News location:

Tuesday, February 18, 2025 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Morrison ‘has to live with robodebt impact’: Clare

PM Scott Morrison says his predecessor Scott Morrison showed a lack of contrition over Robodebt. (AP PHOTO)

FORMER prime minister Scott Morrison will have to live with the impacts of robodebt on his conscience, Education Minister Jason Clare claims.

As the fallout from the royal commission report continues, federal police and the national anti-corruption commission are considering civil and criminal evidence against unnamed individuals in relation to the debt recovery scheme.

The report, which was handed down on Friday, found former coalition ministers, including Mr Morrison, dismissed or ignored concerns about the legality of the scheme.

Mr Morrison has rejected suggestions of wrongdoing or that he mislead cabinet, saying the report’s findings were “based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of how government operates”.

Mr Clare said robodebt could have been avoided if officials and ministers had asked for legal advice.

“Scott Morrison and all of these ministers and bureaucrats are going to have to live with this on their conscience for the rest of their lives,” he told Sky News on Sunday.

“This wasn’t just one or two cases, this was half a million Australian who got a bill that they didn’t owe, taxpayers had to fork out over a billion dollars to fix this mess.”

The comments follow Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Saturday saying Mr Morrison had lacked contrition over robodebt.

Mr Clare said Opposition Leader Peter Dutton had also not expressed enough concern for the victims of robodebt.

“All you got from Peter Dutton the other day was all the empathy of a rock,” he said.

The opposition leader had accused Government Services Minister Bill Shorten of trying to politicise the release of the royal commission report.

“He’s a political animal and he’s used every opportunity to milk out whatever political advantage there is to the Labor Party out of this particular issue and the prime minister’s doing the same,” Mr Dutton told reporters on Saturday.

The report contained a sealed section that was not publicly released, which recommended senior figures behind the scheme be referred for civil and criminal prosecution.

Mr Clare said while the list of names in the sealed section would be known eventually, the proper process needed to take place.

“You don’t want to do anything which is going to prejudice a criminal proceeding or prejudice civil action,” he said.

Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather said the robodebt scheme was shocking and disgraceful.

“What we know, as a lot of people have pointed out now, it’s destroyed lives and taken lives,” he told Sky News.

“It also speaks to a broader problem though around the way often welfare recipients are treated by federal governments.”
More than 100 ministers, advisers, public servants and contractors gave evidence to the royal commission.

The former coalition government launched its crackdown on “suspected welfare fraud and non-compliance” in 2015 in an effort to save billions of dollars.

It issued debt notices to people identified through a process called income averaging, which compared reported incomes with tax office data.

The scheme was ruled unlawful by the Federal Court in 2019 after issues were raised by Victoria Legal Aid.

 

 

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Share this

2 Responses to Morrison ‘has to live with robodebt impact’: Clare

Red says: 9 July 2023 at 5:22 pm

Why does Jason Clare believe that:“Scott Morrison and all of these ministers and bureaucrats are going to have to live with this on their conscience for the rest of their lives,” They don’t have a conscience rather a “political conscience” which exonerates them every time.

Reply

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews