Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

That indeed was a very, very unfortunate contribution to this debate, because it neither accepted the hurt to 400,000 Australians that this government's robodebt has impacted on nor seemed to take the matter seriously. That contribution was an absolute disgrace, because this is, indeed, a very grave and serious matter of public importance.

For 400,000 Australians, this is a deeply personal and painful matter, because their own government effectively lied about them and stole from them. You can only accept two things: either that was their objective in the first place—they were just out there to get money back to bolster their bottom line—or they're just incompetent. It can only be one or the other. I'd be happy, and I'm sure the 400,000 people that they vilified would be happy, if they could just fess up. But what this government did with the robodebt they did with a very heavy hand, meting out pain and suffering based on flimsy and false evidence that debts were owed. It did so in a particularly galling fashion, in a very patronising way, saying to everyday Australians—pretty much like the contribution we just received—'You know you owe us money. We know best. Don't challenge us. Fess up. Cough up.' But these Australians had done nothing wrong. They didn't owe the government any money. There was no debt, only a fantasy debt dreamed up by the social services minister desperate to prove himself by preying on the weak and vulnerable, because that's the sort of thing that earns you brownie points among the Liberal Party circles of the chattering classes.

As social services minister, Scott Morrison bragged and boasted about this illegal scheme, designed with the intent of scaring, intimidating and thrashing about with a big stick. But the people on the receiving end were many hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians who had done absolutely nothing wrong. They didn't deserve this treatment. The damage to people's mental and physical health wrought by this scheme has been profound. In the state that I represent over 15,000 Tasmanians are estimated to be victims of this Prime Minister's botched, dodgy, dehumanising and, indeed, malevolent scheme. It was his scheme as social services minister. He designed it. As Treasurer, Mr Morrison was the implementer and the enforcer of this scheme. And now, as Prime Minister, he has been forced to come to the biggest settlement of any Australian government in history over this illegal scheme—a $1.2 billion settlement. What a blunder. What a backflip. What a disgrace.

Yes, this settlement—as humiliating and humbling as it must be—goes some way towards justice for everyday Australians who are victims of this illegal scheme, but the fact is they deserve so much more. They deserve more from their government. Australian governments are vested with the responsibility of protecting Australian people, securing them from harm and predatory behaviour. But in this instance it was their own government the Australian people had to fear. The victims of this illegal scheme deserve nothing less than a royal commission, because a royal commission is the only forum vested with coercive powers and broad jurisdiction that can properly investigate this blight on our nation—this fiasco of the Prime Minister's own making.

The truly extraordinary thing about this scandal is that it has followed this Prime Minister through every portfolio he has held since the coalition came to office. As social services minister, it was his baby. As Treasurer, it was meant to be his cash cow. As Prime Minister, it landed him a spot in history as the man responsible for the largest ever settlement by a government in Australian class action history. That is why he remains uninterested in getting to the bottom of this matter. He's uninterested in finding the truth, uninterested in the transparency needed to reveal just how badly this went wrong, uninterested in holding anyone to account, because the person who needs to be held to account more than any other in this sorry saga is none other than the Prime Minister himself. No wonder he hasn't held anyone to account for it.