Between 2016 and 2020, the Australian government inflicted nearly $2 billion of imaginary "debts" on welfare recipients, courtesy of an illegal automated overpayment calculation system. The policy led to suicides as people struggled to pay debts they didn't owe. The scheme was scrapped in 2020, and the illegal "debts" were later forgiven and repaid. And today, a royal commission into the fiasco has recommended prosecuting its architects:
The architects of Robodebt will be referred for criminal and civil prosecution after a royal commission handed down its report into the unlawful scheme today.It also finds that former PM Scott Morrison (who was social services minister at the time robodebt was created) misled Cabinet by failing to provide all relevant information about the scheme and its lawfulness. To prevent this happening in future, it recommends repealing Australia's blanket exemption of cabinet documents from the Freedom of Information Act. Its still secret who should be prosecuted, and what for. But the onus is now on Australian federal agencies to follow the recommendation. The problem is that they have a track-record of perverting the course of justice to protect those in power. Hopefully that won't happen in this case.Commissioner Catherine Holmes has branded the former coalition government's debt-raising scheme an "extraordinary saga" of "venality, incompetence and cowardice".
"The report paints a picture of how the Robodebt [scheme] ... was put together on an ill-conceived, embryonic idea," Commissioner Holmes wrote.
"It is remarkable how little interest there seems to have been in ensuring the scheme's legality, how rushed its implementation was, how little thought was given to how it would affect welfare recipients and the lengths to which public servants were prepared to go to oblige ministers on a quest for savings."
