The former PM said there was an “evolving understanding” of the illegal welfare recovery scheme and the advice that went to cabinet was it didn’t require legislative change.
A briefing, signed by Morrison on February 20, 2015, agreed the Department of Human Services would continue to work with the Department of Social Services to explore policy and legislative changes to green-light the debt recovery scheme.
“There was no information, and had there been such information, I would have expected that to be brought to my attention, which it certainly was not.” The scheme used Tax Office annual income data and averaged it over 26 fortnights, presuming income was the same across each, and put the onus on welfare recipients to prove they didn’t owe the government money. It was used from 2016 until 2020, and wrongly recovered more than $750 million from 381,000 welfare recipients.
“I also note the other commentary in my office, which has appeared here, that describe an evolving understanding of the proposal and implications of that and what was ultimately affected.” that detailed legal advice was provided to DHS, now called Services Australia, before the program was rolled out, but she believed legal advice was not passed on to Morrison because there was some “role confusion” between the two departments.
“At some point in time, a decision was taken that it didn’t require policy or legislative change,” she said.
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