As the dust settles on the Robodebt Royal Commission, an examination of how the scheme was orchestrated clearly shows its architects should face prison time, writes Paul Begley.
Tag: Robodebt
we have heard from the architects, those charged with the responsibility to provide essential social services to all Australians, and who instead left us with a decade-long legacy of abject failure and wilful neglect on a multi-faceted grand-scale of human pain and suffering.
Source: Robodebt’s architects suffer temporary embarrassment, its victims are gone forever | The Shot
It was revealed that: “More than 2030 people died after receiving a Centrelink debt notice, also known as robo-debt, according to new data released by the Department of Human Services.”
Source: Many suffered a robodebt of death – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Robodebt the cyber-machine pretending to take values out Welfare decisions. Only a Penacostalist could come up with a smokescreen like that. Let the computer be the judge said Pontious Pilate Morrison “I wash my hands and stand aside of any decision”
If public trust is to be restored, at the very least, the people responsible for this major breach of the law, the illegal Robodebt scheme, should face the hardest penalties available under our legal system.
Source: No accountability or public shaming for Robodebt criminals
In his appearance at the Robodebt Royal Commission yesterday, Stuart Robert wants us to believe that not only was he the one that finally put a stop to the illegalities of income averaging, but that he knew it was wrong all along. However, the pesky Westminster system stopped him from speaking out.
Source: Stuart Robert – loyal Robodebt slayer – Michael West
Scott Morrison and Stuart Robert presided over a gross policy failure that brutally harmed vulnerable Australians and cost the nation $1.2 billion in compensation. Yet they still have their jobs, writes Belinda Jones.
Source: Morrison and Robodebt-responsible ministers deserve to lose their jobs
Pink Bats were fairy floss compared to Robodebt carnage and denial. We can still here the echoes of outrage and the demands the LNP made back then to the accidental unorchestrated deaths of 5 workers. The ALP didn’t “double down” like Stuart Robert who is still a Cabinet Minister in Dutton’s shadow front bench
The former PM and all the architects of this unlawful scheme which drove thousands to despair and suicide must face consequences for their part in Robodebt. Managing editor Michelle Pini reports.
Source: Morrison, Robert, Tudge & Co should be in the foetal position over Robodebt
The Robodebt Commission lays bare a lack of regard for the rule of law among both ministers and public servants.
On 30 November last year, when the House of Representatives was censuring former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Mr Albanese rose and stated with force:
The fact is that our democracy is precious. There’s no room for complacency … we can’t take our democracy for granted.
Yet his own office is engaged in undermining the rule of law; a foundation for democracy. If the Prime Minister doesn’t act in this instance, he’s no better than the man that was censured on that day.
Source: Robodebt and transparency failures: is the rule of law optional for the PM’s office? – Michael West
Show us your money and favour.
The evidence is damning: many outlets in the mainstream media worked in support of the former Coalition government’s establishment of its illegal Robodebt scheme, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.
Source: ‘Friendly’ media and Coalition colluded to silence Robodebt victims
With the multitude of interlinking fuck-ups strewn among this pockmarked road – the ministerial opportunism, the abrogation of duty of care on behalf of the senior public servants, the omissions of contracted lawyers, the pay-outs and the human toll – all of it seems to have been avoidable if there were anyone along this chain of command who truly cared about the horrible consequences. The Robodebt scheme has left a permanent mark on the nation, it is etched into the memory of so many and into the legacy of those who unleashed it, and it signals an urgent need for change that can no longer be ignored.
Source: The Robodebt Royal Commission has exposed the depth of Canberra’s rot | The Shot
PwC was commissioned to do a report on Robodebt in 2017 but but can’t recall if it was finalised, or not, or why. What’s the scam?
PwC is the scam. PwC was effectively paid *not* to deliver the Robodebt report; to never “finalise” it, to keep it in draft form so nobody ever had to be accountable.
