Robodebt royal commission live: Scott Morrison insists income averaging was ‘established practice’
Morrison #Morrison
Some thoughts before we return: things went off the rails there for a little bit.
Senior counsel assisting, Justin Greggery KC, has spent the day so far trying to establish Scott Morrison’s knowledge of the robodebt scheme’s issues at the time it was being developed.
We are really talking about a small window of a few months in early 2015.
Greggery wants to do this in a methodical way. As we’ve seen with other witnesses, he will ask what a person knew in 2015. To put it simply, if they knew important things, he’ll ask what they did with that knowledge (either in 2015 or later when robodebt hit the headlines). If they didn’t know, why not? Why didn’t they seek out the knowledge, especially if it was their responsibility to know?
This process has proven a little more time consuming than Greggery had hoped, because Morrison has been keen to expand on his answers with what the, commissioner Catherine Holmes, called “unnecessary detail” .
On several occasions, it has been a little unclear whether Morrison’s answers have reflected what he knew in early 2015 (when he was considering the robodebt plan) or what he knows now and is offering as a post-scandal political defence. What’s relevant at this stage in the questioning is the former, not the latter. (Morrison will get the chance to make the other arguments.)
It’s been slow going, but we’ve gotten through the February 2015 minute where Morrison was told about the robodebt proposal and that it might need legal change.
We have established a few things:
His evidence is he had directed his departments to work through these issues.
His evidence suggests a good understanding of the brief (he doesn’t claim he wasn’t across it, which is important because he signed it).
In particular, he understood the potential issues the brief was raising: that legislative change might be needed to allow the ATO annual data to calculate fortnightly income (and raise debts a la robodebt.).
Now we’re getting to the moment where Morrison considered the proposal in March and then took it to cabinet before it was included in the May 2015 budget. As Morrison said in his own defence today, the proposal said “no legislation was required”.
He’s already been asked why he didn’t ask what had changed. He’s said he had faith in his department and they’d provided “clear advice”.
But you can expect him to be grilled further on this. Greggery has already taken him to the cabinet handbook which requires ministers to bring forward accurate proposals to cabinet. He will likely build on the reasons why Morrison ought to have asked more questions.
That will be further bolstered by Morrison’s evidence this morning. When quizzed about some aspects of the robodebt plan today, he’s gone to specific sections of the Social Security Administration Act (echoing arguments made by DHS staff at the time in support of the proposal). He gave a long answer about past compliance processes to suggest the robodebt scheme didn’t change how things worked.
Again, he hasn’t simply said he didn’t understand the granular details of the plan and went along with his department.
One suspects this Holmes assertion will be revisited later on: “If you were so familiar with the act, you ought to have been concerned about whether the act was being complied with in the development of this proposal.”