The Greens welcome the settlement of $1.2billion in the Robodebt Class Action including that the Commonwealth must pay $112 million in compensation to approximately 400,000 eligible individual Group Members, including legal costs.
“I am very pleased for the victims of robodebt today. This is yet another indictment on the abominable actions of the Government who went after the most vulnerable in our community to make savings”, Senator Rachel Siewert said.
People in our community shouldn’t have had to go through a class action in order to get action from the Government.
It will be almost impossible to account for the social and economic costs of the Government’s punitive robodebt program.
This program has literally cost people’s lives, ruined many many more and caused so much pain and anguish.
We still don’t know what the Government knew and when and they are still desperate to cover it up.
Now the community needs to know how this all happened.
The Government has clearly demonstrated they are not willing to hand over the legal advice they have relating to robodebt and have hidden behind “public interest immunity claims”.
We need a Royal Commission because it’s very clear that the Government is going to continue to keep trying to hide what has happened. A Royal Commission is the only way to get to the bottom of how this happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
In the mean time the Community Affairs References Committee will continue to pursue this issue.