This was the Big4 consultancy the government used to attack poor people with its big “welfare report” a year earlier now deployed in the cover it up. Highlights from the testimony of PwC partner Shane West at the Royal Commission this week:
“No … I can’t recall.” “I don’t know.” “I’m not sure”. “I don’t recall”. “I’m not sure I can say whether or not it is”. “Sorry, I can’t think of one” “This is getting beyond my area of knowledge”. The series of short videos on this Twitter feed is worth watching for sheer obfusca
Source: PwC and the Robodebt Royal Commission. What’s the scam? – Michael West
Tudge knows full well he’s “out of reach”
The party that calls itself Liberal and describes itself as conservative is neither liberal nor conservative.
Wealthy and privileged public servants and politicians all collaborated to demonise the poor and destroy people’s lives with the Robodebt scheme, writes Dr Jennifer Wilson.
Source: Robodebt’s privileged perpetrators shamefully punished the poor
At one point Commissioner Catherine Holmes asks Morrison: What do you understand was the legal basis requiring someone who had not been on Government benefits for 6 months, 3 years or longer to confirm or deny ATO data which said they had a debt?
Morrison replied by talking like he was a lawyer or a barrister and started quoting the relevant legislation, but he was wrong and Commissioner Catherine Holmes SC carved Scott Morrison up and put him in his place.
A senior public servant told a Social Services official to tone down language indicating the robodebt welfare management scheme wouldn’t be lawful before it was introduced.
Andrew Whitecross, from the Social Services department, told the royal commission investigating the scheme it “couldn’t be clearer” calculating welfare debts based on an average income would require laws to be changed in 2015.
The scheme, which went from 2015 until 2020, wrongly recovered more than $750 million from 381,000 people, with a number of victims committing suicide while being pursued for false debts.
Mr Whitecross strongly advised against using income averaging in 2015 and said he was surprised to learn the scheme was implemented the following year.
He told the commission he’d had a meeting with Social Services’ Cath Halbert and Human Services’ Mark Withnell in 2015 where he outlined income averaging wouldn’t be legal. He said Mr Withnell was frustrated with the feedback because it could mean a promised $1.2 billion saving wasn’t achieved.
Of the saving, Mr Whitecross later added: “It was a sense … this was a number that had come out of a methodology, but the number itself was a goal of the process”.
The commission heard he was told by Ms Halbert that DHS deputy secretary Malisa Golightly “didn’t want us to go in so hard” with feedback income averaging was illegal.
Asked by senior counsel assisting the commission Justin Greggery if he had pushed back, Mr Whitecross said he had but she had continued to ask him to change the language.
Source: Top officials shut down robodebt criticism – Michael West
“Well, a lot of the individuals who would end up receiving these notices would be – the onus of proof on what they earned over the period of time, stretching back potentially years, would be a level of proof which they simply would not be able to substantiate. And unemployed people are, almost by definition, they have very vulnerable cohorts within them, and that there would be people who would enter into agreements to repay debts, which they had not incurred in the first place, and I felt that the practice as a result was unethical.”
Source: Robodebt: can you recall a greater failure of public administration? – Pearls and Irritations
It is only fitting that, as well as senior bureaucrats who administered the scheme, the Royal Commission into the Robodebt disaster will likely call forth Scott Morrison, Alan Tudge, Stuart Robert, Christian Porter and Michael Keenan.
It is fitting because all of these men – two of whom still occupy parliamentary positions – oversaw the portfolio responsible for Robodebt. Each of them added to the pain and suffering of so many of Australia’s most vulnerable. And some of these men even added further muscle to an already drunk-with-power debt recovery scheme, wilfully creating deliberate fear among the populace and inciting hatred for the victims.
Source: Wanted for Robodebt crimes: Morrison, Tudge, Robert and Co
Nothing says “we are the government for big business only” like doling out money for nothing to multinationals with one hand, while simultaneously clawing back cash from the impoverished with the other.
Source: Corporate welfare for the greedy — Robodebt 2.0 for the needy
In January 2020, Morrison only committed $2 billion to bushfire recovery across the nation. It cost $1.2 billion to buy their way out of the robodebt fiasco they created, and we don’t know the cost of the legal and administration fees on top of that. Shows where the Coalition’s priorities lie, doesn’t it?
The cost of ideology – » The Australian Independent Media Network
olddogthoughts 