SUBJECTS: Member for Cook Scott Morrison’s statement on the Robodebt Royal Commission
QUESTION: My question is to the Minister for Government Services. What did the Royal Commission into Robodebt’s Final Report find as to who the real victims of Robodebt were?
BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: I thank the Member for Higgins for her question about who the real victims of Robodebt were. I draw the attention of the Parliament to Volume 3 of the Royal Commission, Chapter 10, Effects on Robodebt on individuals, from pages 325 to 346. The Royal Commissioner forensically outlines who the real victims were.
The real victims were those who received confusing initial letters which people didn't understand how to reply to. The real victims were those who had changed their address from the Centrelink record, having got off Centrelink or were homeless. The real victims were those who had their onus of proof reversed, that after the first demand from the government they were required to prove the case wrong. A case of guilty until proven innocent. The real victims were those who were denied reviews because they couldn't provide the payslips of companies which had gone out of business. The real victims were the Centrelink staff required to carry out illegal orders of an unlawful policy. The real victims were those Australians who lived in rural and remote Australia who at no point were ever contemplated in the design of the Robodebt scheme. The real victims were those who suffered stigma, exacerbated by the political narrative of the successive Liberal governments. The real victims were those who suffered financial hardship and had to sell their possessions to pay an unlawfully raised debt. The real victims were those who suffered the effects of unfair accusations. The real victims were those who suffered trauma, anxiety, distress. The real victims were those who took their own lives. The real victims are the mothers of those who took their own lives. The real victims are all those Australians who lost trust in government because of an unlawful scheme run for four and a half years.
I've gone to who the real victims are. But one person who is not a real victim is the Member for Cook. Yesterday, the Member for Cook claimed that the adverse findings against him were disproportionate wrong, unsubstantiated or contradicted. The purpose of that statement was to frame himself as the real victim of a Robodebt Royal Commission. The member for Cook said, and I quote, that in making their finding, the Commission sought to reverse the onus of proof to establish their claim. Satire is truly dead in this country, when the Member for Cook complains about the reversal of onus of proof on him, but not the 434,000 people who did have their reverse onus.
And the Member for Cook then said the royal commission was a quasi-legal process, a new Morrisonian doctrine about the law. The Royal Commission was not quasi legal. It's real. It was constituted by the law. 46 days of public hearings, over 100 witnesses under oath.
And I can hear the Member, I can see the Member for Cook lip synching something. Well, let us be very clear. The victims of Robodebt never had their legal costs paid for. Never had the chance to see the evidence put against them.
The Member for Cook is a bottomless well of self-pity and not a drop of mercy for all of the real victims of Robodebt.