A Royal Commission into Australia’s Robodebt scheme has referred several government officials for civil and criminal prosecution after handing down its final report on Friday. The inquiry included 46 days of hearings, received over 1000 submissions and heard from 115 witnesses regarding the unlawful scheme. The report contains an “additional sealed chapter that is not part of the bound report,” which recommends referrals of multiple individuals involved in the scheme for prosecution.
The Commission stated:
Robodebt was a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals. In essence, people were traumatised on the off-chance they might owe money. It was a costly failure of public administration, in both human and economic terms
The report stated, “elements of the tort of misfeasance in public office appear to exist.” The inquiry criticised several public officials, including former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, for failing to properly investigate the use of income averaging during his time as social services minister. Then-Secretary of the Department of Human Services (DHS) Kathryn Campbell was found to have known of the illegality of her department’s scheme and failed to act on the information. Campbell was responsible for the policy proposal that was presented to the national cabinet in 2015.
Evidence emerged during the inquiry, which found that several government officials, including the chief counsel for the Department of Social Services (DSS), were aware that the Robodebt scheme was illegal. However, this legal advice remained in the draft and was never finalised.
The report made 57 recommendations, including repealing s 34 of the Commonwealth Freedom of Information Act to end the confidentiality of cabinet documents and requiring Services Australia to direct its agencies to finalise legal advice regarding government programs within three months of receipt. It recommended that Services Australia design accessible policies and processes that avoid language that “reinforces feelings of stigma and shame” associated with the provision of government benefits. It also recommended that Services Australia amend its processes to consider vulnerability factors facing recipients, including their ability to meet compliance activities and training for frontline staff which promotes open consultation processes when new programs are being implemented.
The report recommended implementing a debt recovery management policy emphasising ethical and transparent practices and imposing a six-year limit on debt recovery. A comprehensive legislative framework for government services was recommended for automated debt collection processes, including a statutory body to monitor and audit automated decision-making processes.
The Commission identified the impact of the Robodebt scheme on individuals, stating:
Declaring income earned was not necessarily straightforward for income support recipients because their earnings might be irregular and the periods over which they earned would not necessarily match the Centrelink fortnight on which income was calculated. Inaccuracies could be hard to avoid. But DHS did nothing by way of investigation of discrepancies before demanding explanations from recipients. For people who were able to prove they did not owe a debt, it was a stressful and time-consuming process. Undoubtedly some people paid amounts they did not owe because they were not in a position, practically or psychologically, to demonstrate otherwise
Robodebt, a debt collection scheme employed by Services Australia from 2015 to 2019, demanded payment of outstanding debts from Centrelink recipients which were calculated through an automated debt assessment. The scheme was based on averaging income information provided to the Australian Taxation Office. The scheme ended in 2020 after 470,000 wrongful debts had been issued. Several investigations and inquiries had been made into the scheme based on unlawfulness, and a class action was initiated in 2019 against the federal government for the harm caused by Robodebt. The class action was settled in June 2021, resulting in compensation of AUD 112 million to 430,000 participants.
