On 23 December 2014 the Liberal MP for Cook Scott ‘Stop The Boats’ Morrison moved ministerial portfolios – ceasing to be the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (a first ministerial position he had held for 15 months & 4 days) and becoming the Minister for Social Services.
Twenty-nine days later in the parliamentary recess he took part in a Sky News radio interview that contains this exchange:
RICHARDSON: You were not put in there to be a pussycat. You are in there to do some hard things. You would not have been put there otherwise. All the predictions were you were going to defence. I wouldn’t have put you in defence if I was the boss, I think he has been sensible doing this and I think this or health would have been where I had shoved you because you have got to go where there are jobs to be done and messages to be sold. Who are you going to crackdown on because a bloke like you is not going to sit there and do nothing. Does that mean that anyone on the dole has got to look out?
MINISTER MORRISON: Anyone who is trying to rip it off does. Anyone who is trying to rip off the welfare system because every benefit paid is paid for by another taxpayer. On average an Australian who works is working a whole month to pay for someone else’s benefits. There are a broad range of people that need and deserve our support whether those on the aged pension who have worked hard all their life and had a clear deal as they went through life that if they worked hard there would be an age pension at the other end. Now I think retirement incomes have changed a lot since then for people like me when I come to retire and my generation but that said all the way to those who have real disabilities, those who are looking after people as carers and I think Australians generally are quite happy to have a system that helps people who are genuinely in need and deserve our support. But what they won’t cop just like they won’t cop people coming on boats, they are not going to cop people who are going to rort that system. So there does need to be a strong welfare cop on the beat and I will certainly be looking to do that but I will be doing that because I want to make sure this system helps the people who most need it……
RICHARDSON: I really wish you all the best and it was always a problem for me and I always worried about it but there aren’t as you know in government once you get there not every problem is easy to solve. Having covered that, I want to take you more into general politics because I always like to do that with you because as I said you are the tough guy, but you also know which way is up, I think you know the electorate pretty well. I don’t think you live in some on high castle I think you have been pretty good at what you do. Now, are you on this economic review committee, this small sub-committee of cabinet? You are more than a third of the budget, are you on it?
MINISTER MORRISON: Yes I have joined the ERC, that’s right the Expenditure Review Committee. I was previously on the National Security Committee in my previous portfolio and obviously Peter Dutton has taken that on he has done a great job particularly over this last week also dealing with the issues on Manus, but I have taken his place on the ERC and he has taken mine on the NSC….
RICHARDSON: I was on the ERC for a year or two and I remember asking to get off because it takes up an enormous amount of time and if you are a busy Minister it is an enormous position and you know I guess when a third of the budget is yours you have to be there. Now what about these leaks from it, I can recall leaks from our Cabinet back in the Hawke/Keating days but not from the Expenditure Review Committee that is a new thing, you must be pretty disturbed by that.
MINISTER MORRISON: Well look I have only seen the press reports about this Graham and it is important the government remains focussed on the job within ERC and that is to get the budget under control and make sure we have got an economic programme that grows the economy. That is what I am focussed on, I believe that is what the team is focussed on and we will be meeting again soon and we will just get on with the job of preparing for the next budget. We have got matters outstanding from the last budget that are held up in the Senate, that is frustrating. We are going to have to take a good look at quite a number of those measures both in the context of what is currently before the Senate as well as what we seek to recast for the budget that is coming forward particularly in my own area of responsibility. A big area there is going to be child care.
[my yellow highlighting]
Morrison's remarks were immediately picked up by print and online newspapers.
Morrison also alluded to the term “welfare cop” on the floor of the House of Representative on 17 June 2015 when speaking to Appropriations Bill No1 2015-16:
I am pleased to be speaking on the Human Services budget consideration in detail and I acknowledge the fine work of my colleague Senator the Hon. Marise Payne, who is the minister responsible for these areas. Our welfare system, as I was mentioning in the previous discussion, must respect those who pay for it—that is, the taxpayers. Eight out of 10 income taxpayers are required to go to work every day to pay for our welfare system and they deserve two things in particular when it comes to the Human Services portfolio: that the welfare measures will be delivered with integrity, and that they will be delivered with efficiency. That is what they expect. More broadly, as a question of policy in relation to the previous discussion, it must help those who are most in need. In this budget, this government has committed to some significant initiatives that will improve not only the integrity of the welfare payment system and broader payment system for the government and the Human Services portfolio but also its efficiency.
