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Sunday 6 November 2022

Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme is slowly but surely revealing the nastiness at the core of what was an extreme federal government & an increasingly politicized public service

 

Details of Scott Morrison's seven year war on the poor and vulnerable are being exposed.... 


The Saturday Paper, 5-11 November 2022:


Robo-debt: Liberals knew it was illegal before it started

Rick Morton, senior reporter.

@SquigglyRick

November 5, 2022


David Mason was the first person to give advice about a thought bubble program that would become robo-debt. In an email, he called it for what it was: a program with no legal basis that would result in serious reputational harm if it was allowed to go ahead.


His assessment should have been the end of the perverse experiment. Instead, this algorithmic program was used to terrorise welfare recipients for more than five years.


Mason was an acting director within the Department of Social Services (DSS) means testing policy branch when he was asked, in October 2014, to provide the advice. The service delivery arm of government, then known as the Department of Human Services (DHS), had cooked up a potential budget savings proposal that involved splitting taxation data into fortnightly blocks, when social security benefits are also paid, and using this to figure out if a welfare recipient had earned too much money and needed to pay back a debt.


We would not be able to let any debts calculated in this manner reach a tribunal,” Mason warned. “It’s flawed, as the suggested calculation method averaging employment income over an extended period does not accord with legislation, which specifies that the employment income is assessed fortnightly.”


Again, Mason reiterated that the team could not “see how such decisions could be defended in a tribunal or court, particularly when DHS have the legislative authority to seek employment income information from employers”. He stressed that “the approach could cause reputational damage to DHS and DSS”.


On October 31, 2014, the team asked for a second opinion from within the DSS’s legal branch. The same person who had sought advice from Mason, Mark Jones, emailed principal lawyer Anne Pulford to note that the two departments were working together on payment assurance, as was normal, but noted “a strategy is being considered that requires legal advice prior to proposing it to government”.


This is important in establishing a provenance for the controversial robo-debt idea: although governments enthusiastically set expectations for savings in budget cycles, the robo-debt scheme itself was the brainchild of someone or some group within the DHS.


The legal advice from DSS, provided by lawyer Simon Jordan on December 18, 2014, was almost as unambiguous as David Mason’s: “In our view, a debt amount derived from annual smoothing or smoothing over a defined period of time may not be derived consistently with the legislative framework.”


This advice was a co-opinion from Pulford, who features repeatedly in the years to come.


Unemployed people are… almost by definition, they have vulnerable cohorts within them. There would be people who would enter into agreements to repay debts which they had not incurred in the first place.”


Five days later, Scott Morrison became the minister for Social Services.


The end. Or there things might have rested were it not for a gruesome lack of imagination on behalf of dozens of players across government. It is not that they lacked the ability to conceive or design this wicked hunter’s trap of a debt policy – that is well recorded – but that these figures apparently possessed an inability, at all levels of the public service, to wonder what the final outcome of such a hideous program might be.


And it was this: at least seven families believe the suicide of a loved one was connected to the receipt of a robo-debt letter. Hundreds of thousands of Australians were hounded by government officers and debt collectors for money they never owed.


To be clear, these people owed no debt – not because of some administrative technicality but because the Department of Human Services concocted a system that literally made them up, despite the above advice being provided before the program even made it into pilot form.


Commissioner, we anticipate that the evidence to be adduced may be sufficient to show that the reason why no authoritative advice on the legality of the robo-debt scheme – and by that I mean from the solicitor-general or other eminently qualified counsel external to the department – the reason why no advice was obtained prior to the advice of the solicitor-general in September 2019 was because advice in one form or another within the Department of Social Services or Services Australia [formerly DHS] created an expectation within those departments that the external and authoritative advice may not be favourable in the sense that it may not support the legality of the scheme,” senior counsel assisting the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, Justin Greggery, KC, said on Monday.


Indeed, what has emerged in an explosive first week of full hearings is information that has been actively hidden from the public for almost six years. This includes multiple rounds of “advice” seen by the most senior people in both departments over many years before officials finally scurried to ask the solicitor-general for advice in 2019. The answers to questions sought by Services Australia in September of that year should have surprised nobody who had been paying attention.


The solicitor-general was very clear: the use of smoothed or apportioned tax office data “cannot itself provide an adequate factual foundation for a debt decision”. Further, his advice noted that the government couldn’t use the same data in the same way to essentially shake down past or current welfare recipients by presenting it to them and demanding they provide evidence that they did not incur a debt.


This advice continued a piece-by-piece demolition of the entire framework for robo-debt, noting that – as Greggery put it – compliance officers are required to investigate other sources of information, such as employer records, to justify the assumption that a debt exists. They cannot simply outsource this to welfare recipients by issuing threatening letters.


Failure to respond does not provide positive proof of a debt, and the decision-maker cannot speculate about why a person may have failed to respond and to treat that speculation as evidence of a fact,” Greggery said on Monday, summarising some of the solicitor-general’s reasons.


The question raised by the solicitor-general’s advice is whether the Commonwealth government was, prior to that point, recklessly indifferent to the lawfulness or otherwise of the use of averaged PAYG ATO data obtained from the taxation office to allege and recover debts.”


