Australia inquiry says ex-PM Morrison misled cabinet on debt recovery scheme

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

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» programme, 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 programme recovered A$1.76 billion ($1.17 billion).

«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. The report said Morrison, who in 2015 monitored the rollout of the programme 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 «authorising the scheme». «They are wrong, unsubstantiated and contradicted by clear documentary evidence presented to the Commission,» he said in a statement.