CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The Federal Government has signed a $1.2 billion compensation deal in relation to the botched automated debt recovery scheme that resulted in $398 million in wrongly raised debts
The bogus debts have since been dismissed, and the government has agreed to pay $112 million in compensation to the families of those that killed themselves, or lost their entire livelihoods to this bureaucratic software.
However, in a weird turn of events, Human Services Minister Stuart Robert has somehow painted himself as the hero in this binfire that saw countless vulnerable people dragged below the poverty line into homeless.
Robert told Sky News, the propaganda arm of the Liberal Party, that he put a stop to the Robodebt scheme as soon as he became aware of issues with how ATO data was being used.
“This is why we stopped the scheme in November last year, because we had concerns about the sufficiency of using this longstanding practice that governments had been using,” he said.
“I’d only been in the portfolio for a few months before I stood in and stopped it so as soon as I came to the conclusion that I believed there were issues with the sufficiency of how average data was being used by the ATO I stood in and stopped it.”
These comments seem to contradict the last couple years of Stuart Robert’s political career, ever since he rode the Hillsong wave into cabinet with Morrison.
Robert has refused to offer any apologies to the lives ruined by his party and their flawed RoboDebt scheme that targeted vulnerable Centrelink recipients for the reimbursement of overpaid welfare payments that never existed.
His new narrative that suggests he was actually the first person to realise there was something wrong with this system also seems to contradict his comments made earlier today.
Robert was seen standing under a bridge in his northern Gold Coast electorate, where he was reportedly shouting at a young homeless woman and her child.
“Fine! You win” roared Robert.
“After all your whingeing you finally get back that measly ten grand I accidentally hounded you for with countless letters and legal threats”
“But seriously, love. Pull yourself up by your boot straps.”
“If it only takes 10 grand to send you into poverty, you really aren’t managing your money very well”
MORE TO COME.
