That "massive failure in public administration" of Australia's social security scheme, by way of the creation of the unlawful 'Robodebt' automated data matching program, has to date cost the Morrison Government: (i) est. $8.4M in Federal Court applicants' awarded legal costs; (ii) approx. $751M in debt repayments to applicants; (iii) a further $103.6M in settlement distribution costs; (iv) the forced abandonment of recovery of up to $1.01 billion in debts claimed by Centrelink but not yet realised; and (v) government having to absorb its own legal costs as well as the former unlawful program's multimillion dollar administration costs.

 

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

Prygodicz v Commonwealth of Australia (No 2) [2021] FCA 634 (11 June 2021)

Commonwealth of Australia v Prygodicz [2020] FCA 1516 (14 October 2020)

Prygodicz v Commonwealth of Australia [2020] FCA 1454

National Redress Scheme: Morrison Government's deviation from royal commission recommendations without sound evidence had been "to the detriment of the scheme and against the interests of survivors"

Sadly Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his political cronies continue to wage war on the poor and vulnerable without exception.

This time it is victims of insitutional child sexual abuse they are trying to deny access to compensation and to unfairly limit the amount of compensation recommended by the Royal Commission into Insitutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse.

Herald Sun, 4 April 2019:

THE Federal Government must explain how it capped National Redress Scheme payments to child sex survivors at $150,000 rather than a recommended $200,000, said a parliamentary committee left "deeply dissatisfied" when it was unable to find an answer during a review of the scheme.

The $150,000 cap was rammed into legislation after the Turnbull Government warned any push to lift it would delay the scheme's implementation by 18 months.

But the committee's unsuccessful attempts to solve the mystery has left survivors believing $150,000 was chosen because it matched Anglican and Catholic maximum payments, a joint select committee reviewing the scheme found.

"The committee is deeply dissatisfied that the maximum payment amount has been reduced and that no clear explanation has been provided about why this occurred or who advocated for this reduction," the report released on Wednesday said.

"The committee has tried to ascertain the reason for the reduction in the maximum payment and has put this question to various witnesses, including Department of Social Services and the Department of Human Services on numerous occasions. 

However, apart from acknowledging that $150,000 was the amount agreed to between the Commonwealth, states, and territories, the committee has not received any explanation or rationale about this discrepancy."

The committee, headed by Senator Derryn Hinch with Newcastle MP Sharon Claydon as deputy chair, was told more than 3000 people had applied for redress by February 28 after its launch on July 1, 2018, but only 88 cases were finalised, with fewer than 10 survivors paid between $100,000 and $150,000.

At least one person received the maximum $150,000.

"The committee recommends that the government clearly and openly explain how the maximum payments came to be set at $150,000 rather than $200,000, and the rationale for this decision," it said in one of 29 recommendations. The committee recommended amending legislation to lift the cap to $200,000.

The cross-party committee made up of four Liberal members, three Labor, one Green and Senator Hinch issued a damning assessment of parts of the redress scheme that vary from recommendations by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2017.

They include an assessment matrix that restricts maximum payments to penetrative child sexual abuse, counselling capped at $5000 and excluding people with serious criminal convictions or making applications from jail.

The criminal conviction and jail exclusions would "disproportionately impact" Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who made up almost one third of survivors seen by royal commissioners during private sessions in jail.

"This is an alarming statistic," the committee said.

Ms Claydon said the Federal Government's deviation from royal commission recommendations without sound evidence had been "to the detriment of the scheme and against the interests of survivors".

BACKGROUND

Joint Select Committee on oversight of the implementation of redress related recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse:

On 20 June 2017 the House of Representatives agreed to a Senate resolution that a joint select committee on oversight of the implementation of redress related recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse be established following the tabling of the final report of the Royal Commission.

Excerpts from Joint Committee's report:

Intrinsic to a survivor's access to redress are the institutions responsible for the sexual abuse and their decision to join the scheme. While all states and territories are now participating in the scheme, there are no mechanisms to force private institutions to join the scheme. Yet survivors will not be able to obtain redress if the institution responsible for their abuse refuses to join the scheme. This is both unfair and unacceptable. Plainly, more needs to be done to pressure non-participating institutions to join the scheme, and provide survivors with access to redress....

Central to the redress scheme are the survivors. Wherever possible, the scheme should be an inclusive scheme that does not exclude groups of survivors. Currently, certain groups of survivors are either not eligible for redress or are subject to potentially arbitrary decisions when seeking permission to apply for redress. The government has suggested that some of these exclusions are necessary to protect the scheme from particular risks, such as fraud, while others are necessary to ensure the efficient administration of the scheme. These are not sufficient justifications to unilaterally exclude large groups of survivors, who would otherwise have a legitimate claim, from accessing redress.

Recommendation 14
8.94 The committee recommends that the government clearly and openly explain how the maximum payments came to be set at $150 000 rather than $200 000, and the rationale for this decision.

Recommendation 15
8.95 In line with the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the committee recommends that Commonwealth, state and territory governments agree to increase the maximum redress payment from $150 000 to $200 000.

