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The People vs Robodebt Season 1 Episode 2
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FunTranscript
00:00If you were sitting in government and you wanted to create a scheme that was as harmful as possible,
00:29you'd probably come up with something like RoboDip.
00:35Robots were going to take over our jobs.
00:40The power of a government to reach into someone's life and create trauma.
00:47It was actually Centrelink that became Australia's largest criminal organisation.
00:53Why are they chasing me? When is it ever going to stop?
00:59Empathy, I just didn't have any left.
01:02People, they were put in jail, they lost their homes, they lost their marriages, lost their lives.
01:07There were a couple of customers that I wonder, were they still alive?
01:11Was I the one that pushed them over the edge?
01:14RoboDip stole my trust for the government and stole my relationship with my daughter.
01:19How could they not know? Why did it take so long for a court case?
01:25I had all the information there to prove that I didn't owe a debt. I knew.
01:31I wasn't going to give in. I was not.
01:36To take on the government is a really scary thing.
01:39Finally, someone's going to listen.
01:41Somebody said you're a whistleblower or something. What do you mean?
01:44You have to put yourself at risk so that the truth comes out.
02:12Reece was extremely loving and kind and expressive and he just loved wholeheartedly, loved his art, loved his music.
02:26Brit was his lovely partner.
02:31Gorgeous girl. They loved each other.
02:41So Reece, his debt, it was $17,319.
02:47Centrelink were in constant contact.
02:54His debt notice was to be paid by January.
02:58Reece wouldn't believe that he had a debt.
03:03He doesn't know where it came from.
03:05Britt was putting letters to one side
03:08until he was in a mind frame
03:11that he would be able to handle reading those letters.
03:15What are these?
03:19Are you getting so upset?
03:25I'm doing it too.
03:29Happy New Year.
03:37Munta's a small town of about 6,000 people
03:39in regional South Australia.
03:41At the end of 2016, I had a 10-month-old,
03:45so that's a lot of sleepless nights,
03:48living in a small country town.
03:51I was needing mental stimulation and community,
03:55and Twitter absolutely helped to fill that gap.
04:03It was getting close to Christmas.
04:05I was online.
04:06I was following a digital rights activist and journalist called Asha Wolfe,
04:11and they had noticed a pattern that was happening with people
04:17talking about these debts that they had.
04:19First impressions were that something was wrong.
04:25The way that they were calculating these debts didn't make sense.
04:29No one really had a clear idea of what was happening,
04:34but Asha was seeing the pattern and was able to start putting it together
04:40in a way that made it really clear that this was something that was an issue.
04:46Lots of people that I respected and that I knew who weren't out there trying to defraud the government
04:56were saying, hey, I seem to have this debt that I can't figure out.
04:59I can't figure out how they've come to the conclusion that I owe them anything.
05:03A discussion started on Twitter at that point where you had a flurry of people coming together,
05:10talking about different ways that they could respond.
05:14It's Christmas, so all of the organisations, they're going on holiday.
05:20There's going to be this period of time where no one is getting support for what is actually happening.
05:27Asha Wolfe was sharing information and stories.
05:30I tweeted to her and said, someone should make a website.
05:37I felt that bringing the stories into one place would help to create visibility
05:42around how big the problem actually was.
05:45And so from my kitchen table, I created the Not My Debt website.
05:52We were trying to connect people so that they didn't feel so isolated and so alone in this.
06:00I thought I was the only one that had this robot there.
06:07Definitely felt isolated and alone.
06:10Extreme shame. I felt very embarrassed.
06:14Like, it'll happen to everyone else, but it won't happen to me.
06:16Extremely isolated, extremely alone.
06:1840,000 people have been on the dole for 10 years.
06:27It's become a way of life for too many people.
06:29Well, it's about time we extracted the leeches.
06:32We have had successive governments, bipartisanship in calling welfare recipients,
06:38dole bludgers, parasites.
06:40We deny them the right to be seen as what they are, which is humans.
