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Former Liberal minister Alan Tudge has denied duty for the disgraced robodebt scheme being unlawful.
Mr Tudge, who was human companies minister between 2016 and 2017, informed the royal fee into the Centrelink debt restoration scheme that whereas he was in cost for issues in his division, he wasn’t chargeable for the scheme’s “lawful implementation”.
Throughout his look on the fee on Wednesday, Mr Tudge mentioned whereas he didn’t think about the legality of the robodebt scheme, questions of this system’s equity had been introduced up.
“It’s unfathomable for a [department] secretary to be implementing a program which she or he would know to be illegal, it’s unfathomable,” Mr Tudge informed the fee.
The scheme used averaging on incomes to determine debt levels and ran from 2015 to 2019, continuing to operate despite concerns over its legality.
The controversial program recovered more than $750 million from more than 380,000 people. But it also led to several taking their own lives while being pursued for false debts.
Mr Tudge said he had no recollection of being “excited” about the prospect of recovering money as part of data-matching activities, despite emails between tax office staff presented to the commission stating he was.
Mr Tudge also told the commission he could not remember looking to extend the time period officials could use to recover debts.
Concerns were raised that the time period was looking to be stretched back to as far as 2000.
The commission was told that shortly after becoming human services minister, then finance minister Mathias Cormann asked Mr Tudge if there was any way to find more budget savings in the portfolio.
Despite concerns being raised in late 2016 and early 2017 in the media about the legalities of the controversial scheme, Mr Tudge said he was focused on its implementation.
On Tuesday, the royal commission heard how Mr Tudge sought the Centrelink file details of robodebt recipients who had spoken out in the media about the scheme.
Mr Tudge’s former media adviser, Rachelle Miller, said he had “requested the file of every single person who appeared in the media so that we [could] see the exact transactions that they’d had with Centrelink and understand what the details of their case were”.
Former Liberal minister Christian Porter, who was in charge of social services at the time of the scheme, will also testify before the royal commission later this week.
– with AAP
