Prominent critic of robodebt who ruled against scheme five times lost AAT job, inquiry hears

Terry Carney, who says robodebt’s legal foundation was ‘completely missing’, was surprised to not be reappointed to tribunal

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An administrative appeals tribunal member who ruled against the Coalition government on several robodebt cases has told a royal commission how he was surprised to lose his job after nearly 40 years of service.

The commission is investigating why and how the unlawful Centrelink debt recovery scheme was established in 2015 and ran until November 2019, ending in a $1.8bn settlement with hundreds of thousands of victims.

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