06:45There's been this really persistent narrative in a lot of the News Corp tabloids
06:50around welfare and welfare recipients.
06:53The term dole bludger originated in the 1970s under the Whitlam government.
07:00But it is a term that implies that they're bludgers, they're underserving,
07:06they're trying to rort the system, and they're creating a drain, I guess,
07:09on the economy and on honest, hardworking taxpayers.
07:13It's such a small proportion, a fraction, an absolute fraction,
07:17of all welfare recipients ever engage in that kind of behaviour.
07:21In 2016, I took a role with the Minister for Human Services, Alan Tudge.
07:46At that time, the culture around welfare recipients was one of a lack of empathy.
07:53There was a perception that there were people rorting the system.
07:56Hi.
07:58Definitely that conversation with that young woman in the bathroom
08:01was the first time that I had serious doubts about the robo-debt scheme.
08:06I got this debt notice. They're saying I owe thousands.
08:10Well, someone like you shouldn't have one of those debts.
08:13You're not exactly rorting the system, right?
08:15Yeah.
08:16The feedback was always, look, it's working as it should.
08:19So I trusted the department.
08:21Minister Tudge, he wanted me to focus on making sure the media
08:25were getting the right information from us.
08:28There was a story questioning the legality of the robo-debt scheme.
08:33And over the Christmas period, the issue really started to gain traction.
08:43I worked every single day right through Christmas and New Year.
08:48Minister Tudge had gone overseas with his family to Europe.
08:51The Prime Minister's looking at his media clips every morning,
09:07and every morning there's stuff on this scheme that's not going right.
09:11I can recall the Prime Minister asking, hey, is there any substance to this?
09:17So I just kept working to try and shut down the story.
09:23The situation was just getting so bad, Sir Malcolm Turnbull sent a text to Alan,
09:36said, look, I think you should come home.
09:38I mean, if the Prime Minister sends you a text and says you need to come home,
09:41you don't say no.
09:43We were getting a lot of requests for help.
10:04I couldn't even tell you how many people contacted us because it was thousands.
10:10If you look at the website, there are stories from people that are semi-retired,
10:15nurses, teachers.
10:18There were people with disability, there were parents, there were teenagers.
10:23When we had stories coming in, we had some real information.
10:29We had numbers, we had a debt level that we were capturing.
10:34So our understanding of the scheme came together really slowly.
10:37We began to realise people who were working freelance jobs seemed to be getting these debts more than anybody else.
10:43It seemed to be data matching and an increased level of automation than previously existed in the system.
10:50People received letters demanding money that they said that they didn't owe.
10:55And people were pretty adamant.
10:57They didn't owe that money and they weren't going to pay it.
11:02They didn't owe her money.
11:03They didn't owe her money.
11:04They didn't owe her money.
11:05They didn't owe her money.
11:06So we came.
11:07So we were here.
11:08And people in our case were to kind of be able to pay off the debt level.
11:11From around mid-November 2016, those debts were placed in the hands of the debt collectors.
11:30When it went to the debt collectors, again, Rhys was absolutely hounded daily and that
11:36was with letters and emails and texts and that's where he was threatened that they would
11:44garnish his wages, that they would take his tax return, that they would take his car and
11:48personal belongings and that he would be left with nothing.
11:55That pushed Rhys over the edge.
11:57It was just a complete burden and he didn't know which way to, which way to turn.
12:27When public servants are forced to keep food on their table, keep their mortgage paid, keep
12:42their home or speak the truth about something, that's where you have real issues.
12:49I kept contacting the union.
12:51I kept looking for where I could discuss what was going on.
12:57I definitely used my local Member of Parliament a lot.
13:02I just kept speaking out, talking to my union.
13:06That was really all I had.
13:10I grew up with young parents and my dad was quite involved in the union movement.
13:17And I'd see him striking, doing the greater good.
13:21And my background is that I'm in a long line of Jeannie Marie's.
