Robodebt royal commission live: Scott Morrison agrees he saw himself as ‘a welfare cop’

Justin Greggery is trying to examine whether or not Scott Morrison, as the minister, was concerned with saving money in the portfolio and whether (this is my contention here) that attitude is what led to robodebt being embraced.

Just before the NDIS comments, Justin Greggery references this interview with Graham Richardson on Sky News.

Greggery:

… Richardson towards centre of the page, prompts you to adopt some language. You can see that in the centre of the page he says, … ‘You are not put in there to be a pussy cat’.

Morrison:

He always had colourful turn of phrase, from my experience.

Greggery:

Indeed. You can see towards end of that paragraph what he says is, ‘Who are you going to crack down on? Because a bloke like you cannot going to sit there and do nothing. Does that mean anyone on the dole has to look out?’ And your response is, ‘Anyone who is trying to rip-off does’, – the language that ‘crackdown’ was obviously suggested to you by the interviewer, but it appears to be language that you are comfortable to adopt at that point?

Morrison:

I didn’t use that phrase, I don’t believe as the next paragraph says, and given you make reference to it, I would draw attention to the comments that I made. I said, ‘Anyone who is trying to rip it off does.’ That’s who I was referring to.

And then I go on to say, ‘Anyone who is trying to rip-off the welfare system because every benefit paid is paid by another taxpayer,’,which is indeed true.

On average an Australian who works is working a whole month to pay for someone else’s benefits, that’s true.

There’s a broad range of people that need and deserve our support, I said.

Whether those on the age pension or worked hard all their life and had a clear deal, they went through life, that if and when they worked hard they would be an age pension at the other end. Now, I think retirement incomes have changed a lot since then, I go on to make a range of comments.

So I acknowledge both that there are people who are indeed very deserving of the benefits that are paid under the system. There are people who pay for those benefits which are taxpayers, and there are those regrettably in my experience having a minister for immigration, where I have seen people seek to defraud the immigration system, I have been a minister for social services and seen people seek to defraud the social services system, I have been a treasurer and I have seen people sought to defraud the tax system, so regrettably that is an aspect that ministers must be conscious of and, in fact, taxpayers demand that we be so.

Greggery:

The end of that paragraph that you read out in part continues, you say, ‘I think Australians generally are quite happy to have a system that helps people who are genuinely in need and deserve our support. What they won’t cop, just like they won’t cop people coming in on boats, they’re not going to cop people who are going to rort that system. So there does need to be a strong welfare cop on the beat and I will be certainly looking to do that, but I will be doing that because I want to make sure the system helps the people who need it most.’

Morrison says this is all correct.

Greggery:

Alright. Did that reflect your view as minister that that was the approach you were going to take in respect of welfare reform?

Morrison:

Yes, and I – and I restate it. ‘I want to make sure this system helps the people who most need it.’