ABC News, 11 June 2021:
A Federal Court judge has delivered a withering assessment of the unlawful Robodebt recovery scheme, calling it "a shameful chapter" and "massive failure in public administration" of Australia's social security scheme.
He also ordered the Commonwealth to pay costs of $8.4 million to Gordon Legal, which brought the class action against the Commonwealth on a no-win, no-fee basis.
"This has resulted in a huge waste of public money," he said.
Justice Murphy's judgement gave legal effect to a settlement reached between the Commonwealth and people wrongly pursued for debts last year.
The Commonwealth agreed to fund compensation, pay back wrongly raised debts and drop debt recovery actions, but has not admitted liability.
Robodebt was an automated debt collection system in place between July 2015 and November 2019 that used data-matching in an attempt to identify the overpayment of social security benefits.
More than $750 million wrongfully recovered
The court heard that as part of the scheme, the Commonwealth had unlawfully raised $1.73 billion in debts against 433,000 people.
Of this, $751 million was wrongly recovered from 381,000 people.
"The proceeding has exposed a shameful chapter in the administration of the Commonwealth social security system and a massive failure of public administration," Justice Murphy said.
Justice Murphy said he "could not help but be touched" by the "heart-wrenching" stories of people who had suffered as a result of the scheme.
"One thing … that stands out … is the financial hardship, anxiety and distress, including suicidal ideation and in some cases suicide, that people or their loved ones say was suffered as a result of the Robodebt system, and that many say they felt shame and hurt at being wrongly branded 'welfare cheats'," he said.
He said ministers and public servants should have known the method of using taxation income records to estimate a welfare recipient's average income was flawed.
"However, it is quite another thing to be able to prove to the requisite standard that they actually knew that the operation of the Robodebt system was unlawful," he said.
"There is little in the materials to indicate that the evidence rises to that level….
In settlement of Prygodicz v Commonwealth of Australia the Morrison Government made no admission of legal liability with regard to any aspect of the unlawful Centrelink debt collection program.
It never ends
— Asher Wolf (@Asher_Wolf) June 12, 2021
BACKGROUND
