Ex-Aussie PM Morrison ‘misled cabinet’ on debt recovery scheme

In this file photo taken on Feb 17, 2023, former prime minister of Australia Scott Morrison speaks during a symposium of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China at the Diet Members Building (IPAC) in Tokyo. (PHOTO / AP)

SYDNEY – An Australian inquiry into a program to recover welfare debt said on Friday former prime minister Scott Morrison had misled the cabinet about the scheme in an earlier ministerial role.

The report recommended unnamed people be referred for prosecution or civil action over the automated "robodebt" program, designed to ensure welfare recipients were not underreporting income and over-receiving government payments.

Computer algorithms for the scheme, in place from July 2015 to November 2019, wrongly calculated that hundreds of thousands of Australians owed money and, with little to no human oversight, the program recovered A$1.76 billion ($1.17 billion).

The report said Morrison had failed to "meet his ministerial responsibility to ensure that cabinet was properly informed about what the proposal actually entailed and to ensure that it was lawful"

"The robodebt scheme was a gross betrayal and a human tragedy … it was wrong, it was illegal," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told a press conference after the release of the nearly 1,000-page report from a Royal Commission, the most powerful type of government inquiry.

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The report said Morrison, who in 2015 monitored the rollout of the program as the social services minister, took the proposal to the cabinet without necessary information.

"He failed to meet his ministerial responsibility to ensure that cabinet was properly informed about what the proposal actually entailed and to ensure that it was lawful," the report said.

The commission also rejected some evidence by Morrison as "untrue".

Morrison, prime minister from August 2018 to May 2022 and still a member of parliament, rejected each finding adverse to him and critical of his involvement in "authorizing the scheme".

"They are wrong, unsubstantiated and contradicted by clear documentary evidence presented to the Commission," he said in a statement.

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In 2020, he apologized in parliament for distress caused by the robodebt scheme but did not admit legal liability.

A federal court in 2021 approved a A$1.8 billion settlement after Morrison's government agreed to settle a class action brought by the victims.

The report did not name the individuals it recommended for prosecution, but the commission said relevant parts of the report had been submitted to several federal agencies, including the Australian Federal Police.