E&OE TRANSCRIPT

SUBJECTS: Albanese Government severs ties with debt collectors; RBA board members’ comments

TOM CONNELL, HOST: Well, the Federal Government says it will bring social welfare debt collection in house in the wake of the Robodebt debacle. There'll be no more outsourcing to so-called debt collectors. Joining me live is Government Services Minister Bill Shorten. Thanks very much for your time. This decision is made, as you alluded to earlier today in the news conference, to avoid another Robodebt. But wouldn't that be avoided anyway if the Department assesses whether these are real debts and whether or not they're collected by the department or an outsourced debt collector, well, that doesn't really matter, does it? 

BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNEMENT SERVICES: Well, I do think it matters about the use of third-party debt collectors. You're quite right, the way to avoid Robodebt is a number of decisions. Ideally, don't get the mistake wrong in the first place about overpaying someone. But if you do, do that, if there is an overpayment and the debt has to be recovered, it should be done lawfully, which the previous Government didn't do for four and a half years. But one of the things which we've heard a lot about from Robodebt victims and survivors is that when they have to deal with a third party Robodebt business, a debt collector, they just got a very sort of brutal treatment. They were not treated with dignity and their individual circumstances, where they were at in life wasn't taken into account. The debt collector had a job - just go and get the money. So, I don't think that we should be using third party debt collectors on people out of our social welfare system. Of course, if there's a debt, it's got to be recovered. But I think we can do it a lot more empathetically with a lot more humanity and a lot less callous indifference to a person's individual circumstances. I spoke to a lady who had $11,500 dollars garnished out of her pay. She had to deal with the debt collector. It was when she was at the doctor's, she had a sick child, she was in such distress. She really challenged her grip on her sanity - these are her words. If you deal with in-house Services Australia people, at least your individual circumstances will count for more than nothing at all. 

CONNELL: So, does that mean a bit more scope? I mean, if you're outside debt collecting agency, you want to get as much money as possible. Does this mean when it's in house, even if they're real debts, there's more of a scope to forgive them in personal circumstances? Is this what this move goes to? 

SHORTEN: No, I think what we'll do is they'll just - Australian consumer law spells out standards of chasing debts and compared to the last Government, energy retailers treat people who owe energy companies money better than the previous government was treating people in the welfare system. So, it's a whole change of attitude. Listen, the first thing is make sure we've got the right payment systems as we move to single touch payroll hopefully, we can pre-fill a lot of a welfare applicants’ data, so we don't need to sort of guess between annual income and weekly income. But in the event there is an issue, the first thing we've got to do is write to the person in plain English and also give them a full explanation of their rights. And people on welfare are not second-class Aussies. You end up in the welfare system through often, quite often, circumstances beyond your control, or you might have an episodic mental illness or you're just a pensioner. And the point about it is that if there's an overpayment, we shouldn't just assume that the person where there may be a red flag about an overpayment is a crook or a criminal trying to defraud the system. Now there is opportunistic behaviour, but the reality is that quite often the mistake can be the Commonwealth's, or it can be an inadvertent issue and we shouldn't treat people as if they're the subject of some sort of bounty hunter film where we've got to send third party Robocops in to, you know, just extract the money.

CONNELL: What about automation? Because a lot's been made of the automated nature of it. Automated debt recovery within the department actually started under Labor when Tanya Plibersek and you announced it. Are you comfortable we can go back to the automation, the previous settings? 

SHORTEN: Oh Tom, Tom - you'd be the last person left alive I think, reading Scott Morrison's Robodebt media lines saying that Robodebt was started before Scott Morrison – 

CONNELL: I didn’t say Robodebt – 

SHORTEN: No, no hang on, it's really important. 

CONNELL: Hang on. I didn't say Robodebt.

SHORTEN: I had to put up with this. I had to put up - Tom, let me finish. You said it all started - these were Scott Morrison's weasel words, mate. What happened is that there's been data matching for a number of people. But what this Government did, the previous Government did, is that they increased from 20,000 people a year where if a red flag was raised, there would be a human checker in the system. It wouldn't be just thrown at the individual; you sort out your pay records. They did it to a million people a year and they didn't bother checking and they just put the onus of proof back on. So please, no more about that.

CONNELL: I'm not - yeah, I didn't actually make the assertion that - I didn't I didn't actually make the assertion that you're going to there. 

SHORTEN: Sorry.

CONNELL: Yeah, what I'm going to though is.

SHORTEN: Listen, I have to be honest. Tom, I had to listen to the coalition ministers receive relatively unquestioning, you know, absorption from the media whenever the whenever the last Government was criticised by Robodebt for years, they used to look down the barrel and lie to you and lie to journalists and lie to Australians and say, oh, Labor was doing this, what crap. Just a lie. Mr. Morrison's never apologised for that lie. And yes, if I am sensitive about the question is because the Morrison Government lied to millions of Australians, illegally raised debts against hundreds of thousands of innocent people, they didn't have the lawful authority to do it and they just BS’d their way for years. And so, I'm just calling it out.

CONNELL: All right. 

SHORTEN: Anyway… no more election, sorry mate.

CONNELL: Well if I get to the specifics -  

SHORTEN: Back to you. 

CONNELL: Now, look, we like passionate politicians. But my question goes to this, because at the time of the release when there was automation introduced, you said it's quite a high time sort of process for the Department offices. You're announcing a change today to stop, you know, debt collection, go external. Are you comfortable that there can still be that low level of automation with a human backup? Is that still something you're comfortable can run within the department, that was going before Robodebt?

SHORTEN: Do I think technology and automation can be used for good? Absolutely. Do I think that the ability to process data using automation and using, digitising government services is going to increase equity and outcomes? Yes. But what I do want to do is what happened in Robodebt is that senior public servants and Coalition Ministers basically for four and a half years, if you believe their evidence, said they didn't know what was going on and they didn't know it was unlawful. It was just a soullessness, a sickness at the heart of the previous Government. They were going after welfare recipients because they wanted to poor-shame people. They were going after the poor and the vulnerable because they thought they were soft targets. Labor, we’re not interested in that.

CONNELL: Almost out of time, but that was simply my question around some level of automation. RBA comments were pretty interesting this morning from board member Ian Harper. He says, we did a terrible job looking back. Another board member saying we had a garbled message. Is there any way Phil Lowe can keep his job if even the RBA thinks they've stuffed up?

SHORTEN: That'll be a matter for the Treasurer and the Government further down the track when his term comes to an end. I wouldn't speculate on that. But for mortgage holders hearing some of this, it's just teeth grindingly frustrating. We know that people are doing it really hard. As a Government Minister, we're doing everything we can to dampen inflation by relief for family budgets, for repair of our economic infrastructure, from energy through to skills training. There will no doubt be restraint in the budget, but I do think that our millions of mortgage holders will be distressed by what they’re hearing

CONNELL: And we'll see what happens on the front of the RBA because well, there is that review of it. I think most people can guess where one particular aspect is going.