On 7 June 2024 The Guardian ran the following article:
The federal court has ruled against a decision blocking access to early robodebt documents drafted under the former Coalition government, as part of one man’s long-running fight to shed light on the scheme’s origins.
Justices Geoffrey Kennett, Anna Katzmann and Shaun McElwaine ruled that a December 2022 decision made by the administrative appeals tribunal (AAT) to keep some robodebt documents exempt, including draft costings and new policy proposals, should be set aside due to procedural unfairness and because the AAT had incorrectly agreed with the cabinet confidentiality exemptions Services Australia applied.
The documents could add more details to the public record about what the former prime minister Scott Morrison – who was then responsible for the social services portfolio – and other senior ministers, including Christian Porter, Alan Tudge and Marise Payne, were privy to in the scheme’s initial stages.
The man seeking the key robodebt documents, IT expert Justin Warren, first made the freedom of information request to the then Department of Human Services, now named Services Australia, in January 2017. The department identified 13 documents, totalling 287 pages, but refused him access on the basis they were cabinet documents and related to the agency’s investigation methods.
The original FOI application was submitted on 14 January 2024 and Services Australia dug in.
What started as formal consideration by the Australian Information Commissioner (2018-2023) morphed into Administrative Appeals Tribunal rulings (2022-23) and ended before the full bench of the Australian Federal Court Warren v Chief Executive Officer, Services Australia [2024] FCAFC 73, where the decision of the Tribunal having been set aside, the matter was remitted to the Tribunal for rehearing and determination according to law.
On 25 October 2024 political activist Asher Wolf posted a 26 page copy of FOI documents received by Justin Warren at the end of that seven-year & five month battle of wills.
These can be found, read and downloaded at
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d21K_oEaGbaNNWlfsuY2_t5X8wViG8CD/view
Ms. Wolf reminded us that during the term of the Turnbull & Morrison federal governments that "The government estimated $763 million in net savings from Robodebt over four years. It ended up *costing* $3 billion dollars"
Scott John Morrison, that disgraced former federal minister for social services, treasurer and later Australian prime minister, first sanctioned by Parliament, then effectively sacked by the national electorate before being subpoenaed to appear before the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, has lost another hiding place with the release of these Cabinet papers.
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