Robodebt royal commission

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull will give evidence on what he knew about the unlawful robodebt scheme while he was in office, after previous evidence ...

Please click below to help InDaily continue to uncover the facts. Your contribution goes directly to helping our journalists uncover the facts. The commission will conclude its hearings on Friday, with the final report due to be handed down on June 30.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has been called to take the stand at the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme on Monday, as the epic probe ...

Turnbull’s appearance is primed to be another unedifying day for the Australian Public Service (APS). Also recalled to the royal commission is Kathryn Campbell, the former secretary of both the Department of Human Services (since renamed Services Australia) and the Department of Social Services, under whose watch robodebt was conceived, built and prosecuted. Turnbull’s appearance could test new grounds on cabinet confidentiality because, unlike Morrison, Turnbull never held a welfare-related portfolio.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has become the latest high-ranking Coalition politician to front the robodebt royal commission.

Appearing at a royal commission on Monday, Turnbull spoke to WhatsApp messages of discussions between the then prime minister and key ministers Alan Tudge and ...

They have been reduced for a government of one half of 1%. We hope they will take it seriously, and use the opportunity to actually answer your questions. Those opposite see the most vulnerable people in our community and introduced the robodebt scheme. Anything less will be a pretty cruel oversight by the government. Our priority is dealing with the trillion dollars of Liberal debt that we inherited off those opposite. PhD students are struggling to make ends meet amid the cost of living crisis and rising rents. It is unfair to expect every PhD student in Australia has the opportunity to get paid work while they are studying full-time. You will see those merit-based, transparent appointment processes in all respects in the appointments of this government. My question is for the attorney general: This morning, I introduced a bill to end the jobs-for-mates culture in federal politics. Without a process like I proposed in my bill, how can the government guarantee any future appointments to public institutions will not end up as more jobs for mates? I thank the member very much for her question. It emerged in the wake of the COVID supply chain disruptions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” That is what the Reserve Bank Governor said last Friday.

The ex-Liberal leader was questioned about what he knew about the failed Centrelink debt recovery scheme as he testified before the royal commission into the ...

I didn’t regard him as being a negligent or incompetent or careless minister”. Mr Turnbull replied: “Alan Tudge, I always regarded as a technocrat. Mr Tudge replied to say “it is not correct that we simply take the average of the income declared to ATO and apply that average across 26 fortnight”.

Former PM tells royal commission he accepted what then human services minister Alan Tudge told him about legality of scheme.

He added that he believed Tudge had the “situation in hand”. “I say, ‘Alan, we need a frank assessment of what the problems are,’ and what was happening to fix them,” Turnbull said. “It’s clear what it says.” Other ministers have also pointed to the checklist, telling the royal commission they were misled by the public service. More broadly, Turnbull said he had accepted what Tudge had told him about the program, as the “responsible minister”. Malcolm Turnbull has told a royal commission that he didn’t turn his mind to the legality of the robodebt scheme while he was prime minister, saying it never occurred to him it was “unauthorised”.

Malcolm Turnbull was questioned over the legality of the scheme, but said it never occurred to him that it ...

The former prime minister asked Tudge in a text message: "Alan, we need a frank assessment of what the problems are and what is happening to fix them. "Look, I did not turn my mind to the legality of the program, it never occurred to us that it was unauthorised," Turnbull said. [Malcolm Turnbull](https://www.9news.com.au/malcolm-turnbull)has told the [robodebt](http://9news.com.au/robodebt)royal commission it never occurred to him the controversial scheme was unlawful.

Former prime minister Scott Morrison always saw the royal commission as political payback from the Labor Party and its former leader Bill Shorten, who he ...

Morrison said: “It’s about telling governments how things can be done, not just the risks of doing them, or saying why they shouldn’t. It must never happen again.” The sad take out from what we’ve seen and heard in the commission is that while a couple of public servants were prepared – according to their evidence – to alert ministers, no one in Morrison’s cabinet was prepared to similarly alert the Prime Minister. The change of government is a start, but the test for the Albanese government will be whether it will adopt the recommendations of the far-reaching Thodey review of the Australian Public Service (APS) handed to the Morrison government in 2019 and largely discarded for being too big a brake on its power. The nobbling of a public service’s ability to give “frank and fearless advice” and the resources to assist in the development of policies to serve the public interest is a crisis that needs to be urgently addressed. What we are getting is a long-overdue reality check on the way in which the engine rooms of governance – the cabinet and the public service – were no longer operating according to the norms and conventions of the Westminster system, let alone the moral imperative to “be honest in the conduct of public office”.

Which brings us to the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, headed by former Queensland Supreme Court Justice Catherine Holmes AC SC. If ever there was an ...

The royal commission is not the target audience. And it’s not the intent of the commentary. Throughout the royal commission, Shorten has called media conferences and made statements to suggest that the former Coalition government has squandered opportunities to use the inquiry to apologise for Robodebt. They are so independent of government that once one is established, through the issuing of Letters Patent by the Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia under the Royal Commissions Act 1902 (Cth), it can almost never be stopped even by the government that instigated it. A royal commission is a form of non-judicial and non-administrative governmental investigation that is only established in exceptional circumstances and with tightly specified terms of reference. In Australia, royal commissions are the highest form of inquiry on matters of public importance.

Kathryn Campbell tells the Robodebt royal commission that a document put to Cabinet failed to mention the need for legislative change.

How could you not wonder how this was to be done and whether it would be done". The former secretary was asked by Mr Greggery: "Was it your inadvertence that the document arrived in this form before … I did not notice the change in the document". but if that were the case, there would have been no need to put it [the need for legislative change] in the briefing in February [to Scott Morrison]." "I accept that now … No," Ms Campbell said.