13:25Like there's a strong line of women with really strong ethical values.
13:32It felt strange when the first time somebody said you're a whistleblower, I was like, what
13:37do you mean?
13:38But then the more people that asked me why I decided to speak out, what made me the one.
13:46I just kept thinking that this needs to be discussed.
13:52You feel that you have to put yourself at risk so that the truth comes out.
14:01It's December 2016.
14:16The atmosphere has become pretty intense.
14:19There's a lot of criticism of government.
14:22We are contacted by someone who is working within the compliance team in Centrelink.
14:29This is the first whistleblower to speak out about the scheme.
14:35And that whistleblower tells us that she has reviewed hundreds of these debts that have
14:41been created by the system and that only a fraction of them are genuine.
14:45So she's gone through about 200 to 300 debts and she's found about 20 that are actually
14:50right, which is just an extraordinary number.
14:54She tells us all about income averaging.
14:57So income averaging is really just Centrelink taking that ATO data, dividing it evenly over
15:0426 fortnights and then comparing it to what you've told Centrelink, which is really at the
15:10heart of everything that's wrong with Robodebt.
15:13She tells us that letters are going out to the wrong people.
15:15That staff are being told that they can't intervene.
15:19And all of this is crucial at this really early stage of reporting on Robodebt because it gives
15:27certainty around what we're reporting.
15:30Everything that's being said by victims and advocates and community groups is right.
15:35There is a real problem here.
15:38But it also cuts away the government's argument up to that point, which has been basically
15:43rubbishing our reporting.
15:45Hey.
15:46Hey.
15:47Hey.
15:48Hey.
15:49It's more than I expected.
15:50Happy New Year everybody.
15:51It's mainly just grabs that people are interested in for the news tonight.
15:56Now, this by the way is the same process that has been operating for many, many years.
16:01The methodology which is used is exactly the same methodology that has always been used.
16:07Automation uses exactly the same methodology that we've always used.
16:12I knew that things were different.
16:14We knew that from the whistleblower.
16:17For the government to come out and just boldly kind of lie about that, it was incredibly frustrating,
16:22but actually drove me to just continue reporting on it because I just, I didn't want that to
16:27stand.
16:32Hey, Tom Tilly here.
16:33Today's Australia Day.
16:35There's a growing call from some Australians to change the date.
16:39But why?
16:40Well, before we kick off the Hottest 100, I'm bringing you special tips.
16:53I'm knackered.
16:55Ugh, I'm starving.
16:57Are we still going out to eat?
16:59I can't.
17:00Sorry.
17:01I don't have the energy.
17:02Let's do anything.
17:03No, you go ahead.
17:04I'll be fine.
17:05Okay.
17:06Tell you what, I will go eat, but I'm going to pick up cheesecake on the way home.
17:20Sound good?
17:21It'll pop you out.
17:22Besides, it's one of the five basic food groups.
17:23You know that, don't you?
17:24Yep.
17:25You want to be out long?
17:26We'll bring cheesecake.
17:27Okay.
17:28I'll have to make it up to you.
17:29I'll have to make it up to you.
17:30Alright.
17:56Rees, what's going on?
18:20Hey, I'm going to hurry off if you want any cheesecake.
18:26Rees?
18:35Rees?
18:40Rees?
18:45Rees?
18:50Rees?
18:53Rees?
18:55Rees?
18:57Rees?
18:59Rees?
19:02Rees?
19:04Rees?
19:05Rees?
19:07Rees?
19:08Rees?
19:09Rees?
19:10Rees?
19:11Rees?
19:15Rees?
19:20The police came to our door here at about three o'clock in the morning.
19:30I didn't hear them, so they'd come round to our bedroom window and we're knocking on the
19:36window.
19:58I got up in a fluster and I came out here to the lounge.
20:06And that's when they advised me that Reece had taken his life.
20:26Total shock, absolute shock.
20:29I did lose the plot, as one would say.
20:37I just didn't really know what to do.
