Morrison misleads Parliament yet again — and says he’s the real victim of robodebt

Scott Morrison’s mendacity is now a well-established fact of Australian public life, even in the twilight of his career as he sits, otherwise unemployable, on the opposition backbench.

His belated response to the robodebt royal commission report in Parliament yesterday maintains that record of mendacity, as he misled Parliament — something he readily did as prime minister — in maintaining his innocence of anything relating to the debacle that led to the suicides of several people and the misery of hundreds of thousands.

Indeed, Morrison believes he’s the real victim of robodebt. The tens of thousands of Australians who received entirely fictional debt notices, the tens of thousands more sent grossly inflated bills, the dead and their families, were merely “unintended consequences”, he maintains, whereas he is the victim of a “political lynching” by Labor.

The former prime minister rejects royal commissioner Catherine Holmes’ finding that he allowed cabinet to be misled, because — he says — he was the victim of public servants who failed to do their job: “I was constitutionally and legally entitled to assume the officers of the department had complied with their obligations under the Public Service Act to advise their respective ministers. As a result my obligations were fully and properly discharged.”

Any suggestion he should have questioned public servants’ assurances that no legislation was required to make robodebt legal was naive and would make the job of a minister “unworkable”.

Morrison’s defence hinges on the fact that public servants changed the new policy proposal (NPP) that Morrison took to the Expenditure Review Committee to remove reference to the unlawful practice of income averaging and the need for legislative change, thus misleading cabinet. Morrison says what was put in the NPP overrode all previous advice about the use of income averaging and the need for legislation.

But as Holmes noted, the then-cabinet handbook required that: “Ministers are expected to take full responsibility for the content, quality and accuracy of advice provided to the cabinet under their name.”

Morrison knew that income averaging formed part of the proposal, even though it stated there would be no change to how income was calculated. And he knew that legislative change was required to implement income averaging, because he had been told that previously by bureaucrats. When the requirement for legislative change conveniently vanished without explanation — after Morrison “made clear to DSS [Department of Social Services] that he wanted the DHS proposal progressed by way of NPP for the upcoming DSS portfolio budget submission without legislative change” — he stayed silent and asked no questions.

Morrison’s self-portrayal as an innocent gulled by bureaucrats falls away entirely on the charge that he misled the royal commission about his belief that income averaging was part of the way DSS had always operated. Holmes forensically details Morrison’s evidence and shows there is simply no way that Morrison could plausibly claim to have believed that when he approved the NPP in 2015.

Morrison admitted to the royal commission that he was never told in writing there was a longstanding practice of income averaging, saying “It would have come up in verbal briefings” — except he couldn’t say who told him. He began claiming he’d been told verbally only during his evidence to the commission, not in his formal statement beforehand.

His department at the time, DSS, knew there was no practice of income averaging, because it was unlawful, as it told the Human Services Department (DHS), so it wouldn’t have told him. DHS officers knew that income averaging was used only occasionally with the agreement of the recipient, so it wouldn’t have told Morrison either. In fact Morrison was specifically told that income needed to be calculated fortnightly to determine overpayments.

Later ministers were misled by DHS that income averaging was a longstanding practice, but Holmes shows in brutal detail that Morrison hasn’t got a leg to stand on in claiming he was told that in 2015. He was reduced yesterday to insisting “there was therefore a reasonable likelihood that such views would have been conveyed to me at the time”. Except there’s no such likelihood. He misled the commission.

And Morrison’s insistence that he didn’t pressure public servants over the development of robodebt again falls short of the detailed assessment of the royal commission. He had publicly committed to being a tough cop on the welfare beat and to restoring “integrity” in his new portfolio, and told public servants he didn’t want anything that required legislation, and that he “expect[ed] them to get on and deliver it”.

Public servants specifically told the commission that, despite the concept of robodebt needing further refinement (not to mention legislative change), there was pressure to “get on with it. Just get on with it … And we collectively got on with it.”

Morrison’s greatest lie, however, is his callow expression of regret for what he claimed were “unintended consequences”.

The misery inflicted on hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients was no unintended consequence of robodebt. It was the very point of it.

The scheme’s unlawful use of averaging was “essentially unfair”, the commission found. “It subverted the rationale on which income support was provided in the first place.” 

Recipients were deliberately pressured to furnish proof of income going back five years when DHS told them to keep payslips for only six months, often from employers who had since gone out of business. Recipients were deliberately forced to go online rather than deal with DHS officers, in a disastrous attempt to find savings.

There appears to have been an obliviousness to, or worse a callous disregard, of the fact that many welfare recipients had neither the means nor the ability to negotiate an online system.

That is, in overall conception and in detailed design, robodebt was intended to be unfair and difficult for the most marginalised members of the community.

The only “unintended consequence” for Morrison is that, eventually, belatedly, the unfairness, the cruelty, the illegality, the abandonment of basic standards of government process, not to mention decency, were exposed in detail. And he was central to it.

For anyone seeking help, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue is on 1300 22 4636. In an emergency, call 000.