A $1.23 billion robodebt settlement was reached in 2022. Photo: AAP
A senior public servant has played down the role of the tax office in providing data used for the robodebt scheme, despite himself raising issues with it in 2017.
Director of data management at the ATO, Tyson Fawcett appeared as a witness at a royal commission into the now defunct scheme in Brisbane on Monday.
Mr Fawcett agreed with a description of the ATO’s role in the data sharing as “passive” and said until issues began to be aired in the media he was essentially unaware of how the data was being used.
The Department of Human Services (DHS), which runs Centrelink, used annual income data provided by the ATO to calculate debts of those it deemed had received incorrect amounts of welfare.
According to email records, in July 2017, Mr Fawcett told the DHS either to agree to an urgent meeting to discuss how the data was being used or “cease and desist” with the scheme.
Mr Fawcett told the inquiry that as best he could recall his concerns mostly related to the averaging of annual data to determine fortnightly income, which he said is simply not accurate.
From 2015 until 2020, the scheme wrongly recovered more than $750 million from 381,000 people, with several victims taking their lives while being pursued for the false debts.
Emails shown to the commission from Mr Fawcett and others in the DHS, initially asked for clarity as to how the data was being used and later offered to explain the limitations as he saw them.
He told the commission, the “limitations around annualised data…may not been well understood” by the DHS.
An earlier email to the DHS that included the “cease and desist” line received a response from DHS representative Ali McRae.
Despite agreeing to work more closely on the scheme, Ms McRae replied “there are currently a range of measures the Government has asked us to deliver which rely on the data matching capabilities of our organisations and this work needs to continue.”
Commissioner Catherine Holmes AC SC suggested to Mr Fawcett, “it looks very much as if she’s telling you to back off because this is what the government wants.”
“If I read it as it is, it definitely could imply that,” Mr Fawcett replied.
Former prime minister Scott Morrison and ex Liberal-National government minister Marise Payne are due to front the commission on Tuesday.
Last week, former Services Australia general manager of business integrity, Mark Withnell, rejected a statement that the controversial income averaging process, also known as “income smoothing”, was fundamental to proposals for the scheme.
Mr Withnell also denied memory of a 2015 meeting at which it has been claimed he was frustrated when told an income averaging debt calculation practice was not lawful.
Another former public servant, ex-Social Services employee Catherine Halbert denied in her evidence manipulating the truth about the department’s view on the scheme in 2015, insisting it did not endorse income smoothing.
Meanwhile, former Human Services secretary Kathryn Campbell told the commission she knew law changes were needed in 2015 to use an average income instead of actual income for debt calculation, but said Social Services was in charge of the matter rather than her own department.
AAP