Reckless indifference” is a phrase no barrister uses lightly. It is also a crucial element in the civil law of misfeasance in public office. In its own advice on the tort, the Australian Government Solicitor notes that the element of “bad faith” requires one of two things: either intentional harm caused by knowingly acting beyond their legal power or the defendant having been “recklessly indifferent to whether the act was beyond power and recklessly indifferent to the likelihood of harm being caused to the plaintiff”.


The story of robo-debt is one in which those responsible for it gradually knew less and less, and with less certainty, about its dimensions, about what it was going to be used for and how. What happened between 2014, when departmental advice cast near total doubt over the legality of robo-debt, and 2019, when the solicitor-general’s advice was finally delivered and led to the scheme’s ultimate end, is a collective act of leaning in to a studied ignorance.


We now know, from the evidence so far, that departments had all the legal power needed to compel information from businesses but that, apparently, the government “didn’t want [the] burden to be on employers”, according to a senior official at the DHS.


We know that design decisions were made in relation to the debt letters sent to robo-debt victims, which shunted them deliberately online rather than providing a contact number, because “past experience shows that if an alternative phone number is provided a significant proportion of recipients won’t engage online”.


We know the DSS, faced with an investigation by the Commonwealth ombudsman in early 2017, considered withholding the 2014 legal advice from that office and, even though it appears to have relented, had new advice drawn up by the same co-author of the 2014 document, Anne Pulford, which was used to hoodwink the ombudsman’s office and “show” robo-debt was legal.


We know that, once this convenient deception was established in the eyes of the ombudsman, its subsequent reports declaring robo-debt to be consistent with the legislative framework were used by the DSS as de facto legal justification for a scheme that was – and that they had every reason to expect was – illegal.


You must have understood,” Justin Greggery put to Pulford during questioning on Wednesday, “that you were being asked to walk back the clear terms of the 2014 advice in the context of what was happening in the public arena with the robo-debt scheme.”


It was Greggery’s contention that nothing had changed in the question put to Pulford in 2014 and again in 2017, but somehow the answer had.


This was the most hypothetical advice that could be provided to legally justify some aspect of the scheme then in existence,” he pressed, adding that it had no practical application at all.


Pulford agreed it was “hypothetical” but said she believed she was answering a “quite narrow and quite technically focused general question” put to her by acting group manager Emma Kate McGuirk, who emailed on January 18, 2017, and asked: “As discussed, I am looking for advice, please, regarding a last resort method of debt identification for income support recipients … is it lawful to use an averaging method as a last resort to determine the debt?”


Pulford says she does not recall the robo-debt program being mentioned in this context. That being the case, Greggery pushed, why did emails written by Pulford mention a “business need” to “justify” the question being asked?


The difficulty with you saying that you don’t believe the robo-debt scheme was raised is the evidence that you have given that you simply cannot recall the context of what was occurring socially, or politically, or within the office, or within your department, at the time that you were asked this question,” Greggery said.


As a purely academic question about administrative decision-making, one doesn’t need to have regard to a business need do they?” No, Pulford agreed. She was then asked if she felt pressure from above to massage her advice.


I believe I felt pressure from Ms McGuirk to provide an answer that justified taking action in circumstances which the broad general advice in 2014 would not have supported on its face,” she said.


I now cannot recall whether that was done in full awareness of the robo-debt scheme being in full flight or not.”


McGuirk, who had involvement with robo-debt for only a matter of weeks and who took the stand briefly on Wednesday afternoon, said she could not recall this conversation with Pulford but accepted one must have happened, as it is referred to in the email.


Greggery and Pulford argued back and forth about whether the 2017 advice was just a “rehash” of the same 2014 question with a different answer. Greggery’s view concluded like this: “Despite all the investigation in the world, if all you’re left with is smoothed income, you still arrive at the same answer that you gave in 2014. Legally, the absence of evidence doesn’t amount to positive proof of a debt, correct?”


Pulford wrote a separate email in February 2017 to a colleague in which she noted that “DSS policy has become more comfortable with the DHS approach of using smoothed income, given it is being applied as a last resort”.


She continued, “This appears to represent a change in DSS position, although it doesn’t represent a change in the legal position.”


On the stand, Pulford accepted that this meant the robo-debt scheme was, and remained, “legally flawed”.


In isolation, it is conceivable that the different cogs in the social service machine really had become aligned with the original DHS proposal. After all, despite early and significant doubt over its legality, the idea still made it to the minister’s office in a joint executive minute alongside a bundle of options presented for the 2015-16 budget.


A new minister at that time, Scott Morrison, with his eyes on the Treasury, liked the “PAYG” element. Once he had seen it, there was apparently no turning back.


Minister Morrison has requested that the DHS bring forward proposals for strengthening the integrity of the welfare system,” DSS branch manager Catherine Dalton wrote to Pulford in January 2015.


DHS has developed the attached minute and, given the quick turnaround required to the Social Security Performance and Analysis Branch, has provided comments highlighting the need for legislative change, as well as the shift away from underlying principles of social security law.


We would appreciate your scrutiny of the proposals and advice on any legal implications/impediments. What action would need to be undertaken to resolve legal issues, as well as some indication of the lead time required to obtain legislative change?”


