Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Dolega for the question, and I also acknowledge the role that your union and mine played in advocating against the robodebt scheme and raising concerns around robodebt, particularly the impact it had on your constituents in Tasmania.

We all remember, and we will never forget, the failed robodebt program that those opposite, when they were in government, established to hunt down—I think that was the language used by ministers—people that owed money for them to pay it back to the Australian government. Of course, the major problem with that was the majority of the 450,000 that were affected by robodebt didn't owe any money. Their government raised debts they never owed and pursued them, using language like 'we will hunt you down and jail you for debts' that they never owed. Not only were they pursuing debts that people didn't owe and demonising some of the poorest and most vulnerable Australians in the language and the way they prosecuted robodebt; they were also using robodebt as a budget savings measure. It was to repair their budget. They made a lot of promises about that.

We see the end result of this—the people that lost their lives; the families traumatised; the individuals who will never, ever get over the biggest failure of public administration in this country, which those opposite presided over. We now know the ongoing harm that has happened to those people affected by robodebt and we have sought to settle this legal matter. The decision taken demonstrates our commitment to address the harms caused by robodebt.