20:40I screamed and I just broke down.
20:47Of course, I spoke to Brett, who was an absolute mess.
20:55And then when I flew down to Melbourne, even flying down was just so surreal knowing that
21:12I wasn't going to see him again.
21:17He was my heart and soul.
21:19It was very difficult.
21:44We were all in quite a state of shock at that point in time.
21:53I just wanted to go through absolutely everything.
21:55I wanted to find something to explain.
21:58And what I had to do, of course, is go through Reece's cherished items.
22:05Initially, I was frantically looking for a letter or something to say, you know, why
22:11he had done this.
22:12Because I'm thinking, well, he hadn't had a fight with his girlfriend.
22:16He hadn't, you know, lost his job.
22:18There's definitely something that's not right here.
22:21And I went from every bedroom.
22:23I went through the lounge.
22:24I went through the dining room.
22:25And I collated all the paperwork that I could find.
22:28When I got to the kitchen, there were these debt notices from Dun and Bradstreet on the
22:33fridge.
22:34And there was a photo, a picture that Reece had drawn with him having a gun through his
22:39mouth and dollar signs coming out.
22:44And that added up for me absolutely entirely.
22:56So 2015, I was part of the compliance team that did data matching.
23:01RoboJet comes along.
23:03And then 2017, you're starting to get a lot more information coming out.
23:08You had that wonderful whistleblower who went to the Guardian.
23:13You're getting some of the media, particularly the online newspapers.
23:20So they were finding out little by little what was going on.
23:23And the next thing, we got an all staff bulletin from Catherine Campbell.
23:28Catherine Campbell was the secretary of the department.
23:31And so she was basically as high as you could go.
23:34I'd never seen her apart from her picture on the banner headline of the memos that come out.
23:41The internal memo said, we're sorry all that you have to go through, but we really appreciate
23:46what you're doing.
23:47And this was the crucial bit.
23:48The way we are raising debts and recovering debts has not changed.
23:54And I thought, wow, someone's misleading her.
24:02I knew nothing about her.
24:03I had no perception of how helpful she would be or what have you.
24:08My only concern was that she obviously doesn't know.
24:11Because I thought, well, you know, at secretary level, you're not going to be across the minutiae
24:16of everything.
24:17So I got a right to her direct.
24:18In excruciating detail, the 32 pages, she got all the things that were wrong.
24:23I set out what it was like before, what it was like after.
24:28I included, as a compliance unit, we shouldn't be the ones stealing from our customer.
24:35I mentioned that when we had reported that we were being asked to commit fraud, I got
24:40the phone call almost immediately to say, thank you for that.
24:43I'm going to set up a phone hookup and you're going to talk to a couple of my people tomorrow.
24:48And I thought, wow.
24:50And I said to everyone, oh, my God, because it was like, finally, someone's going to listen.
24:56And this is one of the top people.
25:06And the phone hookup was arranged for the next day.
25:09He went through everything I'd gone through and I was there for an hour or two.
25:12And after they said, so what you're saying is the old way was very time consuming and laborious
25:20and this will be much quicker.
25:22And I thought, I didn't say that.
25:27I thought, oh.
25:29I went out and I said, I don't think she listened to a word I said.
25:33I was already not feeling very proud to be a public servant.
25:37A lot of the fight went out of me.
25:39I still held some hope that something would happen.
25:43But within a matter of weeks, I knew nothing had.
25:47Yes.
25:49Oh, such a gorgeous boy.
26:15And maybe this one for the, for the booklet thing.
26:40Thanks, love.
26:45I've got to make all those phone calls.
26:48Do you have to?
26:51I want them to know what's happened.
26:59Hi, thank you for coming down to Bud Street. Can I just confirm a full name and a date of birth, please?
27:05Okay, it was in the name of Mr. Reece James Corzo.
27:10Okay, and is he available to speak with at all?
27:12No, because he's dead.
27:16Ah, okay, just bear with me a second.
27:19Due to these letters.