This, of course, was never done. After the PAYG option was cleared for advancement by Morrison, DHS drafted a “new policy proposal”, including a checklist that indicated “no legislation is required”.


So far the inquiry has heard only from DSS public servants.


What began as an idea floated within the public service to please political masters had done exactly that. Now that it involved the knowledge of those politicians, the pressure to deliver was many orders of magnitude higher than before. All of this was happening despite additional “legal questions” being identified in 2015 by internal DSS lawyer David Hertzberg. Handling a jarring disconnect between what was now being asked, and the ever-growing certainty that robo-debt had no legislative basis whatsoever, required an unlearning of unhelpful facts or the almost comical evasion of knowledge.


Take the events of mid-2018, when the DHS referred an Administrative Appeals Tribunal to DSS to consider an appeal. At stake was a robo-debt case that threatened to derail the program, or at least add to mounting and sustained public backlash.


The AAT decision so alarmed DSS officials that they punctured a longstanding refusal to get outside legal counsel regarding the legality of robo-debt and enlisted the private law firm Clayton Utz to provide an opinion on the matter.


In the eyes of those same officials, it was not a good opinion.


In our view, the Social Security Act in its present form does not allow the Department of Social Services to determine the Youth Allowance or New Starts recipient fortnightly income by taking an amount reported to the ATO for a person as a consequence of data-matching processes and notionally attributing that amount to or averaging that amount over particular fortnightly periods,” the draft advice says.


This draft advice was sent to DSS principal lawyer Anna Fredericks on August 14, 2018, and must have produced an extraordinary cognitive dissonance among legal officers there.


Fredericks emailed colleagues and said the advice from Cain Sibley and John Bird was “somewhat unhelpful”.


[They] called me to discuss as the advice is somewhat unhelpful if the mechanism is something that the department wants to continue to rely on,” Fredericks said in the email, sent to Melanie Metz and Pulford. “Cain advised that they might be able to rework the advice subtly if this causes catastrophic issues for us, but that there is not a lot of room for them to do so.”


Backed into a corner, someone within DSS decided to deal with the problem by pretending it didn’t exist. The Clayton Utz invoice was paid but the department never asked for the draft advice to be “converted” to final, more “official”, advice.


Was this not extraordinary? No, Pulford said, because this kind of thing happened all the time. If the advice on any given matter was not favourable or judged as no longer needed, it would not be finalised.


Commissioner Catherine Holmes, who has shown herself to be a fair but direct chair of the inquiry, simply said: “I am appalled.” ……


After the first full week of her royal commission, a few things are clear. Robo-debt was a wicked scheme. It was illegal, and many people knew or ought to have known it was illegal from its conception. Despite this understanding, which never vanished, it was rolled out in such a way as to herd past and current welfare recipients, like cattle, through deliberately designed gateways that maximised the amount of money they could be forced to pay.


For many, they never owed a cent. This was a particularly cruel abuse of the Australian public, at scale, by their own government, which persisted – indeed, which was covered up – for five years against truly overwhelming evidence that it should never have been allowed to begin.


Read the full article here.



Sunday 28 August 2022

Royal Commission into Robodebt and Terms of Reference announced by Albanese Government


 

Ministers for the Department of Social Services, media release, 25 August 2022:


Establishment of the Royal Commission into Robodebt


Joint with:


Anthony Albanese MP

Prime Minister of Australia


Amanda Rishworth MP

Minister for Social Services


Bill Shorten MP

Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme

Minister for Government Services


Mark Dreyfus QC MP

Attorney-General


The Governor-General His Excellency General the Honourable David Hurley AC DSC (Retd) has issued Letters Patent establishing a Royal Commission into the former debt assessment and recovery scheme commonly known as Robodebt.


The inquiry will examine, among other things:


  • The establishment, design and implementation of the scheme; who was responsible for it; why they considered Robodebt necessary; and, any concerns raised regarding the legality and fairness;

  • The handling of concerns raised about the scheme, including adverse decisions made by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal;

  • The outcomes of the scheme, including the harm to vulnerable individuals and the total financial cost to government; and

  • Measures needed to prevent similar failures in public administration.


The Royal Commission’s focus will be on decisions made by those in positions of seniority. The full scope of the inquiry is outlined in the Royal Commission’s Terms of Reference.


Commonwealth agencies will work to respond expeditiously to requests made by the Royal Commission.


The Royal Commissioner is Catherine Holmes AC SC. The Commissioner is a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland and brings vast experience from a distinguished legal career.


The Commissioner led the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry following the 2010-11 floods and acted as counsel assisting the Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions in 1998-99.


The Government has allocated $30 million for the Royal Commission and the final report will be delivered to the Governor-General by 18 April 2023.


The headquarters of the Royal Commission will be in Brisbane and information about hearing dates and how to participate will be provided in the coming weeks.


A legal financial assistance scheme will be available to people requested to formally engage with the Royal Commission, for example, to appear as a witness.

