E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
5AA MORNINGS WITH LEON BYNER
TUESDAY, 17 NOVEMBER 2020
SUBJECT: $1.2 billion record-setting Robodebt settlement.
LEON BYNER, HOST: In what is maybe the start of finality to a story that's been bubbling for a long time, the Commonwealth has agreed to a settlement worth 1.2 billion dollars over its unlawful Robodebt recovery program, which raised automated debts against welfare recipients. Now, in May, the Federal Government agreed to pay back 721 million to more than 370,000 people who were wrongly pursued. So today's settlement includes that amount, plus 112 million in compensation and a decision to drop a further 398 million in debt wrongly raised. Now, the Federal Minister, Stuart Robert, has declined any sort of apology, but it's clear that the courts found this illegal and the Government's been forced into a corner where they've got to pay. I wonder how many people still have to receive retribution if you like, financial retribution. I call that word because, frankly, the government has been dragged. I've got to say, I don't think the way they've handled this has been very dignified. I think they needed just to say, look, we got it wrong, let's fix it. Let's talk to the bloke who's been on this case for a while. In fact, the Federal member for Adelaide, Steve Georganas, was contacting me because many callers rang me and said, listen, I got the debt and it’s wrong and what am I going to do? And it wasn't legit. So let's talk to the Shadow Government Services Minister, Bill Shorten. Bill, what do you think about today's decision?
BILL SHORTEN, MEMBER FOR MARIBYRNONG: I’m pleased, frankly. I wish it hadn't been necessary. I wish hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens had not been treated as cheats and debtors by their Government. It was illegal what happened to them. But I'm pleased that the people can get some closure, but of course, nothing replaces the better outcome, which would have been it should never have happened. But my hat's off to all the people who've been arguing about this, including yourself and Steve Georganas and plenty of your listeners and Gordon Legal. They've done a good job and I'm happy at least people are getting some recognition.
BYNER: Can you just clarify something from your point of view? Stuart Robert was in the media today, the national media, saying that this algorithm where debts are raised from this very income averaging process was actually Labor's system. What do you say to that?
SHORTEN: Complete rubbish. Governments have tried to match data from Tax Office to Social Security before this Government, but this Government were the only people silly enough or mean enough to take out the human checking. What would happen in the past is on a small number of people they’d have what they said to the Social Security Department checked against the Tax Office and then a human would go and check with the employers and chase up the records. This Government took out the human oversight element, the checking of what the computers spat out, and it moved from 20,000 cases a year to 20,000 a week. And it was just a straightforward revenue grab to patch up their budget. And they thought they'd get away with it by saying, you know, index finger on the nose, these welfare people are all cheating and they're all ripping the system off. And they thought they could get away with shaming people receiving a government payment has caused untold harm. But sadly, we're no closer to knowing who authorised this scheme or who's responsible.
BYNER: How much on average is going to be paid out, do you know?
SHORTEN: well, some of it's already been paid out, but 400,000 people is an average of about 3000 dollars. But it'll depend. Some people had ten and fifteen thousand dollars ripped off them. Some had a thousand.
BYNER: Goodness.
SHORTEN: Now, this is the other thing. The government says they fixed the problem. I mean, I don't want to annoy people with Labor versus Liberal, but the current mob, they're lying through their back teeth on this one. The only reason why people got some money back from May is because of the class action, which, to be honest, I helped instigate with Gordon Legal, was issued last December. And the Government realised, uh oh, we've broken the law, we're going to have to produce all these documents. And the only reason why the final amount of the settlement was worked out yesterday was because if it wasn't, then senior government public servants and ministers were going to have to get in the witness box and explain what they did or didn't do and what they knew and didn't know. And at that point, you know, the penny dropped and these guys realised they couldn't hide behind the system anymore and they had to give people some recompense for the unjust enrichment by the Government.
BYNER: Bill, thank you. Stay on the line because you'll want to hear, Steve Georganas who’s called in, Steve the latest on this?
