by Cam Lucadou-Wells
Bruce Labor MP Julian Hill – whose electorate included as many as 5678 Robodebt victims – says attitudes to welfare recipients must change.
In a speech to Federal Parliament on 3 August, Mr Hill echoed the Robodebt Royal Commissioner’s words that politicians needed to abandon the political narrative of ‘taxpayer versus welfare recipient’.
“Politicians need to lead a change in social attitudes to people receiving welfare payments.
“Anti-welfare rhetoric is easy populism and useful for campaign purposes. It is not recent; nor is it confined to one side of politics.”
Government stats suggest as many as 9393 Robodebt victims lived in Greater Dandenong and Casey.
Mr Hill spoke on the impact in Bruce, “one of the most disadvantaged electorates in the country”.
“Do those opposite really know what it’s like to sit down week after week with vulnerable poor people sent fake debt notices for $20,000 or more for money they didn’t owe?
“How many years does it take to repay a debt like that at $10 a week? It’s more than 38 years.
“But it’s not even the financial pain or the trauma—it’s the sense of injustice and fairness, and the further loss of dignity.”
In July, Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes handed down a report on Robodebt – an ‘income-averaging’ measure used by Centrelink to illegally claim $2 billion in purported overpayments from 433,000 welfare recipients between 2015-19.
“Robodebt was a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals,” the report stated.
“In essence, people were traumatised on the off-chance they might owe money.”
In 2020, the Federal Government settled a $112 million class action to compensate Robodebt victims.
Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently said he was the subject of a “political lynching” by the current Government over the report.
“This campaign of political lynching has once again included the weaponisation on quasi-legal process to launder the government’s political vindictiveness,” he told Parliament.
“They need to move on.
“For the government to now condemn me for holding a view that they shared and sustained for more than three years after I left the portfolio is rank hypocrisy.”
Mr Hill said the former PM was casting himself as the “victim in chief”.
“He is not the victim. The real victims were Australians sent fake debt notices for money they did not owe.
“The real victims were those Australians who committed suicide, and those who loved them.”
