Government Services Minister Bill Shorten said he had already acted on several of the recommendations by stopping the use of external debt collectors,improving communications with welfare recipients and employing 3000 extra staff at Services Australia to process payments faster.
“We have confidence that Services Australia can be re-humanised,” Shorten said.
He said the government’s investment in the agency – including $228 million for new staff – was a “recognition that people who use our welfare system deserve to be properly resourced”.
“I think that the government’s response to the royal commission is the next stage in what you call robo-justice.”
In a sealed chapter of the commission’s report,Holmes recommended some individuals be referred to various agencies – including the National Anti-Corruption Commission,the Australian Federal Police and the Law Society of the ACT – for potential criminal or civil action. She did not reveal who had been referred for further investigation.
Dreyfus on Monday said he would not comment on any investigations by the anti-corruption commission or criminal proceedings.
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Finance Minister Katy Gallagher confirmed 16 investigations relating to potential breaches of the Australian Public Service code of conduct were under way.
“They’re being led by the public service commissioner,” she said. “There is an independent reviewer and then there will be a sanctions reviewer appointed to ensure that there’s fair and just process.”
Shorten said two mothers,Jennifer Miller and Cathy Madgwick,whose sons had taken their own lives after being chased by debt collectors,were also considering civil action.
“If I was a former Coalition minister I wouldn’t be breathing a sigh of relief that you’re out of the woods because … something grievously went wrong,” Shorten said.
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“There’s the public service code ... and that’s appropriately being investigated. But I also think that it has tarnished a generation of Coalition ministers’ reputations. They will wear the stigma of robo-debt on their Wikipedia CV for the rest of their lives.”
Shorten accused Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of not giving a “real apology” for the scheme and challenged him to “own the sins of the Coalition”.
Dutton pointed to his comments after the report’s publication in July,when he said he was “sorry to those people that have been adversely affected,I truly am” and that the Coalition took “responsibility for that which we got wrong”.
“The politicisation of what is a very serious issue by the minister[Shorten] knows no bounds,” he said on Monday.
Dutton has alsopreviously notedthat some of his colleagues had disputed the commission’s findings and “that’s entirely their right to do so”.
Morrison,who took the initial proposal to cabinet as social services minister in 2015,issued alengthy defence of his actions after Holmes found he had allowed cabinet to be misled over the legality of the scheme and gave untrue evidence to the commission.
“I reject completely each of the findings which are critical of my involvement in authorising the scheme and are adverse to me,” he said in July.