Commissioner Catherine Holmes expressed dismay at the quality of the legal advice used to justify the $1.8 billion robo-debt program which unlawfully pursued hundreds of thousands Australians for non-existent debt.
relied on a hit-and-miss approach backed by a single piece of internal legal advice based on a “vibe”, Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes says.
Ms Musolino said DSS had “resiled” from this earlier advice after it understood the scheme better. In 2017 DSS had come to the view debts could be raised using ATO income averaging data, after all other inquiries to verify the debt amount had been exhausted, the so-called “last resort” test. But faced with contrary advice, from what was described by DHS as the “sensible” parts of the AAT, that the robo-debt scheme was lawful, DHS chose not to the appeal cases that found the scheme legally flawed.
“The trouble with averaging is it’s the luck of the draw, it might or mightn’t give you the right answer, you just don’t know because you don’t know the surrounding circumstances.”
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