Scott Morrison, a former prime minister, has denounced the robodebt royal commission’s damning conclusions about him, including that as a minister, he “allowed cabinet to be misled” about the operation.
Prior to its introduction in 2015, Morrison, the social services minister, presented the debt collection scheme proposal to cabinet.
Few hours after the report was made public, Morrison vehemently denied any misconduct in a long statement.
“I completely reject each and every finding that is adverse to me and that is critical of my involvement in authorising the scheme,” he stated.
“They are incorrect, unsupported, and in conflict with the commission’s strong documented evidence.
“It is unfortunate that these findings fail to recognise how the government and cabinet processes function properly in the face of not only my evidence as a former prime minister and cabinet minister for almost nine years, but also the evidence of other cabinet ministers,” said the former prime minister.
Morrison emphasised that no conclusions were drawn regarding his tenure as prime minister or treasurer, noting that he was in those positions when robodebt came to an end.
In a section of the report that has been sealed, there is no indication that Morrison is one of the unnamed individuals the royal commission referred for civil or criminal legal action.
The report’s use of income averaging as the benchmark for assessing and pursuing debts without supporting data is one of its main concerns.
Morrison, as a minister, was found to have gotten conflicting guidance on how to calculate debt, according to the commission.
He “took the proposal to cabinet knowing that it involved income averaging and that his own department had indicated that it would require legislative change, but on the basis of the contrary indication in the NPP checklist, proceeded without enquiring as to how the change had come about,” according to the report.
“Mr Morrison allowed cabinet to be misled because he did not make that obvious inquiry,” the report stated.
He was aware that the proposal still called for income averaging; he had only recently been informed of this proviso; nothing had changed about the proposal; and he had taken no action to find out why the caveat was no longer relevant.
“He failed to fulfil his ministerial obligation to ensure that cabinet was properly informed about what the proposal actually entailed and to ensure that it was legal,” says the attorney general.
Morrison rebutted the criticism, claiming it was unfounded.
“The findings which are adverse to me are based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of how government operates,” he claimed.
“The commission has argued that a minister cannot rely on the advice of their own department, which goes against rulings of the High Court and long-standing practise.
Such a proposal would render executive government wholly ineffective.
The evidence Morrison provided regarding his knowledge of the practise of income averaging was harshly criticised in the commission’s findings.
“The commission rejects as untrue Mr Morrison’s evidence that he was told that income averaging as contemplated in the Executive Minute was an established practise and a ‘foundational way’ in which DHS (the Department of Human Services, now Services Australia) worked,” the report stated.
The DHS agents who formulated the idea, according to the commission, were unlikely to have called income averaging “foundational” to Morrison.
Morrison asserted that the Executive Minute conclusion was the result of yet another misunderstanding.
“Unfortunately, the royal commission has mischaracterized the status of the Executive Minute, and in doing so, it is given weight it cannot bear,” he wrote.
“The significance the Commission attempts to ascribe to the Executive Minute was not true.
“The Executive Minute contained alternatives to advance the development of unfinished proposals that had not yet been put through the rigorous cabinet processes and departmental due diligence review, not settled policy recommendations.
“A minister would not come to conclusions about a measure’s constitutionality before the proposal had gone through the rigorous cabinet process and been presented in a new policy proposal.
“The rigorous cabinet processes were followed and satisfied for this measure, and as the minister for social services, I was constitutionally and legally entitled to assume the officers of the departments had complied with their obligations under the Public Service Act to advise their respective ministers.”
As minister of social services, Morrison was also criticised for his role as a self-described “welfare cop” and for conveying goals and using language that the commission claimed made it easier for people to accept the robodebt plan.
However, the former prime minister insisted that he always behaved in good faith.
Anthony Albanese, the prime minister, said today that Morrison’s decision to leave parliament was his to make.
The findings, he added, “make it clear that Scott Morrison’s defence of this scheme and of the government’s actions over such a long period of time were, to quote the report, ‘based upon a falsehood’.”
“That’s a damning discovery. People will evaluate this for themselves.
