E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO NATIONAL
MONDAY, 16 NOVEMBER 2020

SUBJECTS: $1.2 billion Robodebt settlement

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: The Commonwealth has agreed to pay out 1.2 billion dollars to settle a class action relating to its failed Robodebt program. The scheme was found to be illegal last year; it used technology to automatically calculate debts owed by welfare recipients. Trouble is; a lot of those calculations were wrong. Law firm Gordon Legal brought the case against the government and the settlement will benefit about 400,000 people. Bill Shorten has been prosecuting this issue and is the Shadow Minister for Government Services. He's in the studio, my first studio guest. I'm going to be okay, though. Bill Shorten, welcome.

BILL SHORTEN, MEMBER FOR MARIBYRNONG: Hi, Patricia. Great to be your first live interview, face to face.

KARVELAS: Are you glad the government has decided to settle this class action?

SHORTEN: Oh, I certainly am. When I became the Government Services Opposition person last year after the election, I sort of started to dive deeply into Robodebt, and I formed the view after talking to a range of people, not only was Robodebt harsh and unfair, but it was illegal. And, you know, I take my hat off to Gordon Legal. I went to them and I said, would they be interested in looking at a class action? All my spidey-sense instincts said that this was illegal and a class action would be successful. A year later, 400,000 people are getting justice. They're getting, in many cases, just the money they paid back from a Government running an illegal protection racket, which should never have happened.

KARVELAS: Seven hundred and twenty million dollars of this settlement is money the Government had already agreed to pay back. It's the money that Centrelink illegally pulled in through Robodebt. Another three hundred and ninety eight million is debts that the Government has now agreed to stop chasing. But the remaining one hundred and twelve million dollars is money that will be paid out in compensation. That's the compensation largely for the suffering that Robodebt has caused. Is that compensation appropriate, that sum?

SHORTEN: It is. I mean, put it this way, if you owed the government money and if you don't pay, say you owe the Government ten thousand dollars, if you don't pay them after a certain time, they'll charge you interest. So the Government's unjustly enriched itself with seven hundred and twenty million dollars plus of people's money. The people haven't had the chance to put that in the bank or get any interest. So the Government having unjustly and illegally taken hundreds of millions of dollars from some of our most vulnerable Australians, of course, they should compensate. I mean, the great shame is that the Government's incompetence and illegality means the taxpayer has to pay the interest, the legal costs, the compensation, because the Government was running a Ponzi scheme, a stand over racket against the poor.

KARVELAS: Well, let's go to that, because does this set a sort of potentially dangerous precedent for the taxpayer? This is the largest payout. And as you say, the taxpayer has to foot the bill.

SHORTEN: Well, of course, a lot of the money in the 1.2 billion is money which the Government was never entitled to have. But the reality is that the government did get it wrong. And merely because the Government gets it wrong doesn't absolve them of responsibility. I mean, what I find as staggering is the fact that the government, through their neglect, their negligence, their incompetence, their illegality, has cost the taxpayer money and compensation. What they've also done is cause hardship. At the end of each of these 400,000 journeys is a person, farmers, single mums, students, unemployed people, many of whom felt a lot of pressure, a lot of stigma. I mean, I salute the seven plaintiffs. They don't want to be reminded that the government was chasing them for debts. This Government spent millions of dollars on debt collectors to chase money it was never entitled to chase. So there's been a lot of trauma. I've spoken to families who believe that their loved ones took their lives over this. People tried to get on planes to go overseas because there was a Commonwealth debt, they couldn't get on the plane. A lot of people don't actually like to be regarded as debtors. Most Australians, most of us, you just want to pay your money and move on. It’s a stigma.

KARVELAS: Some people would say, okay, this is now settled. But Labor is calling for a Royal Commission into this affair. Why do we need one? Given today's settlement, why do we need a Royal Commission, do you think?