27:22Hi, thank you so much for holding. Thank you for letting us know about that. We'll have that followed up now.
27:27And you can just disregard this one, alright?
27:31If we do need any further information or anything, you will get, we will try to contact you.
27:38But as far as I am aware from my end, you can just disregard this matter at the moment, okay?
27:44We can just erase him and erase his life. Just have a rubber and we'll just rub Reece's name out.
27:53Heartbreaking.
28:03The whole of the eight years, eight and a half years has been heartbreaking.
28:07Because that's what you're dealing with.
28:09So, um, I think I need a new heart.
28:20At the funeral, it was, it was a packed house.
28:23Reece just had so many people that loved him and adored him and, you know, even all his neighbours came and, and his people from work came.
28:37And when I spoke to his boss, and she was the one that brought it to my attention when I was telling her about these debt notices that I'd found.
28:45And she goes, oh my God, that makes so much sense.
28:49There's this thing called robo debt.
28:52And she goes, I betcha it's got something to do with that.
28:56And she happened to know the owner of the, the Saturday paper.
29:00So she rang him and said, do you want to have a chat to Jenny?
29:07Because, um, I think we've got a robo debt on our hands.
29:12And the article went onto the front page of the Saturday paper on the 18th of February, 2017.
29:22God.
29:24No.
29:25What's up?
29:27There's been a suicide.
29:29We heard this story was coming and we checked the guy's file and told them it has nothing to do with the scheme.
29:35Can't find my boots.
29:37Well, you can't be held accountable, surely.
29:39Hello? Boots.
29:41Garage.
29:43Journalists can't get away with this.
29:45This is the most disgraceful piece of reporting I've ever seen.
29:49I'm going to have to go in.
29:51Found them!
29:54So, it sets off a chain of events within the government.
29:59Straight away, within Human Services Minister's Office, people are trying to undermine the reporting.
30:05Saying that it's wrong, the Saturday paper's untrustworthy, this should be ignored.
30:12And the government goes into a form of what I would call damage control.
30:17It starts briefing other journalists using Reece's personal Centrelink information, so protected Centrelink information.
30:25You know, your personal life, your personal circumstances is going to be there for everybody to see, to basically undercut the story.
30:34But I've become really quite desensitised. I was just like, this is part of what happens.
30:42You know, in a big welfare system, we've got a lot of people who are getting payments.
30:45There are going to be people who suicide. There are going to be people who, you know, lots of things happen.
30:52There was formal, signed, legal advice. We were able to release those details.
30:57When there is misinformation which is put out there, the law allows us to correct that misinformation.
31:06It was a risk taken because we're at the point where the usual strategies of us, you know, putting out counter-narratives are not working.
31:15The article was quite one-sided in our opinion, and so we were frustrated about that.
31:21To be frank, I didn't really know what to say.
31:26An exceptionally difficult time, and I was tired.
31:30And I really, empathy, I just didn't have any left, to be frank.
31:40You just do what your minister wants you to do.
31:42In September 2016, I said, you know, you cannot do this to people.
32:02People will commit suicide.
32:03And then, in 2017, it was reported in the media that Rhys Corso had committed suicide.
32:12I remember going into the manager's office and waving the paper and going, look, it started.
32:19Because to me, I thought, oh my God, you know, this is not going to be an isolated case.
32:25It was very affecting because it was like, okay, it's really hit rock bottom now.
32:33You know, you've done the worst damage you can do.
32:37You know, you looked at their pictures in the paper and you thought, what a waste.
32:41For what? For what?
32:43What was the final straw for me was the reaction to it.
32:57Because what we had was from the department saying, well, you know, there are lots of things happening in people's lives that lead them to suicide.
33:08And denying that it had anything to do with robo-debt.
33:13And you come out with, to all of Australia, to all his friends, to his family, he lied to Centrelink.
33:21Just unforgivable.
33:25I decided that I would retire.
33:28So I put in age retirement and I was retiring in July.
