The murderous disaster of Robodebt

[Pies4shaw]

^ Robodebt doesn't matter. It only affected other people.

[eddiesmith]

[quote="David"][quote="eddiesmith"]It’s not the only failure of WPTs hero and dear leader that has lead to people’s deaths.

Morrison got the ass.
Brumby got the ass.
Andrews got an increased majority

[Pies4shaw]

Are you incapable of staying on topic or just some kind of slightly simple LNP bot?

[stui magpie]

Seems increasingly likely that this will be the major legacy of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison governments: a repellently inhuman domestic policy to match the repellently inhuman policies that they carried out on our borders.

Completely agree that all involved should never set foot in Parliament House ever again.

The principle seems fair, cross check ATO data to make sure people receiving centrelink payments are being honest in disclosing their earnings, and seek repayments where they aren't.

I'm unclear on what the apparent Illegal part of it was. The income averaging, which is a bad way to do it?

[doriswilgus]

Without a doubt the biggest scandal in modern Australian political history.Hundreds of thousands of people were unfairly targeted and harassed by this scheme,resulting in lives being ruined and people even committing suicide.Just a shocking example of a system that was unaccountable and out of control.

[blackmissionary]

Seems increasingly likely that this will be the major legacy of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison governments: a repellently inhuman domestic policy to match the repellently inhuman policies that they carried out on our borders.

Completely agree that all involved should never set foot in Parliament House ever again.

The principle seems fair, cross check ATO data to make sure people receiving centrelink payments are being honest in disclosing their earnings, and seek repayments where they aren't.

I'm unclear on what the apparent Illegal part of it was. The income averaging, which is a bad way to do it?

Robodebt was the government literally making up debts, using a simplistic and unreliable formula to do so, with little to no human oversight, on a massive scale. Instances of using income averaging to investigate discrepancies went up from 20,000 cases checked manually on an annual basis, to 20,000 debt notices being automatically issued per week. It switched the onus from Centrelink having to prove that a debt existed, to the welfare recipient having to prove that it didn't, without Centrelink providing any evidence as to how they came up with that debt or its total.

When threatened with court action to prove how they came up with the existence of a debt and its total, the relevant departments would often just negate or recalculate the debt to avoid having the matter being tested in court. High ranking public servants from several departments - DSS, DHS, and even the Ombudsman's office - went out of their way to ignore or redact internal and external advice that the scheme was unlawful to please their ministerial masters, who could then plead ignorance on the matter by claiming that they weren't told that operation of the scheme would require legislative change to make it lawful.

[David]

Well said, blackmissionary. Stui, government departments have to follow the law too; they couldn’t just send you a debt notice because somebody there doesn’t like you, or because they’re running out of money, or because your name was drawn from a lucky dip. In this case, they were asking people for repayments that they weren’t legally entitled to ask for because the debts didn’t exist in the first place. It was a shocking failure of bureaucracy made in the name of efficiency, and one that was made by the government of the day in full knowledge of its legal dodginess and what consequences it might have for the people targeted.

All that to me puts it on an entirely different level and scope of misjudgement than, say, something like Rudd’s pink batts scheme. The nicest word for it is callous, though some might prefer evil.

[think positive]

I thought evil didn’t exist!

[David]

That’s what I thought, but the Liberal Party seems determined to prove otherwise to me.

[David]

Some suggestion Morrison might be facing prosecution over his Robodebt lies:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... rosecution

I’d be shocked, but there might actually be some justice in this world if he goes down over this.

[David]

[stui magpie]

These consultancy firms have a serious boner for Powerpoint.

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/fede ... 5dmkr.html

[Culprit]

My perception of sacking a Public Servant is extremely hard. I have seen many despite incompetence and discretions that they don't get dismissed, they get moved sideways. I am hoping Kathryn Campbell is booted out of Defence. In saying that I feel she may have the evidence to take out others and a deal may be done.

[Magpietothemax]

That’s what I thought, but the Liberal Party seems determined to prove otherwise to me.

Not just the Liberal party is evil.
All the Liberal politicians responsible for this scheme should be facing criminal charges.
Instead, Shorten and Albanese are politely saying to Morrisson that whether or not he leaves Parliament is a choice for him. This, to a man who is responsible for the criminal extortion of money from the most vulnerable layers in society!!
Same as the executives at PwC, who still face no criminal charges under the Labor government's watch.
Albanese and the entire Labor Party is complicit in shielding the entire political elite from any accountability. This is because they have no differences at all with their policies. Just as much as the LNP, the Labor Party aims to rip money away from those dependent upon any kind of government assistance. Take the example of the NDIS, which Albanese plans to eviscerate. Or the public health expenditure, which his government will cut by $2.4 billion over the next 4 years. Or the contemptuous ''increase'' of $50 per fortnight in unemployment benefits during a cost of living crisis. Afterall, it was Graeme Richardson in 2004 who declared that welfare recipients are "cheats'' from whom it is necessary to protect taxpayers' money. Morrison was simply following Richardson's advice.