Politics

The Government Reckons It Has No Duty Of Care To Robodebt Victims

"The govt has one job and it’s literally to care for citizens."

by Rachael Conaghan  18 February 2020
robodebt

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

If you’re looking for evidence the government doesn’t care about poor people, they’ve gone and made it easy for you by boldly claiming they don’t have a duty of care to welfare recipients.

The Coalition is currently facing a class action suit into the giant robodebt mess, and are trying to avoid paying compensation to those hit with incorrect bills.

In documents filed with the federal court, the government argues it should not have to pay compensation because social security law doesn’t explicitly say they need to exercise “due or reasonable care”.

They also deny that people were placed under “duress” during the debt recovery process, despite plenty of affected people saying the exact opposite.

The documents, obtained by The Guardian, also admit the debts that were issued based on tax income summaries could “not be validly established” under the law.

Keep in mind the government is still refusing to tell a Senate inquiry (which is also looking into robodebt) what legal advice they received about the scheme.

This defence to the class action is its first public acknowledgement that thousands of debts it issued are not legally valid.

The unlawful debts are the ones that Centrelink calculated using income averaging, where they estimate a person’s income without actually obtaining payslips that proved a person misreported their earnings.

The government has admitted they relied on an income average that was false in the cases of the class action’s five lead applicants.

The class action suit is being bought by Gordon Legal and is pushing for the government to withdraw debt notices with no proper basis, compensate people for distress caused, and return the money with interest.

For what it’s worth, the government’s own Social Security Guide does actually specify that government employees have a duty of care to the public when performing their duties, and compensation can be paid if Centrelink has breached that duty.