Commonwealth warned of potential legal problems with Robodebt scheme two years before it began, Royal Commission hears

10/31/2022

Government departments failed to obtain high-level external legal advice about Robodebt despite their own lawyers questioning the legality of the scheme more than a year before it was implemented, a royal commission has been told.

The incident was raised in the first day of a Royal Commission inquiring into the Commonwealth scheme which was set up to recover alleged Centrelink debts from hundreds of thousands of Australians using an algorithm to estimate recipients' incomes.

The inquiry, which is headed by former Queensland chief justice Catherine Holmes SC, focused on legal advice that had been obtained for the scheme and then went on to hear evidence from two women who were wrongly targeted for debt collection, and one of their lawyers.