33:32But come May, I knew I couldn't go back into the office.
33:39I just knew I couldn't.
33:41And so my cop-out was...
33:48So I went on sick leave and then I retired.
33:51And I know from talking to my colleagues, they were told no one's to ask why Colleen's not coming back to work.
33:57I believe that the stance that they took internally to release people's private information just caused so much harm for people.
34:19And they ignored that harm that they were causing.
34:26It was consistent.
34:27I mean, they did not acknowledge that people were vulnerable.
34:31They did not acknowledge that people were suffering.
34:35And they just didn't do their job in leadership as you would think that they should do for the people of Australia.
34:44I think I wrote to everyone that you could possibly think of.
34:49The coroner's ombudsman.
34:51Numerous MPs.
34:53The letters that I received back were patronising.
34:57They were condescending.
34:59They were just platitudes.
35:01It was like me hitting a brick wall.
35:03Okay, this is a letter that I received from Alan Tudge.
35:10It is headed the Honourable Alan Tudge, but I...
35:14I tend to leave it just as Tudge.
35:17Dear Miss Miller, thank you for your correspondence on 3rd of March 2017 about the death of your son, Rhys.
35:24Please accept our sincere condolences during this difficult time.
35:30Following receipt of your letter, I asked my department to undertake a thorough review into its interactions with your son.
35:38While the review identified some minor errors of administrative nature, it concluded that both the department and its agent's interactions with your son were handled appropriately, professionally and sensitively.
35:53Yours sincerely, Tudge.
35:55It makes me sick reading it.
36:06No answers.
36:07Absolutely nothing.
36:09So, I was going to keep fighting.
36:11I have worked almost all of my adult life as a support worker in the disability service sector, with some work in aged care, palliative care and in nursing homes.
36:35Hey, Lucy.
36:36Hey, how are you?
36:37I loved my job.
36:38When I first started working with adults with disabilities, I just felt that it was my niche.
36:45I'm the mum of four beautiful men.
36:49In that stage, I separated from my husband, which was an awful thing.
36:55I was always broke, so you're not getting two incomes, you've got to get the money from somewhere.
37:01I was trying desperately to keep my house.
37:04My grandmother taught me this trick, actually, because she was a single mum with four kids herself.
37:10You know, just give the kids their food, they won't eat at all.
37:13You eat what they don't eat.
37:15Which is what I did.
37:17Anyway, here I was working for three different organisations, but I had just finished getting my bachelor degree in counselling, and I was getting a payment from the government.
37:29It was helping me make ends meet.
37:32It wasn't very long until they called me.
37:36Hello?
37:37Hi, is that Sandra Bevan?
37:40It is.
37:41Sorry to bother you today.
37:42I'm just getting in contact with you because we've set some correspondence that have been set out over the last month in regards to an online check and update your past income review.
37:52Oh, yes.
37:53Just to make sure that over that year, if you were receiving benefits, you were paid the right amount and you reported correctly.
37:59Okay.
38:00I report exactly what I earn exactly.
38:04So I had these little diaries that would fit in the car and I'd write in the diary which company I was working for, how many hours I did, which pay bracket and how much.
38:19And then I would calculate that all up at the end of the fortnight and report that income.
38:26Now, I am pretty bad at math, but because it's not my strong point, I would triple check and I would just make sure that I had the exact amount every time.
38:36I was coming home and I got another call from them saying that I owed nearly $3,000 to Centrelink because I'd been overpaid.
38:50My maths is pretty bad, but it's not that bad.
38:52What the department is asking you to do is to either use that Australian Tax Office information for the review or provide bank statements and payslips to make sure that all our information is right and with yours as well.
39:07What?
39:08What?
39:09What?
39:10You don't have to do that.
39:11What the fuck?
39:13They wanted me to provide evidence.
39:15And so I went around calling up these three different organisations that I had worked for.
39:22Well, one of them no longer existed.
39:25The other one had been taken over by another organisation.
