Self Employed Australia

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“Everyone needs an Advocate”

Robodebt

Robodebt lies and fraud: How corrupt government works

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robodebtRobodebt was and is a huge a scandal that was eventually investigated by a Royal Commission. We’ve studied the 1000-pages-plus Royal Commission Report—it’s a shocking read—and have written a summary and analysis.

If you read anything of what we write, this analysis stands out as one of the most significant we have written. (9-minute read)

The issue goes to the heart of whether government can be trusted to be honest and accountable.

Frankly, Robdebt should shatter any naivety Australians may hold about the ‘purity’ of government. Robodebt shows that governments will lie and cheat, particularly when transparency and accountability are more a public relations con than reality.

The Robodebt Royal Commission Report details how the government of the day decided that there must by wide-ranging social security fraud. It claimed the fraud to be in the order of well over $1 billion per year, but there were no facts to back that claim. Nonetheless, it was pushed as a political priority and the public service was charged with delivering the policy.

The orchestrated ‘scam’ that the government imposed on 866,857 Australians was pretty simple in its design as was its inbuilt flaw.

The scheme involved the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) providing the Department of Human Services (DHS) with income records of welfare recipients over short periods of time, usually a fortnight. DHS then assumed that the income for the short period applied over longer periods, say a year.

Based on this false assumption, DHS then alleged that welfare recipients had more income than they had declared, and that overpayment of welfare had occurred as a result on a massive scale. DHS aggressively collected the ‘debts’. Great hardship followed. There were even suicides.

The Commission’s Report details systemic and deliberate lying, deceit, fraud and cover-up layered over the top of incompetence, bad management, maladministration and ignoring the law at the most senior levels of the public service and politics.

The extent of the scandal would surprise many, but what we observe are patterns of behaviour by government that we have seen before—particularly by the ATO as just one example.

We offer our view of how this needs to be addressed. We say that relying on internal government department policies to stop such government fraud (which is the current dominant structure) is not enough. Government, instead, must be held to at least the same levels of transparency and accountability as are expected of the rest of the community.

We say that Parliament needs to take charge of the bureaucracy.

How government can harm people – The Robodebt scandal

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RobodebtWe’re currently studying the report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme. The report describes a scandal of huge proportions, in which government inflicted enormous damage on individuals—even to the extent of a number of suicides occurring.

The scheme involved the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) supplying income assessment data to the Department of Human Services (DHS) on some 860,000 social welfare recipients. The ATO data reported PAYG income based on employer returns for specific periods during a year. The DHS then used the income data and assumed that the income from one period of time was income across longer periods of time (say a year). They called this ‘averaging’.

To quote directly from the Royal Commission Report:

“…the way averaging was used in the Scheme was essentially unfair, treating many people as though they had received income at a time when they had not … with the further fiction that they now owed something back to government…”

That is, the income assessments made by DHS based on ATO data were wrong. On the basis of these false incomes, people were sent bills to pay back social security payments they had received.

There is now, of course, a lot of political payback surrounding the issue, much we would observe likely justified. But there is a bigger issue at play.

There is a gross institutional failure in Australia when it comes to government operations being subject to transparency and checks and balance. Much of what are claimed to be ‘check and balances’ is government scamming the people. Take one example.

November this year marks the start of strengthened unfair contract laws for small business people. But government departments are not subject to these laws. That is, Australian governments are not prepared to apply to themselves the same rules which they apply to the community. Australia has a big problem in this respect, and it makes for bad government.

The Royal Commission report runs to over 1,000 pages. When we’ve finished our study, we’ll produce a detailed assessment.

On the issue of contracts, we’ve had a number of people ask us for assistance in devising their own contract or reviewing a contract they have been offered. SEA does not provide legal, accounting or other advice. But we have developed guidelines on contract assessment/construction that many people find helpful. SEA members can access that information here. These give good starting points that can be checked by a lawyer.