt scheme—financial hardship, distress, anxiety and far worse. Yes, the money has been repaid, courtesy of the class action. Yes, the scheme has stopped, courtesy of the people of Australia. Yes, the government has gone, courtesy of the voters.

Labor have promised to introduce a royal commission because there is much that we do not know. I have worked with my colleagues, the Attorney-General and the Minister for Social Services. The terms of reference will likely go to: who was responsible for the design, development and establishment of the scheme? What questions were ever asked about its legality? What risks were identified? Why were the volume of complaints and the Administrative Appeal decisions ignored for 4½ years? What were the full costs of this scheme?

This royal commission will start most likely in the last quarter of this year. Hopefully, it will be concluded in the first six months of next year. We are finalising the personnel. But let us be very clear to the people of Australia: we have to learn from the mistakes which the previous government has never owned up to, and that is the very least we can do for the nearly half a million of our fellow Australians who were illegally attacked by their own government.