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Outlines for the upcoming hearings on the Coalition’s flawed debt recovery scheme show where the investigation may be headed next
The royal commission into the robodebt scandal will begin its final public hearings from Monday, with key questions remaining to be answered.
So far the commission has uncovered damning evidence about the Coalition’s debt recovery scheme, which culminated in a $1.8bn settlement with hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients wrongly accused of owing Centrelink money.
The departments that ran the scheme held legal advice saying it was unlawful.
One senior public servant admitted to breaching the Australian public service code of conduct in not taking action to stop the program.
The departments – and some ministers – were aware of suicides linked to the scheme.
The departments got legal advice in 2014, 2018 and early 2019 that suggested the scheme was unlawful, but the government only wound up the program in November 2019. By then, it had issued 532,285 unlawful welfare debts.
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