SHORTEN: Good question. I think the settlement highlights why we need one, actually. This Government's paid 1.2 billion dollars, but in the fine print, it says it won't admit liability. Let's call a spade a spade. The reason why the Government has ponied up with this money in this financial recompense is because it didn't want its senior public servants and its ministers giving evidence. We are still no clearer at 6:00 pm tonight than we were for the last four years, who knew about the scheme that it was unlawful? Who ran an incompetent, illegal debt operation against hundreds of thousands of Australians? The reason why they've settled, in my opinion, Patricia, is because they didn't want to have their Ministers, Tudge and Porter, and Robert, or even the former Treasurer of the time, Scott Morrison, in the box. They didn't want senior public servants spilling the beans. So only a Royal Commission will uncover because this should never happen again. We should never again trust a computer algorithm and a Government who just set out to poor shame people and pick on the vulnerable and say they're ripping the system off. It was wrong.

KARVELAS: Given the Government hasn't agreed to a Royal Commission and is at this stage unlikely to. Would Labor pursue a Royal Commission if you were to win the next election, which of course, could be the next year?

SHORTEN: Absolutely. Anthony Albanese and I announced it during the Eden-Monaro byelection campaign. We're committed to having a Royal Commission. And this isn't just about pointing out the incompetence and illegality of the government, although that is a point to be made. It's to make sure that we understand, how did it happen? How for four years did the apparatus of the state chase individuals when they had no lawful power to do it, when they didn't owe the money and that caused countless harm? Who was responsible? I mean, there is no such thing as ministerial responsibility in Scott Morrison's government. I mean, way back in the day, Mick Young, the Labor Minister, was made to resign by Bob Hawke because he didn't declare he had a Paddington Bear.
Minister Tudge, he was the Minister. And now we've got to pay back 1.2 billion dollars, countless harm caused to real people. No one’s responsible. I mean, it's almost like these guys have swallowed the Trump playbook and they just say it's everyone else's fault. And, you know, I saw the Government this afternoon saying, oh, we fixed it. It's like someone setting fire to the house and then wanting credit for calling the fire brigade.

KARVELAS: This whole story raises questions about how artificial intelligence is used in government services. Do you think artificial intelligence has a useful role to play?

SHORTEN: It does, but it should never be the master. I think every department should have an artificial intelligence ethics policy. We need to be making sure that we don't use big data to create second class citizens to create a digital poorhouse, where we separate people into the deserving poor and the undeserving poor. Like for listeners who think oh, is this another political sort of carry on, Labor versus the conservative, this one's much more serious. And I suppose as Government Services spokesperson for the Opposition, I've started to dive more deeply into the privatisation of welfare. Just think, even now that a number of listeners who will be dealing with government services where they've got to go to the portal, they've got to fill it all out, you’re on phone lines forever and a day, and because the public service is being casualised and headhunted out of the joint, you know, different people you deal with on your matter. Robodebt, though, was the most extreme version because what it effectively did, and I was the leader of the opposition, I sat opposite Mr Morrison, when he gave his budgets and all of that and the rest of them, and they used to say, miraculously, every budget is how we're going to get out of debt and deficit is we're going to have a new compliance campaign against all those scallywags on Centrelink who are getting overpaid. Well, the reality is they were creating the notion of an undeserving poor. Centrelink is a safety net. It’s there for when you get in trouble. And we don't have the right to morally judge people or just rely on computer algorithms to categorise some people as good poor people and others as undeserving.

KARVELAS: You mentioned privatisation, diving deep as the Opposition spokesperson on this into the sector; it's a sector I wrote about for 20 years of my career. I know it really well as well.

SHORTEN: You do.

KARVELAS: Does that mean that if you were to be elected, do you think that that all needs a review, that you need to look at the privatisation? Of course, there's the entire job matching system, Jobs Australia, that does all of that as well. Do you think it all needs to be re-looked at?

SHORTEN: I think that - and maybe COVID-19 is a chance for everyone to draw breath and reconsider how we view government services - what we need in Australia as a crisis capable government, a system. That doesn't mean one which is just designed for blue skies and low unemployment, and everyone's on the Internet loading their data on portals. No, what we need is something which is crisis capable, be it bushfires, be it COVID or be it just the trauma of unemployment. What we've got to stop doing is regarding people who claim benefits as cheats.

KARVELAS: Bill Shorten, thanks for joining us.

SHORTEN: Super.

KARVELAS: Bill Shorten is the Shadow Minister for Government Services .