‘Disappointing’: Labor blocks robodebt royal commission recommendation

Anthony Albanese’s government has declined to implement one of the findings of the robodebt royal commission, in a move a Greens senator has dubbed “perplexing”. 

The Greens had sought to tack on one of the royal commission recommendations to a government welfare bill that’s being debated in the Senate this week, but Labor voted against the amendment on Wednesday. 

“It’s really disappointing, and it’s perplexing,” Greens Senator Janet Rice told Crikey. 

The amendment would have reinstated a six-year limit on debt recovery for social security debt, which was one of the 57 recommendations made by the royal commission when its final report was released in July.

When then-social services minister Christian Porter and then-human services minister Alan Tudge originally announced in March 2016 the limit would be removed, they said it was in order to “provide long-needed incentives for people to repay their debt to the Commonwealth taxpayer”.

“If people have received social security, family assistance, paid parental leave or student payments that they are not entitled to, then their debts should be recovered wherever reasonable and possible,” Porter said in a press release at the time. 

Royal commissioner Catherine Holmes wrote in her report there was “no obvious reason” for the move.

“It seemed to stem from the government’s broader approach to social security recipients,” she wrote.

“To the contrary, as a cohort more likely to be in financial difficulty, there is every reason not to pursue ancient debts against them.”

Holmes recommended reinstating an effective limitation period of six years for the government to bring proceedings to recover debts under the Social Security Act. 

“There is no reason that current and former social security recipients should be on any different footing from other debtors,” she added.

The government is currently undertaking to amend the Social Security Act in order to increase JobSeeker payments and expand access to welfare for single parents and people aged over 55, among other changes.

The bill, called “Strengthening the Security Net”, has passed the lower house and is likely to pass the Senate too, after the Greens vowed to support it. 

Labor Senator Tim Ayres told the Senate on Wednesday the government would not be “rushed into” implementing individual robodebt recommendations before considering a wholesale response to the report.

“We will consider all of the recommendations of the robodebt royal commission,” he said. “We will develop, as a government, a careful package of reforms.”

Liberal Senator Anne Ruston said the opposition would vote against it too.

“We don’t believe this is the appropriate place to deal with such an amendment,” she said.

Rice said her party colleagues were hopeful to get some of their amendments passed, but that they would support the bill regardless.

“It will be the will of the Senate, that it wants people on income support to be able to earn more — and it’s up to the government as to whether they accept that,” she told Crikey.