By Renju Jose
SYDNEY (Reuters) – An Australian inquiry into an automated welfare debt recovery programme said on Friday former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in an earlier ministerial role, had misled the cabinet about the scheme.
The report also recommended unnamed individuals be referred for civil and criminal prosecution over the “robodebt” programme designed to ensure welfare recipients were not under-reporting their 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 it 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 said during a media briefing, 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 federal 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,” it said.
The commission also rejected some evidence by Morrison, calling it “untrue.”
Morrison, who was prime minister from August 2018 to May 2022 and remains a member of parliament, did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
In 2020, he apologised in parliament for distress caused by the robodebt scheme but did not admit any legal liability.
A federal court in 2021 approved a A$1.8 billion settlement after Morrison’s government agreed to settle a class action brought by the victims.
The report did not name the individuals it recommended for prosecution, but the commission said relevant parts of the report had been submitted to several federal agencies, including the Australian Federal Police.
($1 = 1.5099 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Jamie Freed)
