Cassandra Fernando (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Social Services. What steps is the Albanese Labor government taking to clean up the mess left by the former Liberal-National government with its illegal robodebt scheme?

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for Holt, who I know has been a strong advocate for those impacted by the robodebt scheme. Robodebt was a failure in public policy. It caused suffering to around 400,000 people, including some of the most marginalised people in our community. Many vulnerable Australians had unlawful debts mounted against them. Some of them were hunted down, chased by debt collectors, hounded for repayments of debts which didn't make sense and in many cases they didn't owe. Rather than being interested in the integrity of the system, the former government seemed to see recovering social security debts as a means to balance the budget at all costs. We know the consequences were terrible.

It is our commitment to ensure that this failure of public policy never happens again. That is why we established a robodebt royal commission as a priority in coming to government. Australians gave evidence to the robodebt royal commission describing their sheer terror after receiving often inaccurate debt notices for tens of thousands of dollars. One victim had to consider selling her home, so that she would lose everything, to manage the debt which she was inaccurately issued with. Another reported feeling that concerns about unlawful debt applied to her that fell on deaf ears. She reported how the robodebt methodology of income averaging causing a debt to be raised against her when it shouldn't have been, and she reported how debt collectors viciously attacked her in their attempts to recover money. She said no-one listened to her.

The robodebt royal commission has been the first step in ensuring that we can fully understand what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. After establishing the robodebt royal commission, this government took action to provide some certainty to the 197,000 people who had a robodebt review commenced but not completed. It was still hanging over their heads. These reviews were closed by the Albanese government last year, ending the uncertainty and worry that many people endured as a result. Further action will be informed by the royal commission's recommendations, which will be handed down in June, to make sure that this never happens again. The Albanese government is committed to delivering a better Australia, and this means delivering a social security system that is there to support Australians in need, not to demonise them and stigmatise them.