___________ENDS___________



The Monthly, 25 August 2022:


The government has announced the terms of reference for a royal commission into robodebt, fulfilling an election promise to get to the bottom of a calamity that we still know so little about. The inquiry will be led by former Queensland Supreme Court chief justice Catherine Holmes, with the final report to be handed down in April 2023. It will examine, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said today, “the establishment of the scheme, who was responsible for it, and why it was necessary, how concerns were handled, how the scheme affected individuals and the financial costs to government, and measures to prevent this ever happening again”. Government Services Minister Bill Shorten, who spent years raising concerns about the automated recovery scheme, labelled it “a shameful chapter in the history of public administration in this country”, adding that it had caused “untold harm”. The Opposition has already rubbished the commission, with leader Peter Dutton calling it a “witch-hunt” and a “get-square” with Scott Morrison, who was social services minister when the scheme was established. It’s little wonder the Coalition doesn’t want this looked into. But it is utterly shameless of it to continually insist that nothing in the past matters – that we don’t deserve answers to what went on in the years it spent using and abusing the office of government.


Following along with Dutton’s comments today, there was little differentiation between when he was talking about the robodebt royal commission and when he was talking about the inquiry into Morrison’s secret portfolios, which he has also begun labelling a “witch-hunt”. “[The prime minister] should be concentrating more on how he can help families and less on how we can get square with Scott Morrison,” Dutton told reporters this morning, ostensibly talking about robodebt….


BACKGROUND


Australian Parliament, Senate, Community Affairs References

Committee, Centrelink’s Compliance Program, Accountability and justice: Why we need a Royal Commission into Robodebt, May 2022.




Friday 6 May 2022

Australian Federal Election 2022: Scott Morrison in his own words….


The desirability of making welfare recipients cash cows for big business


Speaking before some 300 delegates in Sydney, Morrison said that an investment approach to welfare was the way forward alongside the charitable sector.


Private capital investment in addressing social needs – charity must continue, and I believe it will – but real commercial investment is needed in addressing social challenges the country faces,” Morrison said.


Non-Government providers are not new to the sector particularly when it comes to service delivery – you do it better than the Government ever can and I think that’s been one of the lessons over the last four years.


We need to continue to build institutional capability and capacity of the non-Government sector for the delivery of these services but the big innovation that we must seek has to come through private investment.


Partnerships between civil society groups and our business community will become not only more important, but critical to expanding the service base that is provided.”


Morrison told delegates that welfare must become a good deal for private investors.


We have to make it a good deal for the returns to be there and to attract the level of capital that will be necessary,” he said.


The investment approach to welfare offers much promise for the future welfare system.”

[Xavier Smerdon (June 2015) writing in ProBono Australia, Private Capital Investment Needed to Expand Welfare System - Morrison”]


Australians can forget about relying on the age pension when they retire, according to Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison.


Echoing his predecessor Joe Hockey's pledge about the age of entitlement being over, in a speech on Friday Mr Morrison said the age pension should no longer be seen as an entitlement but "a welfare payment for those who do not have the ability to save enough to fund their own retirement".


"Becoming a self-funded retiree, I think, is one of the most important objectives of any Australian … it means you have choices and control over your life and your care," Mr Morrison said.

[Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison, 9 News, 30 Nov 2015]


"But you also have to make sure your welfare system does the right thing by those who are receiving it and the communities in which they live. That is why we have put in place the Cashless Debit Card. In particular in the member's electorate in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay from 29 January this year that trial commenced, quarantining welfare support from the purchase of alcohol or gambling products, where those purchases have caused drug and alcohol misuse and problem gambling. On 25 March this year we said we would be continuing trials at the existing sites in Ceduna, East Kimberley and Goldfields, and, of course, continuing those trials in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay….

Under this government we're running a welfare system which is a hand up, not out; one that understands that the best form of welfare is a job. Through programs like the cashless debit card, which is supported by this side of the House and opposed by that side of the House— (Time expired)"

[House of Representatives, Hansard (31 July 2019) Prime Minister Scott Morrison on the second time he spoke directly about the “Cashless Debit Card”]


we are keeping the cashless debit card program running to protect more vulnerable Australians from social harm”

[House of Representatives, Hansard (24 October 2019) Scott Morrison on the the fourth and last time he uttered the words “Cashless Debit Card” on the floor of the House]


NOTE: 

In December 2020 Parliament passed the controversial amendments to Cashless Debit Card (CDC) laws but last minute amendments mean the trial sites would now be only be extended for two years and not become permanent income management sites. The CDC would also only be optional for est. 25,000 people currently on the Basics Card in the Northern Territory & Cape York, Qld.

Original commercial contracts and additional associated contracts are with Indue Limited.


AUSTENDER
snapshots retrieved 4 May 2022


















The contentious CDC is being trialled in four regions - Ceduna in South Australia, the East Kimberly and Goldfields region in the West and Bundaberg and Hervey Bay in Queensland. The card quarantines 80 per cent of government payments so they cannot be used to withdraw cash, buy alcohol, or gamble.

Emotional speeches dominated Parliament as fierce debate continued long into the night.

The legislation passed the Senate by just one vote after the government failed to secure the support needed to make the CDC permanent with the last-minute amendments leading Centre Alliance senator, Stirling Griff declining to vote.

South Australian senator Rex Patrick and Tasmanian senator Jaqui Lambie both opposed the bill citing a lack of evidence and more investment in wrap-around supports and services are needed.

Those on the card are overwhelmingly Indigenous with the Minister for Social Services and Families, Anne Ruston revealing the figures in the Senate.