STEVE GEORGANAS, MEMBER FOR ADELAIDE: Well, Leon, the latest on this is that we started this journey on your program more than three years ago when callers were calling your program and my office. I've raised that continuously in parliament, questions on notice. And I was ridiculed by the government and Alan Tudge at the time saying, I'm stirring the pot. Well, here we are today where the Government has obviously broken the law. And if it wasn't for the class action by Gordon Legal, and Bill Shorten pursuing it, a lot of these people would have still been hunted down. There was a program on one of the news programs where Alan Tudge came out and said, we will hunt you down, you have nowhere to hide, we will find you - when they were promoting this Robodebt, supposedly putting a cloud over everybody that's unemployed, retired, part pensioners, etc.. We were inundated in my office and I would consider most of the cases that we took up, over 70 per cent, were found to either not have owed the amount that they were claiming or to have owed much less. Now, you know, we've got a situation now where we have to get to the bottom of this and who in Government made the decision? And the only way we can do that is through a Royal Commission. So this can never happen again. This is a Government, the Government of Australia, pursuing innocent Australians. Now, this only happens in places where you've got despotic government, dictatorships and totalitarian governments. It shouldn't be happening in a place like Australia.
BYNER: Bill Shorten, the reality is, though, in the parliament, the Senate might favour a royal commission, but the lower house one is got the numbers, not two, isn't it?
SHORTEN: Well, then it becomes an issue in an election. I mean, the concept of ministerial responsibility is dead in the Government. Listeners should ask themselves, if they think that perhaps I'm being too hard on the Government; if you illegally raised 1.2 billion dollars from at least 400,000 people when you didn't have the power to, when you put process servers on them, when you caused harm, people couldn't get jobs, people felt shame, people felt pressure - don't you think you'd have to be accountable? If any ordinary person behaved like this, behaved illegally to this scale and dimension, it's not enough just to simply say we haven't conceded liability. I mean, this Government says on one hand that they've never conceded liability, but on the other hand, they've just paid out 1.2 billion dollars. It seems to me that's 1.2 billion concessions of liability. So we should find out how could this happen? How can a government, a democratically elected government, illegally serve debt notices and hound 400,000 of its people?
BYNER: OK, now, given this matter has actually been settled by the Feds, the reason you're still
pursuing a Royal Commission is what?
SHORTEN: I want to make sure it can't happen again.
BYNER: All right.
SHORTEN: I mean, the Feds want a bet each way. They say they're going to pay people, but they're not liable. Whilst they don't concede liability, they obviously don't think they've done anything wrong.
BYNER: All right. Well see, if such an enquiry did get up and running, how far back would it go? Because I've already mentioned and we heard it on news this morning, that the Federal Government argue that Labor used a similar calculation method.
SHORTEN: No, no worries.
BYNER: So you're saying no, wrong?
SHORTEN: I'm saying it's wrong. And I'm saying it's not a worry for Labor. The reality is that the class action, for example, covered the period of time from 1 July 2015. So when this Government says that this all happened under Labor. The reality is that it didn't.
BYNER: Well, Stuart Robert said that the computer algorithms to raise debt were used as far back as Hawke and Keating.
SHORTEN. Oh, yeah. But what Stuart Robert didn't say is that back in earlier times under both John Howard and Keating and Hawke, if the computer raised a red flag that the data between two departments seemed different, then they would get a human to go and check it out. This Government said we're too smart for that, we'll get rid of the humans, and they turbo charged it. They used to use data matching followed up by human investigator for 20,000 cases a year. Then they moved it to more like one million cases a year. They scrapped the human oversight. They were just doing it as a smash and grab raid. They think that getting multinationals to pay taxes is too hard, but why not get people on Centrelink and accuse them of cheating? I'll be honest, there was 80 cases in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal where the Tribunal said this is wrong. This is in the time of the Robodebt.
BYNER: Stuart Robert has said that he's brought, as Minister, this matter to an end.
SHORTEN: No he hasn't, the court did. I didn't see Stuart Robert at court, I know he had his lawyers, but the reality is that it took a year of a class action to get this. If Stuart Robert wanted to bring the matter to the end, why did 85,000 people have to sign up to a class action to get justice?
BYNER: Is it possible that some people may have been given more money, Government money than they should have? And if that's the case, should that money be recovered or shouldn’t it?
SHORTEN: No question, if people get overpaid or if they put wrong data, then they're not entitled to it. But the reality is that that isn't what happened here. This Government had one proof point, that you say what you've earned to the Department of Social Security. They would then just check it with the Tax Office. And if there was a red flag, they immediately said to the person, now you've got to prove you're innocent. See, under this Government, if you receive welfare, you're guilty until proven innocent. It’s a very straightforward process to get people to check it out, rather than immediately leaping to the conclusion based on only one proof point.
BYNER: Bill Shorten, the Shadow Government Services Minister, thank you for coming on, and also Steve Georganas. So people are going to get a cheque, I suspect, or money put straight into their account between now and 2021.
