Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take the opportunity to speak to the delivery of that incredible report—the robodebt royal commission report—from Commissioner Catherine Holmes earlier this month. She simply stated the truth:

Robodebt was a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals.

That is exactly the sort of evidence that the Senate took through the community affairs committee. I want to acknowledge my former Greens colleague in this place Senator Rachel Siewert for her dedication with me on that committee to doing everything we could to get on the public record what was really going on with a government that was determined not only to silence Australians but to send them bills that they never even owed. So when we have members and senators in this place talking about how great they were when they were in government, people should never forget that that was the government that delivered you robodebt. The Abbot-Turnbull-Morrison governments of the previous decade illegally raised debts against our own citizens and then attempted to cover it up through lies—recanting statements in the guise of confidential legal advice. Indeed, in this very place, on no fewer than four occasions, the Senate rejected the claims of the government, who were determined to cover up everything they could about robodebt. Well, the truth finally got out and that gave me great confidence in Australia's capacity to ultimately get to the truth of the matter.

I want to acknowledge the leadership of my colleague the Hon. Bill Shorten in the other place, whose dedicated and determine leadership meant that this issue did not go off the boil; it was continually prominent throughout the time that we were prosecuting in opposition to tell the truth to the Australian people about what was going on. I can still recall almost word-for-word the grief and anger of the mothers, Jennifer Miller and Kath Madgwick, who presented handwritten testimonies to the Senate committee and who gave evidence to Commissioner Holmes. She heard you. We heard you. You have been attended to and listened to. (Time expired)