In WA's East Kimberley 81 per cent of people on the CDC are First Nations while in In the Goldfields 48 per cent of people and in the Queensland trial sites its 18 per cent.

Eighty-one per cent of people in the Northern Territory on the Basics Card are First Nations people. ” [NITV, 10 December 2020]


The sunset clause for Cashless Debit Card trial sites is 31 December 2022 and the 2021-22 Budget did not fund the program beyond that date. So expect Morrison & Co to quickly introduce legislation to extend this coercive program if they retain government after 21 May 2022.



Future militarisation of the response to civil disasters and unrest


PRIME MINISTER: I think we have got to prepare for a new normal. And the new normal, I think there is a community expectation now that there be a more direct ability for the Commonwealth, particularly through the Australian Defence Forces to be able to take action. See what happened…


SPEERS: What do you mean by that?


PRIME MINISTER: What happened last Saturday, this was the change, the big change, historic change, it moved from a respond to request posture, to a move and integrate posture. Which means the defence force moving in and then coming in and working with the local effort without requests, without any instigation at a state level, now…..


SPEERS: You want the power to deploy defence assets when you think you need to?


PRIME MINISTER: Where the Chief of the Defence Force believes there is a risk to life and safety and can support…

[ABC “Insiders” (January 2020) Prime Minister Scott Morrison interview with David Speers, transcript]


As of this morning, three hundred Australian Defence Force troops have been deployed primarily to southwest and western Sydney to help state law enforcement police ensure the diverse communities of lower socioeconomic standing comply with COVID stay-at-home orders.


NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller put in a request to PM Scott Morrison last Thursday afternoon……


The troops won’t be armed or have any official powers. And the terms of the deployment, as well as official orders, aren’t publicly available.


However, it’s lost upon no one that the troops have been sent out straight after a huge and illegal anti-lockdown protest happened the weekend prior to the deployment request…..


the Turnbull-Morrison government streamlined the ability of the PM and other designated ministers to deploy the military domestically, under the Defence Amendment (Call Out of the Australian Defence Force) Bill 2018.


So, rather than a measure of last resort, the executive can now deploy the military to enhance the capabilities of state and territory police in dealing with a threat of “domestic violence”, under the auspices of section 119 of the Australian Constitution.


The rather broad term domestic violence is left undefined within the founding document. However, it is designated as something distinct from “invasion” in that section of the Constitution.


Leading on from this late 2018 beefing up of call out provisions, the Morrison government passed a further bill last December, that streamlined the ability of the executive to deploy ADF reservists to domestic violence situations as well.


Section 33 of the Defence Act provides the governor general with the power to call out ADF troops to assist with domestic violence issues that threaten Commonwealth interests.


While section 35 of the Act allows for the call out of the ADF to assist state or territory law enforcement with “occurring, or likely to occur,” domestic violence situations if the PM, the attorney general or the defence minister is satisfied the situation requires it.


Special powers are bestowed to domestically deployed troops, via section 46, when capturing or recapturing a location, or when preventing or protecting against threats or acts of violence.


These include powers to control movement, search and seizure powers, the ability to detain citizens, to question them and to give them orders.


In terms of “protest, dissent, assembly or industrial action”, section 39 of the Act limits the powers of ADF troops to interfere in such matters, “except if there is a reasonable likelihood of the death of, or serious injury to, persons or serious damage to property”.


Section 123 provides ADF personnel with immunity from state laws in relation to registering a “vehicle, vessel, animal, firearm or other thing”. And section 123AA provides immunity to any civil or criminal liability in relation to anything done “in good faith” during such domestic operations…...


there’s a broader aspect to this use of the military to assist in managing restriction compliance, and that’s the ever-creeping militarisation of public life, whether that be via the coordination of the COVID-19 vaccines or turning the Australia Border Force into a paramilitary institution.


Last month, Australian peace activist Jacob Grech told Sydney Criminal Lawyers that “the military is a bigger and bigger part of our everyday lives”, and it’s “main focus, as assistance defence minister Hastie said around Anzac Day, is the application of lethal violence.”


So, every time we are looking at other issues and areas where the military are involved – whether it’s with education or vaccine rollout – we have to remember that their main application is lethal violence.”

[Paul Gregoire (October 2021) writing in Sydney Criminal Lawyers blog, The Laws Governing the Military’s Deployment on the Australian Public]


A Morrison policy now hiding in the shadows


In addition we will commence a modest drug testing trial for 5,000 new welfare recipients.


JobSeeker recipients who test positive would be placed on the Cashless Debit Card for their welfare payments and be subjected to further tests and possible referral for treatment.


Other welfare measures include: strengthening verification requirements for single parents seeking welfare, a crackdown on those attempting to collect multiple payments, stricter residency rules for new migrants to access Australian pensions, and denying welfare for a disability caused solely by their own substance abuse….


Other welfare measures include: strengthening verification requirements for single parents seeking welfare, a crackdown on those attempting to collect multiple payments, stricter residency rules for new migrants to access Australian pensions, and denying welfare for a disability caused solely by their own substance abuse.

[Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison (May 2017) House of Representatives, Hansard, p. 4067]


NOTE: The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Drug Testing Trial) Bill 2019 was passed in the House of Representatives on 17 October 2019 after the rejected drug testing measures were again put to Parliament, this time by the Morrison Government. These measures applied to 5,000 new Jobseeker and Youth Allowance applicants in Canterbury-Bankstown (NSW), Logan (QLD) and Mandurah (WA) for a trial period of two years. The bill is currently before the Senate after having received a favourable inquiry report and an unfavourable human rights report. To date it has not progressed to assent, seemingly waiting for a cleared legislative schedule after the re-election of a Morrison Government.


On the subject of Morrison's personal unlawful war against the poor and vulnerable


In an interview with The Saturday Telegraph, the Prime Minister said he doesn’t want Australia’s strong economy to be compromised by bludgers who won’t pay back their debt.

If you’ve got welfare debts but you can afford to get on a plane and go overseas, well — no,” Mr Morrison said.

[Prime Minister Scott Morrison (22 Sept 2018) in news.com.au]


Prime Minister Scott Morrison has denied personal responsibility for the Robodebt disaster, which has resulted in a $1.2 billion class action settlement.


Mr Morrison was social services minister when the unlawful scheme was conceived and touted the billions of dollars it was supposed to rake in during his time as treasurer.


He continued the welfare debt recovery program as Prime Minister and pinned a promised return to surplus on its projected windfall.


The federal government finally pulled the plug on the policy late in 2019 in the face of a Federal Court challenge. It settled a class action earlier in November, hours before the trial was to begin.…..


Thousands of debt notices demanding repayments were based on false information.


But Mr Morrison argues the use of income averaging brought the Robodebt scheme undone, not the full automation of the process.


It’s actually not about the computer, it’s about the assumption made that a debt is raised by averaging people’s incomes,” he told Sydney radio 2GB on Wednesday.


Income averaging was found not to be a valid means of raising a debt, that’s what it’s about. This is just the Labor Party trying to throw some mud.”


Robodebt victims are to receive $112 million in compensation, be repaid $720 million and have $400 million in unlawful debts wiped…..


We’ve got on with fixing it, that’s what we’ve got on with doing. Labor wants to just keep kicking it along for their own political reasons,” the Prime Minister said.

[Journalist Daniel McCulloch writing in The New Daily, 25 November 2020]


The Morrison government has told a tribunal there is “strong public interest” in preserving the secrecy of “business case” documents that may outline the nucleus of the unlawful robodebt scheme.


IT expert Justin Warren won access to documents connected to the since-scrapped welfare debt recovery program under freedom of information laws in 2019, but he is yet to receive them after the government appealed against the decision.


Warren’s lawyer argues there is “profound” public interest in release because they may shed light on what went wrong with the scheme, which eventually saw the government reach a $1.8bn settlement with about 400,000 victims in what the federal court called a “shameful chapter”.


The Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which is considering the government’s latest attempt to keep the documents secret, heard closing arguments from both parties on Thursday.


The tribunal has previously heard the documents include detailed costings and other financial data about the program, which matched yearly income data against a person’s fortnightly reports to Centrelink to send a person a debt.


They are also said to include draft “new policy proposal” documents and purported attachments that outline a new plan to ramp up the government’s welfare debt recovery.


The tribunal is considering, among other issues, whether the documents were prepared for the cabinet process or were simply being worked on internally by the then Department of Human Services, which administered the robodebt scheme.


Counsel for the commonwealth, Andrew Berger QC, insisted on Thursday the documents should not be released because they were prepared for cabinet.

[Journalist Luke Henriques-Gomes writing in The Guardian, 23 December 2021]


NOTE:

As of 1 July 2022 a new federal employment service, Workforce Australia,  will begin which encompasses all employment services delivered by the Dept. of Education, Skills and Employment. Workforce Australia falls with the portfolios of Ministers Stuart Robert, Alan Tudge & Bridgit McKenzie as well as Assistant Minister Like Howarth.

As well as transferring more personal responsibility to an unemployed person to provide their own employment opportunities, it also increases the mutual obligation provisions by creating a digitalised points system whose software will decide if the unemployed person has met all mutual obligation requirements in any reporting period - with the apparent penalty for non-compliance being a reduction or suspension of benefits. One suspects that this new employment service is where the aforementioned "new plan to ramp up the government's welfare debt recovery" will initially be applied if the Morrison Government is re-elected. 


On being the best economic manager


On 18 September 2013 when Scott John Morrison moved from the Opposition benches to the Government side of the House of Representatives and straight into the new ministry and a Cabinet position, the nation's annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) annual growth was in the vicinity of 2.6%. By the end of the year he became Australian Treasurer GDP growth had slowed to 2.2%. In the year Morrison became prime minister growth rose to 2.9% and, then fell off a cliff a good twelve months before the global pandemic began, to bottom at the end of 2020 at minus zero annual growth according to the World Bank.


GDP growth (annual %) - Australia 2013 to 2020

World Bank national accounts data, and OECD National Accounts data files.

Annual percentage growth rate of GDP at market prices based on constant local currency. Aggregates are based on constant 2015 prices, expressed in U.S. dollars. GDP is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or for depletion and degradation of natural resources.