Recommendation 16
8.100 In line with the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the committee recommends that Commonwealth, state and territory governments implement a minimum payment of $10 000 for the monetary component of redress, noting that in practice some offers may be lower than $10 000 after relevant prior payments to the survivor by the responsible institution are considered, or after calculating a non-participating institution's share of the costs.

The full April 2019 Joint Standing Committee report can be read here.

NOTE:

The Anglican Diocese of Grafton on the NSW North Coast has now joined the National Redress Scheme.

What will it take to shame religious institutions into joining the national redress scheme for people who suffered institutional child sexual abuse?

Readers living in the Clarence Valley will notice that the Anglican Diocese of Grafton named as perpetrating abuse* by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has not yet joined the national compensation scheme which would allow victims who suffered at the hands of the diocese to seek full redress.

Readers further afield will notice that a large number of Protestant and Catholic institutions are dragging their feet with regard to this redress scheme.

Institutions That Are Not Yet Participating in the Redress Scheme For People Who Have Experienced Instituti... by clarencegirl on Scribd

https://www.scribd.com/document/400681740/Institutions-That-Are-Not-Yet-Participating-in-the-Redress-Scheme-For-People-Who-Have-Experienced-Institutional-Child-Sexual-Abuse

* This is the same Anglican Diocese of Grafton which Clarence Valley Council openly supports by inviting it to offer up a prayer of its choice at the beginning of council monthly meetings.

Q. If Telstra steals est. $60 million, repays $5 million in compensation and is fined $10 million, leaving a profit of $45 million - how big are the telco’s performance bonuses this year?

Readers with a Telstra mobile phone account need to check that their phone was not set to ‘Premium Direct Billing’ before 3 March 2018.

Because although Telstra put out a media release there was no promise to proactively contact all mobile customers with this news below and, the telco will be be deciding which individual account holders (who have been overcharged for a service they did not consent to) will be contacted concerning compensation.

It is possible it will not manage to contact every customer who had been improperly charged. So if you suspect that you may have been then phone Telstra.

New Matilda, 27 April 2018: 

      

Ordinarily, when you get caught stealing, you have to pay the money back, and the punishment you receive is meant to dissuade you from stealing again.

Unless you’re a major Australian corporation. In which case, you can steal tens of millions of dollars from your ‘valued clients’, pay a fine that represents a tiny proportion of what you pinched, issue a few million in refunds… and then keep the rest.

Introducing Telstra and its third-party ‘Premium Direct Billing’ scam, which netted Australia’s biggest Telco a cool $45 million profit, after fines and refunds.

Yesterday, the Federal Court fined Telstra $10 million for the rip-off after it found that Telstra “did not adequately inform customers it had set the Premium Direct Billing service as a default on their mobile accounts. If customers accessed content through this service, even unintentionally, they were billed directly by Telstra”.

“Thousands of Telstra mobile phone customers unwittingly signed up to subscriptions without being required to enter payment details or verify their identity.

By introducing and operating the Premium Direct Billing service, Telstra generated substantial profits by exposing customers to unauthorised charges,” Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Rod Sims announced in a media statement.

The prosecution was launched by the ACCC with powers delegated from the Australian Securities & Investments Commission. You might remember that sleepy Australian corporate watchdog from such scandals as the banking royal commission....

“Telstra estimates it has provided refunds of at least $5 million, and it will review any future complaints in light of this action and deal with those customers in good faith. The ACCC estimates further refunds may be in the order of several million dollars.”

Another how low can they go moment courtesy of the Catholic Church in Australia

The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 February 2018:

The Catholic Church in Australia is worth tens of billions of dollars, making it one of the country’s biggest non-government property owners, and massively wealthier than it has claimed in evidence to major inquiries into child sexual abuse.

A six-month investigation by The Sydney Morning Herald has found that the church misled the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse by grossly undervaluing its property treasures in both NSW and Victoria while claiming that increased payments to abuse victims would require cuts to its social programs.

The investigation was based on intricate data from local councils that allowed more than 1860 valuations of church-owned property in Victoria. That showed that across 36 municipalities - including nearly all of metropolitan Melbourne - the church had land and buildings worth almost $7 billion in 2016.

Extrapolated nationally, using conservative assumptions, the church owns property worth more than $30 billion Australia-wide.

This put the Catholic church among the largest non-government property owners, by value, in NSW and Australia, rivalling Westfield’s network of shopping centres and other assets. It dwarfs all other large property owners.

"These figures confirm what we have known; there is huge inequity between the Catholic Church’s wealth and their responses to survivors," said Helen Last, chief executive of the In Good Faith Foundation.

"The 600 survivors registered for our Foundation’s services continue to experience minimal compensation and lack of comprehensive care in relation to their Church abuses. They say their needs are the lowest of church priorities.’’…..

Monetary payments to abuse survivors have averaged just $49,000 under Towards Healing, the national compensation system established by the church in 1996……

The church also has extensive non-property assets including Catholic Church Insurance and its own internal banks - often known as Catholic Development Funds - with nearly $1 billion in assets in Sydney alone.

And it has other investments, including in superannuation, telecommunications and in the stock-market. A Church-owned fund manager has more than $1.4 billion under management.