39:28So all the records were gone.
39:30But I did have my diaries.
39:34I had all the information in there.
39:36They only wanted the records from three months of the year.
39:40And I thought,
39:41that's wrong.
39:44I thought they're averaging.
39:46They're using an average and they were averaging out my whole year based on those three months.
39:55That's wrong.
39:57So the method simplifies the process and unfortunately leaves the law behind.
40:05You take the person's annual tax return and you don't investigate what they were earning each fortnight.
40:17What you do instead is you divide the annual figure by 26, put it into a letter that you send to the person and ask them to show that it's wrong.
40:31It was very wrong.
40:33I have two days off.
40:36Where do you think that I'm going to have the time to do all that shit?
40:40I cannot retrieve my pay slip from four years ago.
40:46I understand that.
40:47That's not possible.
40:49The tragedy of Robodebt is that we had people left completely in the dark thinking that they were alone and that there was no one to help them.
40:55They didn't know that they could get an administrative review.
40:59They didn't know that they could go to court.
41:02They didn't know that there are free legal services out there that might be able to help them.
41:07I think I tweeted like maybe 15,000 times about Robodebt in those years.
41:11People would direct message me.
41:14I would direct people back towards the Not My Debt website.
41:17You'd try and refer them to services that might support them.
41:23I wanted to prove myself.
41:24I had all the information there to prove that I didn't owe a debt.
41:28I knew.
41:29Sandra, we can only do a reassessment with what information that you've provided us.
41:36All right, well, I have to get more information to you then because I have not been overpaid.
41:45And if I have been overpaid, it's not my fault because I reported my income exactly.
41:51And I did have to take time off work.
41:53I went to Centrelink and they only wanted to photocopy those three months.
41:59And so I went to the library and I photocopied the whole year.
42:16So I sent them back.
42:18I told them if you want to work out an average, you have to have all the numbers.
42:21And they only wanted to accept the information that would incriminate me.
42:26Oh.
42:28I had just...
42:31Every time the phone rang, I would be thinking,
42:35Oh, good God, don't be Centrelink calling.
42:38And then I'd be lying awake in bed thinking about it.
42:42They're going to take this money off me.
42:44No matter what evidence I provide.
42:46I was sick as well as having to get these calls relentlessly.
42:54I gave up on trying to get my Masters because I just couldn't do it.
42:59I couldn't cope.
43:01It was...
43:03It was horrible.
43:05Good God.
43:06The Canberra bubble is just a world away from what I would call real Australia.
43:24I feel like it's an environment in which people who are more psychopathic kind of thrive.
43:34I was walking on eggshells all the time to just do a better job.
43:38I was also under a lot of pressure at home.
43:42My family were pretty reliant on my income at that time.
43:47I was really working hard to just hold it all together.
43:50It's after two.
43:52Is it?
43:56Bloody hell.
43:57Quit your job.
44:03It's not worth it.
44:08I can't.
44:10You can.
44:12People do.
44:14This is no way to live.
44:17You think I see that?
44:19I don't know what to think anymore.
44:21If I quit now,
44:24it'll look like I've been pushed out.
44:28Scapegoated.
44:32Might never get another job in politics.
44:43The power and the privilege is a really toxic combination.
44:47You've got no power.
44:50You knew that if your minister didn't like what you said, you could just get sacked.
44:54We all just said, yes, minister, we'll do that.
44:56Yes, minister, we'll do that.
44:57You know, that there wasn't really any other answer.
45:05I never spoke up against it because I was, to be honest with you,
45:09I was afraid of going up against the actual system.
45:12I was being treated like a criminal.
45:13It just feels like you're fighting this kind of like faceless, like a machine.
45:17I would say this is the first time I'm publicly speaking up against the system.
45:21Oh no, I didn't accept it.
45:23I didn't see how the heck they figured I owed that much for my life.
45:26So I put in all the information.
45:37I took time off work to do all of this stuff.