An economy's growth is measured by the change in the volume of its output or in the real incomes of its residents. The 2008 United Nations System of National Accounts (2008 SNA) offers three plausible indicators for calculating growth: the volume of gross domestic product (GDP), real gross domestic income, and real gross national income. The volume of GDP is the sum of value added, measured at constant prices, by households, government, and industries operating in the economy. GDP accounts for all domestic production, regardless of whether the income accrues to domestic or foreign institutions.


In 2021 Australia's annual GDP growth over the year was a lacklustre1.5% before the December quarter came in at 3.4%. From the end December 2021 to March 2022 GDP growth has held at 4.2% but the International Monetary Fund appears to think that will shrink to est. 2.5% by the end of 2023 and fall yet again in 2024.


Then there was this......


While Monday's mid-year budget update forecasts a slight improvement in the budget bottom line this financial year - with a deficit of $36.5 billion rather than the $37.1 billion expected - the following three years will see the budget bottom line head further into the red than expected.


The deficit in 2017-18 will be $28.7 billion, up from $26.1 billion forecast in May. In 2018-19 it will be $19.7 billion and in 2019-20 the deficit will nearly double from $6 billion to $10 billion. In total, deficits over the next four years will total $94.9 billion.


In a statement, S&P said the latest budget forecasts would have "no immediate impact" on Australia's credit rating, but added a strong warning about the nation's worsening forecast fiscal position placing further pressure on the rating.


"We remain pessimistic about the government's ability to close existing budget deficits and return a balanced budget by the year ending June 30, 2021. Over the coming months, we will continue to monitor the government's willingness and ability to enact new budget savings or revenue measures to reduce fiscal deficits materially over the next few years," the statement said.

[The Age, 20 December 2016, p.1]


Followed by this a little over six years later.....


At its meeting today, the Board decided to increase the cash rate target by 25 basis points to 35 basis points. It also increased the interest rate on Exchange Settlement balances from zero per cent to 25 basis points….


Over the year to the March quarter, headline inflation was 5.1 per cent…


This rise in inflation largely reflects global factors. But domestic capacity constraints are increasingly playing a role and inflation pressures have broadened, with firms more prepared to pass through cost increases to consumer prices.….


The central forecast for 2022 is for headline inflation of around 6 per cent and underlying inflation of around 4¾ per cent; by mid 2024…..


The Board is committed to doing what is necessary to ensure that inflation in Australia returns to target over time. This will require a further lift in interest rates over the period ahead.

[Reserve Bank of Australia, media release (3 May 2022) Statement by Philip Lowe, Governor: Monetary Policy Decision, Number 2022-12]


The entire time Morrison has been a Cabinet Minister - rising to Treasurer in 2015 & Prime Minister in 2018 – every single national budget has been a deficit budget.

Not even in 2019 did he manage to keep the national accounts out of the red.


So what has Morrison had to say over the years about the national economy?


SCOTT MORRISON: In my electorate there are many families and there are many individuals who have mortgages and they would like to see rates come down.

[ABC “The World Today” (September 2008) Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison on the subject of the Reserve Bank lowering the interest rate]


The Prime Minister, campaigning in western Sydney on Monday, channelled former party leader John Howard by saying the government was committed to “keeping downward pressure” on interest rates, which are at a record low of 0.1 per cent….


Mr Morrison said the lift in inflation in the United States, where it climbed to 6.2 per cent last week, highlighted the issues at play in the Australian economy.


I think it does highlight Australia’s economic recovery has to be secured by people who have a track record in economic management, otherwise you will see petrol prices go up, you will see electricity prices go up, you will see interest rates go up, more than they would need to,” he said.

[Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (15 April 2022), The Sydney Morning Herald]


Well, inflation, as you know, is about how quickly costs are rising.” 

[Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (30 April 2022) interview with political commentator Peter van Onselen]


Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has said interest rates would be lower under his government than under Labor, yesterday urged journalists not to politicise the potential rate rise…..


Morrison, campaigning in Victoria, said there were pressures coming from outside of Australia on the nation's interest rate settings.


He said the current rate of 0.1 per cent was "unconventionally low" and taxpayers understood they would start to move up.


"The pressures on interest rates ... the pressures on cost of living, highlight just why the economy is so important in this election," he said.

[Scott Morrison quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 May 2022, p.1]


On the touchy subject of religion within the corridors of a secular democratic parliament


God moves in mysterious ways, and never more so than when He moves into politics. On Thursday, for example, the Liberal Party announced that its candidate for the seat of Greenway, centred around Blacktown, would be Louise Markus, a prominent member of Hillsong, Australia's largest church…..


You might have thought someone standing for such a marginal seat would want all the media attention he or she could get, but the Liberals' state director, Scott Morrison, refused to let the Herald talk to her. He said she would do "local media first".


Instead Morrison, himself a man of "strong religious views", launched into a pitch for the type of "faith-based programs" that Hillsong had established to address social problems.


"In the [United] States there is an increasing tendency of governments particularly the Bush Government to get behind what are called faith-based programs," he enthused.


"That is where governments start to lift the constraints on the Noffses and the Bill Crewses and others, to enable them to really help people, beyond just the material, and give them life advice which involves faith. Those programs, I understand, have had some great success."


Markus works for Emerge, the Hillsong offshoot whose facilities and programs range from medical centres and emergency relief services to drug and alcohol programs, and personal development and recovery programs.


