Following the damning Robodebt Royal Commission report, the Coalition has resolutely refused to ask former Prime Minister Scott Morrison to resign.
Prior to its introduction in 2015, Morrison, the social services minister, presented the debt collection scheme proposal to cabinet.
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.
When questioned about the matter after the LNP State Conference in Brisbane on Saturday, Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton said he would not demand that Prime Minister Scott Morrison resign from office and instead cited statements made by Morrison and other ministers.
He continued by defending the prior administration’s handling of the robodebt program, despite the fact that it was developed and maintained for more than four and a half years during the Coalition’s rule.
“The program was stopped when the problems were brought to the government’s attention at the time,” he stated.
“I truly apologize to those who were negatively impacted.”
David Littleproud, the leader of National, stated on Today that Morrison has not resigned “because he has a contract with the people of Cook.”
Littleproud declared, “He won the election without a single defect.”
The people of Cook have made their choice, and democracy is a hallowed institution.
Littleproud said that the study had not made any recommendations about the resignation of the accused ministers.
On Friday, the royal commission’s final report into the robot scandal was released. It blasted the issue as being perpetuated by “venality, incompetence, and cowardice” and called the robot scandal a “crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal.”
The operation, which operated from 2016 to 2019, raised over 500,000 erroneous Centrelink debts using a technique called “income averaging” that has since been deemed illegal.