45:40And then I was driving home from some late night thing and I got a call from a debt collecting agency saying they wanted $3,000.
45:54I thought, what?
45:55I said, look, they told me they were going to take this information that I've given them and they were going to recalculate the debt.
46:05And they said, well, they have recalculated the debt and it's this much and you have to pay it.
46:09And I said, I'm not paying it because I don't owe them any money.
46:13And I just thought, why am I doing this? Why are they chasing me like this?
46:21When is it ever going to stop?
46:23Because they were calling me day and night, saying to affect my mental health.
46:29And just thought, I can't do this anymore.
46:34I don't want to defend myself anymore.
46:36And I was just thinking, I want it to be over.
46:41And the only way that I could think of it to be over was if I killed myself.
46:48I just thought, I'll just drive into that tree and kill myself.
46:54I'll just put my foot on the accelerator and then it'll be over.
46:58But I wasn't going to give in.
47:10I was not.
47:12I was not going to pay them anything.
47:15And I was not going to let them push me into killing myself.
47:28It's a safety net for the country's most vulnerable.
47:40But Centrelink's accused of provoking depression, anger and frustration as a result of its debt recovery program.
47:47We first became aware of the robot issue in 2016.
47:51We ran a social security advice line and started to get a tsunami of calls.
47:55What became clear is that the automated processes allowed the government to initiate debts at a scale that was incomprehensible to us previously.
48:04Victoria Legal Aid works across a range of practice areas that have a real impact on people's everyday lives.
48:17So help people to resolve complex issues that can make a real difference between living in despair and living with dignity.
48:24And we see that every day in our work.
48:26From the get-go we thought this was likely unlawful.
48:31We really needed to contemplate a test case to definitively determine whether it was lawful or not.
48:36And that's when we started scoping a federal court challenge.
48:38Everyone in the legal community was waiting for a case.
48:47We were waiting for what most people regarded as the inevitable day when this pyramid scheme would collapse on the heads of some very arrogant people.
49:00We went a long, long time, like why did it take so long for a court case.
49:08The absolute ironclad professionals at Victoria Legal Aid.
49:13This was a day that everyone felt had to come.
49:19It was that outrageous.
49:20The case felt high stakes.
49:22I'd never been involved in a case that was so consequential.
49:30We trialled a model actually having two lawyers working on the case.
49:34So myself and Charlie Brumbury Rendell.
49:37You know, you just don't want to make a mistake in litigation.
49:40Bringing litigation against the government can be a scary thing to do for some people.
49:44There's a stigma that's attached in Australia to receiving Centrelink payments, let alone having a debt.
49:51In high stakes litigation, you can see really aggressive tactics inside the courtroom and outside the courtroom.
49:57In the early stages of robo-debt, we had the then minister go on the evening news and tell people,
50:03you will pay these debts, we will track you down and you may go to prison.
50:07So there were some particular challenges with finding a test case.
50:15There was a lot of conversations with people going on.
50:19What became clear over time was that the person had to have had absolutely no engagement with Centrelink.
50:26And that's where Deanna Romato came along.
50:28I really needed to make sure I was ready and confident to do it.
50:39Because to take on the government is, yeah, a really scary thing.
50:43Robo-debt was a constant for three years.
51:08And it was really clear the trauma that this was causing at a mass scale.
51:12It reeks of injustice.
51:14A Royal Commission to find the truth.
51:18It's momentous.
51:20There's just so much to lose for the government here.
51:23People acted in ways that I don't think they would get away with in any other workplace.
51:28We have to have justice.
51:42If you or someone you know require immediate assistance or support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.
51:58Or visit lifeline.org.au.
52:14Or suicide callback service on 1300 659 467.
52:18Or visit suicidecallbackservice.org.au.
52:22Or beyond blue on 1300 22 46 36.
52:26Or visit beyondblue.org.au.
52:29Or talk to your local GP or health professional.
52:31Or health professional.
52:32Or health professional.
52:33Or health professional.
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