Bill Shorten has accused of a series of politicians in the former government of gaslighting the nation over the robodebt scheme.
The government services minister said the debt recovery scheme would be the “political tombstone” of Coalition members who featured heavily in a Royal Commission report handed down on Friday.
The three-volume, 990-page report authored by retired Chief Justice of the Queensland Supreme Court, Catherine Holmes SC, found that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison had misled cabinet over the scheme, while former minister Alan Tudge had engaged in an “abuse of power.”
The debt recovery scheme – known as ‘robodebt’ – operated from 2015 to 2019, and used an illegal process of income averaging to recoup $750 million from 380,000 people.
Mr Shorten said the report was “vindication” for the victims of the scheme.
“For the whole time this scheme was in for four-and-a-half years the old government used to say that the critics were wrong, the government was right, there was nothing untoward to see here, and the old government gaslit a nation and its citizens,” he said.
“There’s things which (Commissioner Holmes) has written in that report about former Coalition ministers which any self-respecting politician would be humiliated to have said about them.”
“This is their political tombstone, this is what’s going to be etched on it, that they abused their power.”
The report also contained a sealed section, which recommended 57 people for civil and criminal prosecution.
Christian Porter and Stuart Robert were two other former government ministers criticised in the report.
Both have denied they have received notice of any referral made against them in the sealed section of the report.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton offered support for his current and former colleagues.
“I just caution the glee of the Prime Minister and Bill Shorten at the moment,” Me Dutton said on Saturday.
“In Question Time, you have seen, they sought to politicise the issue from day one,” he said.
Mr Dutton said some former members of the government had issued public statements rebuking the Commission’s findings.
“And that’s entirely their right to do so,” he said.
In a statement issued on Friday Mr Morrison, who is holidaying in Italy with his family, said “I reject completely each of the findings which are critical of my involvement in authorising the scheme and are adverse to me.”
“They are wrong, unsubstantiated, and contradicted by clear documentary evidence,” he said.
“It is unfortunate that these findings fail to acknowledge the proper functioning of Government and Cabinet processes in the face of not only my evidence as a former Prime Minister, and Cabinet Minister for almost nine years, but also the evidence of other Cabinet ministers.”
Mr Morrison was social services minister when robodebt was in its inception.
Alan Tudge, who was human services minister in 2016 and 2017, said he “strongly rejected” the claims made by Commissioner Holmes that he had abused his power.
“At no stage did I seek to engage in a media strategy that would discourage legitimate criticism of the Scheme,” Mr Tudge said.
“It is part of a Minister’s role to publicly defend government policy when that policy is subject to criticism,” he said.
Mr Tudge also rejected the claim that he was indifferent to suicides caused by the scheme.
“It was standard practice to investigate every suicide that was said to be linked to Centrelink.”