Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Just breaking news is that the federal government has lost a significant legal challenge to its automated debt recovery system, known as robodebt, with the Federal Court ruling that the debt was unlawful. Victoria Legal Aid brought forward the challenge on behalf of a 32-year-old woman who had a debt of more than $2,900 raised against her by the Department of Human Services, which is Centrelink. Justice Jennifer Davies ruled that the court could not have been satisfied that the debt was owed in the amount of the alleged debt. She ruled that the Commonwealth must reimburse the client her interest of $92.06 and pay her legal fees. This is one of the cases where the department had miraculously already waived the debt as soon as the legal issue came up, but the Federal Court has ruled that it's not valid; it is unlawful.

This is why the government rushed out a memo last week—which they probably weren't intending to go public, although they must have realised it would—saying, 'We're not going to be using the income-averaging process anymore,' because they know very well that it's unlawful. Just minutes ago, through this chamber, two motions were passed for orders for the production of documents for the government's legal advice, and the government voted no. Is there any wonder why? That legal advice will no doubt show what the court has just found, which is that the debts are unlawful. They're not based on law. I challenge the government to comply with the order for the production of documents that this Senate has just passed. I suspect that will show that all of this process for at least the last three years has been unlawful. I challenge them to prove that they have advice that it was lawful. I doubt that they can do that.

Senator Davey was sent out by the government to defend their approach to robodebt. What did they do? They blamed the opposition for something in 2011. The opposition didn't defend themselves about the process they introduced, but I note that they had human beings doing this. The point is that it was the government that ramped it up. By the way, it was the government that started using the process of income averaging without human beings, and they have known since the Senate inquiry reported in 2017 that there was great dispute over income averaging. The Senate inquiry recommended that they stop doing income averaging. So, even if you want to blame the opposition for robodebt, you are wholly and solely to blame for the process that has been going on where people have been caught up in income averaging for the last three years. You have knowingly done that.

The Senate inquiry said: 'Take a break. Look at this. Improve it.' The No. 1 recommendation was to put a hold on the process until the procedural fairness of these issues was identified. Don't try to blame anybody else. The evidence is there. You're the ones who had the legal advice. You're the ones who not only knowingly continued robodebt but also ramped it up. After the Senate inquiry you continued to ramp it up. If the government didn't have legal advice at the time, surely they should have looked at that and asked for legal advice in light of the findings of the Senate committee.

I point out that there have been hundreds of thousands of these letters sent out. In answer to some questions on notice that I asked about the number of people with vulnerabilities who have received letters about the OIC process, the EIC process and the CUPI process I was told that there were 9,149 letters sent to people who had registered their vulnerabilities with Centrelink. So not only were these letters being sent out generally but they were being sent to people with vulnerabilities who were receiving income support. The value of those debts was $15.4 million. How many people have had their debts waived? Only 288 out of the original over 9,000. I asked how many clients with vulnerabilities had their debts referred to debt collectors—so they get hassled by debt collectors—and was told that there were 1,812.

I sat through a full Senate inquiry—and we're part way through another Senate inquiry—on this issue. I have heard repeated examples of how people felt demonised, stigmatised and vulnerable. They felt like the community were saying that they were cheating the system. I have heard countless examples—not only through the Senate inquiry but through contact with my office, which has been pretty constant since this whole debacle started—of how people have not been able to quickly pick up the phone and talk to Centrelink, and how they have not been able to get the review processes undertaken, which apparently seems so easy now.

Let me go very quickly to the point we are at right now. The government informed people through an email that Centrelink income averaging was no longer going to be used, and there was a very short media conference by the minister afterwards. I'm sure it was very rushed, because that email was leaked, and that takes me back to the point I was making originally: I don't know when the government was going to formally announce this.

There are so many questions now hanging over this process. What are they doing in terms of contacting people about the debts that have already been paid? What are they doing about the people whose debts have been garnished, like the woman who has just had the finding to overturn her debt, indicating it was unlawful? She never knew about the debt; her tax return was garnished. There have been a lot of those examples. How is the government going to handle that? How many people are affected by income averaging? What's the legality of the approach? I've touched on that. How long have the government known that this is likely to be unlawful? They haven't answered that one. What's the process they're going to use to verify the debts? Are they going to go back to the old system, where they used to have a human being actually looking over and contacting employers where there was a discrepancy? Are they going to do that? Over what time frame are they going to get people's bank statements? How many debts are there? What value are these debts? And, very importantly, will this be included in MYEFO in the next couple of weeks? This is going to significantly affect how much money the government thought they were going to rake in from income support recipients who don't owe debts. They've projected a vast amount of money. How is that going to figure in MYEFO? And how many staff are they going to have to take on to correct all this mess? They are going to need a lot of very well skilled people to reach out to people who have been traumatised through this system, who don't necessarily understand the system and who don't think they've had a debt all along.

This system has caused untold damage, pain and suffering to thousands and thousands of Australians. The government knew what was happening. They should've acted a very long time ago to do what they've done now. I think they've made that decision in quite a bit of a rush, because none of these questions—and I have a whole page of them—have been answered. They need to suspend this process right now.