We have said from day one in this portfolio that we have no tolerance whatsoever for those who rort the system. It is crucial that we have a strong welfare cop on the beat, and this budget contains significant measures to boost fraud investigation and compliance activities. Australians must have confidence in the system, just as they must have confidence that the safety net will be there for those who really need it. We have already made progress on welfare integrity, such as having Australian government contracted doctors assess new claims for the DSP to achieve consistency and equity across the country. We have tightened up portability arrangements, so people cannot just head off overseas for as long as they like and continue to pick up the DSP. You do not get an entitlement to holiday pay when you are on the DSP. In 2013-14 the Department of Human Services investigated 411 people for dishonestly claiming DSP, which resulted in $9.5 million in raised debts. We have put more than $200 million in this budget into strengthening our compliance and we have delivered on our promise to have a tougher cop on the beat for welfare. The government is committed to protecting the integrity of the welfare system.
We are also committed to innovation in service delivery. That is why we are replacing the decades-old welfare payment IT system, which too many governments have kicked down the road for too long. Investing in a new system will boost efficiencies and help advance welfare reforms as well as lessen the compliance burden on individuals, employers, service providers and, indeed, beneficiaries.
I commend the Human Services minister and all members who seek to participate in this debate. Above all, in the Human Services portfolio it is all about implementation. It is all about connecting the intent of policy with the beneficiaries of those policies. That has to be done with integrity and it has to be done with efficiency, and I commend Minister Payne for the outstanding job she has been doing in delivering on both of those objectives and providing a clear path for reform for the way forward.
[my yellow highlighting]
That term continued to be alluded to in the mainstream media over the 32 weeks Morrison held the Social Services portfolio. In articles with headlines such as:
Welfare cop to hunt cheats
AFP welfare cop to target cheats
Welfare cop to stop the fraud
Welfare cop to stop dole, pension rorts
Welfare cops now on patrol
Welfare warning
Cop that, dole cheats
Cracking down on disability cheaters
Senior Cop In Benefit Blitz
Disability pensioner numbers dive as Morrison gets tough
It took another 6 years and 9 a bit months before the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme began to reveal the path that was taken which allowed Morrison's toxic attitude to people he saw as 'the other' to develop into entire government departments and agencies colluding in his personal war on the poor and vulnerable.
The Saturday Paper, 11 March 2023:
The crucial moment came in a radio interview. Scott Morrison was a month into his portfolio as minister for Social Services when he announced a crackdown on welfare. This set off a chain of events still being resolved today. From the outset, robo-debt was the expression of a political desire.
By 2pm that same day, January 22, 2015, Department of Human Services deputy secretary Malisa Golightly had emailed a link of the full interview to her boss, Kathryn Campbell.
In the witness box at the robo-debt royal commission this week, Campbell agreed Morrison’s statement was “significant” because it indicated the direction he intended to take the portfolio.
Ten days later, the then Human Services minister, Marise Payne, in a meeting with Campbell, made an entry in her notebook that indicated they had discussed this welfare crackdown. Her notes record a decisive observation: “What can we do w/o having to legislate?”
This, perhaps, is the original sin of the debt recovery program known as robo-debt. The desire to go after welfare recipients for “easy” budget savings was to be done without new laws and this absence of new laws would mean the fundamental welfare assessment changes in what would become robo-debt could never be legal.
The Department of Social Services was already aware of an automatic pay-as-you-go (PAYG) “clean-up” proposal that had risen from the bowels of DHS to the most senior people. It had already declared it, with internal legal advice, to be unlawful in late 2014. DSS advised as much in an executive minute that went to Morrison on February 12, 2015, which listed a range of options. He circled “pursue”. And that was that.
Everything that followed this moment can be seen through the light of the panic of highly paid and “responsive” public servants, morphed into political servants by their own considerable ambition, willing to ignore or actively cover-up a program that stalked and tricked vulnerable people by the hundreds of thousands into paying back debts they never owed.....
Read journalist & author Rick Morton's full article here.
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