FEDERAL Government Services Minister Bill Shorten once called it “Australia’s greatest failure of public administration in social security”.
That statement rang true last week when Catherine Holmes AC SC concluded that the robodebt scandal stemmed from “venality, incompetence and cowardice”.
That was one of the closing statements in a clinical, 990-page dissection of the scheme through a royal commission.
Handed down in three volumes, it contains a whopping 57 recommendations based on hundreds of hours of evidence and witness testimony.
Holmes described the scheme as “crude and cruel” and made people “feel like criminals”.
“In essence, people were traumatised on the off-chance they might owe money. It was a costly failure of public administration, in both human and economic terms,” she said.
The scheme was introduced in 2016 in a bid to tackle welfare fraud and recoup outstanding debts.
But as Holmes stated in her report, the scheme was rushed and the government of the time was misled.
At least three people committed suicide as a result of the stress the scheme placed on them.
However, the royal commission says that number is almost certainly higher.
How this was allowed to happen is, quite frankly, mind boggling. It is scandalous.
The government was allowed to wage a class war against this country’s ‘lower class’, further demonising and stigmatising those most vulnerable.
Without a doubt, it is one of the darkest chapters in Australian politics in recent memory.
Shorten described the report as “vindication” for thousands of vulnerable Australians who were cheated by a scheme which preyed on their situation.
Four authorities have been referred for further investigation, but that is likely to bring little comfort to those who are still reeling from the fallout.
Scott Morrison, the minister for social services at the time, oversaw the introduction of this illegal scheme.
The shouts are growing louder for him to resign from his position in Parliament, but so far he seems defiant to ignore them