The CEO there, Leigh Coleman, would not put us in contact with Markus, either. And so the views of the Hillsong employee and Liberal candidate on the desirability of passing responsibility for social welfare issues from secular government agencies to religious organisations must for now remain a mystery.


Perhaps some light will be shed when the chief pastor of Hillsong, Brian Houston, addresses Federal Parliament's Christian fellowship prayer breakfast when next it meets, in about a month…..


Are we witnessing here the growth of a US-style religious right influence on politics, particularly on Liberal Party politics?


The state director, Scott Morrison concedes: "Certainly there is a strong element in the party which holds very deep religious convictions."

[Liberal Party Director Scott Morrison (12 April 2004), The Sydney Morning Herald]


He also acknowledges that the Liberal Party, once largely comprised of members of the established Protestant faiths, is these days "literally a broad church"…..

[Journalists Mike Seccombe, Aban Contractor and Mark Metherell, The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 April 2002, p.13]


Since entering the parliament and before I have held a very clear, consistent and public view supporting the current definition of marriage as a voluntary union for life of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others. I maintain this view and issued a statement to my electorate on 19 November last year to initiate feedback from my constituents…..


Religions and cultures over centuries have held that family is ultimately based on the union of a man and a woman. I do not believe that the tested wisdom of centuries has been overwhelmed by more contemporary arguments. I acknowledge that in today's society too many heterosexual marriages fail. Family breakdown is the primary cause of poverty, disadvantage, mental illness and related conditions in our society today. The biggest victims of marriage failure and family breakdown are children. The social and economic costs of family breakdown are incalculable. This is a genuine national tragedy, not an argument for same-sex marriage. Legal recognition of same-sex unions does not, and should not, require the redefinition of marriage.


Marriage, as I have said, is a union between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others for life. Legal recognition of a same-sex union should be termed something else. I have no objection to some other form of legal recognition of such relationships in the form of a type of civil union provided such unions do not provide any automatic access to adoption. I appreciate there are many in the community who hold a different view to those I have expressed in this place. Of those who contacted me by mail, petition and email who I was able to identify in my electorate, more than 850 were against changes to the Marriage Act, while over 50 were in favour. I do not seek to represent this as a representative poll—my position will not be determined by such polls—but it would appear that of those who feel strongly about this issue a majority were in favour of retaining the current definition rather than changing it.


As we look at this issue, though, I think we need to be mindful of what the real threats to marriage are in the context of this debate, and I believe that such threats are posed more from within than from without. This debate should remind us that anniversaries in marriage are earned, not arrived at, and we should all work on the sanctity of marriage. 

[House of Representatives, Hansard (24 Aug 2011) Liberal MP for Cook & Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Scott Morrison]


Scott Morrison has asked a national conference of Christian churches to help him help Australia, while revealing his belief that he and his wife, Jenny, have been called upon to do God’s work.


In video that has emerged of the prime minister speaking at the Australian Christian Churches conference on the Gold Coast last week, Morrison also revealed that he had sought a sign from God while on the 2019 election campaign trail, and that he had practised the evangelical tradition of the “laying-on of hands” while working in the role of prime minister.


He also describes the misuse of social media as the work of “the evil one”, in reference to the Devil, and called on his fellow believers to pray against its corrosive effect on society.


While Australians are familiar with the non-evangelical Christian beliefs of John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, Morrison is the first Pentecostal Christian to hold the office.


Morrison has been open about his faith, inviting journalists into the Horizon church in the Sutherland shire during the 2019 election campaign, and describing his subsequent victory as a “miracle” win. Footage of him calling for prayers for state and territory leaders during the Covid pandemic has also emerged.


The prime minister travelled to the conference from Sydney using his taxpayer-funded aircraft. No video of the address has been promoted on his Facebook or official pages, nor has his office released a copy of his speech, as usually occurs when he is speaking in his official capacity as prime minister.


The video, which was broadcast by Vineyard Christian church then distributed by the Rationalist Society, gives rare insight into Morrison’s personal religious practice and the beliefs that guide him and the rapidly growing Pentecostal movement in Australia…..


Talking about a difficult time during the final fortnight of the election campaign, Morrison shared a story of asking God for a sign before visiting the Ken Duncan Gallery on the New South Wales Central Coast.


I must admit I was saying to myself, ‘You know, Lord, where are you, where are you? I’d like a reminder if that’s OK,’” Morrison says.


And there right in front of me was the biggest picture of a soaring eagle that I could imagine and of course the verse hit me.


The message I got that day was, ‘Scott, you’ve got to run to not grow weary, you’ve got to walk to not grow faint, you’ve got to spread your wings like an eagle to soar like an eagle.’”


He told the conference that he and Jenny had been grateful for the “amazing prayers and support” sent from Christians across the country, and shared with the crowd that he had practised the laying on of hands, a Pentecostal tradition of healing and encouragement to faith.


I’ve been in evacuation centres where people thought I was just giving someone a hug and I was praying, and putting my hands on people … laying hands on them and praying in various situations,” he says….

[Political journalist Sarah Martin writing about Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s faith in The Guardian, 26 April 2021]


*My yellow highlighting throughout this post