Minister Bill Shorten has vowed to put the “human” back into government services amid a hiring spree to bolster public servant ranks in the wake of the Robodebt inquiry.
“What we’re doing is putting the ‘human’ back into human services—literally 1,000s of ongoing public servant positions have been created,” Mr. Shorten said.
The government services minister also said the scheme was a blemish on the former Coalition government.
“If I was a former coalition minister I wouldn’t be breathing a sigh of relief,” he said.
“Something grievously went wrong ... [ministers] will wear the stigma of Robodebt on their Wikipedia CV for the rest of their lives.”
On Nov. 6, Mr. Shorten was filmed with fellow MP Peter Khalil stuffing a tinfoil-made robot replica named “Robodebt” into a bin—symbolising his government’s decision to scrap the scheme.
Mr. Shorten then jokingly claimed the robot told him that, “Scomo made me do it.”
Government Accepts Nearly All Recommendations From Inquiry
The Albanese Government will accept all but one of the 57 recommendations made by the final report for the Robodebt Inquiry. Most notably, the government will revert the automated debt assessment and recovery services back to one administered by humans rather than robots.The one excluded recommendation is that the Freedom of Information Act be amended to reduce secrecy surrounding cabinet documents with Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus saying it was a “closing comment” rather than a formal recommendation.
The government will spend $22 million over the course of four years in implementing the inquiry’s recommendations.
Robodebt was instituted by the federal Coalition government in 2015 in an effort to detect and deter fraud associated with welfare, particularly individuals claiming payments under different names
The government’s scheme would also supposedly save billions of dollars in taxpayer funds.
Recipients Overcharged
Robodebt began to issue debt notices to people identified through income averaging, a process that uses data to automatically calculate a person’s income.Income averaging was carried out based on data collected by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), and would then compare that data with the information provided by the individual to the Department of Human Services, which administers welfare payments.
If there was a discrepancy and the automated system identified a potential overpayment, it would generate a debt notice and seek to recover the funds from the welfare recipient.
It was later found that over $750 million was wrongfully sought from 381,000 people, with the inquiry receiving evidence that bureaucrats ignored legitimate questions about the legality of the scheme.
Professor at the Australian National University (ANU) Peter Whiteford said income averaging was the source of mistaken debt claims.
Mr. Whiteford said that the process was fundamentally flawed with an assumption that welfare recipients had stable earnings over a yearly basis.
“This is unlikely to be accurate for the many people who don’t work standard full-time hours, and particularly for students, since the tax year and the academic year don’t coincide”, Mr. Whiteford said.
“It’s well known that Australia has a high proportion of casual workers. Because they’re employed on an ‘as needed’ basis, their hours can vary substantially. Therefore, their income can too.”
Mr. Whiteford also outlined how the Robodebt model was inconsistent with social security programs previously implemented.
“Since 1980, social security legislation has been amended more than 20 times to encourage recipients to take up part-time and casual work. These measures are specifically designed to encourage people to take up more work, including part-time and irregular casual work, and keep more of their social security payments.”
“Robodebt’s lack of consistency with long-standing policies should have been obvious from the start.”
Questions Over Further Action Against Public Servants
Although the report has referred individuals for criminal and civil prosecution, it is unclear whether key public servants involved in the scheme at the time will face any significant disciplinary action.Minister for Public Service Katy Gallagher recently revealed that there is currently no timeline put in place by her government for any potential investigation into breaches of the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct, according to a press conference on Nov. 15.
The four ministers at the conference said due process must be adhered to, when asked about any disciplinary action.
A point was also made about the feasibility of such a process, given that the public servants being investigated may be able to resign.
