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Short filmTranscript
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.
02:12So, Rhys was extremely loving and kind and expressive and he just loved wholeheartedly.
02:23Loved his art, loved his music.
02:27lovely partner. Gorgeous girl, they loved each other.
02:40So Reece, his debt it was $17,319. Centrelink were in constant contact.
02:52His debt notice was to be paid by January. Reece wouldn't believe that he had a debt,
03:03he doesn't know where it came from. Britt was putting letters to one side until he was
03:10in a mind frame that he would be able to handle reading those letters.
03:15What are these?
03:19Are you getting so upset?
03:22I'm doing it too. Happy New Year.
03:37Munta's a small town of about 6,000 people in regional South Australia.
03:41At the end of 2016, I had a 10-month-old, so that's a lot of sleepless nights living in a small country
03:50town. I was needing mental stimulation and community and Twitter absolutely helped to fill that gap.
04:03It was getting close to Christmas. I was online. I was following a digital rights activist and
04:10journalist called Asha Wolfe and they had noticed a pattern that was happening with people talking
04:17about these debts that they had.
04:23First impressions were that something was wrong. The way that they were calculating these debts didn't
04:28make sense. No one really had a clear idea of what was happening, but Asha was seeing the pattern and was able to start putting it together in a way that made it really clear that this was something that was an issue.
04:45Lots of people that I respected and that I knew who weren't out there trying to defraud the government were
04:56saying, hey, I seem to have this debt that I can't figure out. I can't figure out how they've come to
05:01the conclusion that I owe them anything. A discussion started on Twitter at that point where you had
05:08a flurry of people coming together talking about different ways that they could respond.
05:14It's Christmas, so all of the organisations, they're going on holiday. There's going to be this period of
05:22time where no one is getting support for what is actually happening. Asha Wolfe was sharing information and
05:30stories, I 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 around how big the
05:43problem actually was. And 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. Extreme 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.
06:18It's become a way of life for too many people.
06:29Well, it's about time we extracted the leeches.
06:31We have had successive governments, bipartisanship in calling welfare recipients,
06:37humans, dole bludgers, parasites. We 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 around welfare and welfare
06:52recipients. The term dole bludger originated in the 1970s under the Whitlam government.
06:58But it is a term that implies that they're bludgers, they're underserving,
07:05they're trying to rort the system, and they're creating a drain, I guess,
07:09on the economy and on honest, hardworking taxpayers. It's such a small proportion,
07:15a fraction, an absolute fraction of all welfare recipients ever engage in that kind of behaviour.
07:31In 2016, I took a role with the Minister for Human Services, Alan Tudge. At that time,
07:47the culture around welfare recipients was one of a lack of empathy. There was a perception
07:54that there were people rorting the system. Hi. Definitely that conversation with that young
08:00woman in the bathroom was 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. Someone like you shouldn't have one
08:11of those debts. You're not exactly rorting the system, right? Yeah. The feedback was always,
08:17look, it's working as it should. So I trusted the department. Minister Tudge, he wanted me to focus on
08:24making sure the media were getting the right information from us.
08:28There was a story questioning the legality of the robo-debt scheme.
08:37And over the Christmas period, the issue really started to gain traction. I worked every single
08:43day right through Christmas and New Year. Minister Tudge had gone overseas with his family to Europe.
08:51The Prime Minister's looking at his media clips every morning and every morning there's stuff on this
09:09this scheme that's not going right. I can recall the Prime Minister asking,
09:15hey, is there any substance to this? So I just kept working to try and shut down the story.
09:32The situation was just getting so bad. Sir Malcolm Turnbull sent a text to Alan and said,
09:36look, I think you should come home. I mean, if the Prime Minister sends you a text and says,
09:40you need to come home, you don't say no.
09:45We were getting a lot of requests for help. I couldn't even tell you how many people contacted us
10:07because it was thousands. If you look at the website, there are stories from people that are
10:13semi-retired, nurses, teachers, there were people with disability, there were parents,
10:21there were teenagers. When we had stories coming in, we had some real information. We had numbers,
10:30we had a debt level that we were capturing. So our understanding of the scheme came together really
10:36slowly. We began to realise people who were working freelance jobs seemed to be getting these debts
10:41more than anybody else. It seemed to be data matching and an increased level of automation than
10:48previously existed in the system. People received letters demanding money that they said that they
10:54didn't owe and people were pretty adamant. They didn't owe that money and they weren't going to pay it.
11:06From around mid-November 2016, those debts were placed in the hands of the debt collectors. When
11:30it went to the debt collectors again, Rhys was absolutely hounded daily and that was with letters
11:37and emails and texts and that's where he was threatened that they would garnish his wages,
11:45that they would take his tax return, that they would take his car and personal belongings
11:49and that he would be left with nothing. Mr. Corso. That pushed Rhys over the edge.
11:57Anyone home? Mr. Corso.
12:06Mr. Corso.
12:07Mr. Corso. It was just a complete burden and he didn't know which way to turn.
12:25Mr. Corso. When public servants are forced to keep food on their table, keep their mortgage paid,
12:42keep their home or speak the truth about something, that's where you have real issues.
12:48Mr. Corso. I kept contacting the union. I kept looking for where I could discuss
12:55what was going on. I definitely used my local member of parliament a lot. I just kept speaking out,
13:04talking to my union. That was really all I had.
13:10Mr. Corso. I 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. And my background is that I'm in a long line of
13:24Jeannie Marie's. Like there's a strong line of women with really strong ethical values.
13:33It felt strange when the first time somebody said, you're a whistleblower. I said, what do 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. You feel that you have to put yourself at risk
13:55risk so that the truth comes out.
14:14It's December 2016. The atmosphere has become pretty intense. There's a lot of criticism of government.
14:21We 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 been created
14:41by the system and that only a fraction of them are genuine. So she's gone through about 200 to 300
14:48debts. And she's found about 20 that are actually right, which is just an extraordinary number.
14:53She tells us all about income averaging. So income averaging is really just Centrelink taking that ATO data,
15:02dividing it evenly over 26 fortnights, and then comparing it to what you've told Centrelink,
15:08which is really at the heart of everything that's wrong with robo debt.
15:12She tells us that letters are going out to the wrong people, that staff are being told that they
15:18can't intervene. And all of this is crucial at this really early stage of reporting on robo debt,
15:25because it gives certainty around what we're reporting. Everything that's being said by victims
15:32and advocates and community groups is right. There is a real problem here. But it also cuts away the
15:39government's argument up to that point, which has been basically rubbishing our reporting.
15:48It's more than I expected. Happy New Year, everybody. It's mainly just grabs that people are
15:53interested in for the news tonight. Now, this, by the way, is the same process that has been operating
16:00for many, many years. The methodology which is used is exactly the same methodology that has always been
16:06used. Automation uses exactly the same methodology that we've always used.
16:12I knew that things were different. We 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 stand.
16:27Hey, Tom Tilly here. Today's Australia Day. There's a growing call from some Australians to
16:39change the date. But why? Well, before we kick off the Hottest 100, I'm bringing you a special...
16:54I'm knackered. I'm starving. Are we still going out to eat?
16:58Oh, I can't. Sorry. I didn't have the energy. Let's do anything.
17:10Oh, you go ahead. I'll be fine.
17:13Okay. Tell you what, I will go eat, but I'm going to pick up cheesecake on the way home. Sound good?
17:21It'll pop you out. Besides, it's one of the five basic food groups. You know that, don't you?
17:29Yep.
17:31Don't worry about long. We all bring cheesecake.
17:51Oooh.
18:18Reese, what's going on?
18:19Hey, I'm going to hurry off if you want any cheesecake.
18:33Rhys?
18:38Rhys?
18:42Rhys?
18:49Rhys?
19:19Rhys?
19:24The police came to our door here at about three o'clock in the morning.
19:29I didn't hear them.
19:32So they'd come round to our bedroom window and were knocking on the window.
19:49I got up in a fluster and I came out here to the lounge.
20:10And that's when they advised me that Rhys had taken his life.
20:13Total shock. Absolute shock.
20:28I did lose the plot, as one would say.
20:31I just didn't really know what to do. I screamed and I, yeah, I just broke down.
20:46Of course, I spoke to Brett, who was an absolute mess.
20:52And then when I flew down to Melbourne, even flying down was just so surreal, knowing that I wasn't going to see him again.
21:12He was my heart and soul.
21:18It was very difficult.
21:23So, yes.
21:25We were all in quite a state of shock at that point in time.
21:46I 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 Rhys's cherished items.
22:05Initially, I was frantically looking for a letter or something to say, you know, why he had done this.
22:11Because I'm thinking, well, he hadn't had a fight with his girlfriend.
22:16He hadn't, you know, lost his job.
22:17There's definitely something that's not right here.
22:20And I went from every bedroom.
22:22I went through the lounge.
22:23I went through the dining room.
22:24And I collated all the paperwork that I could find.
22:27When I got to the kitchen, there were these debt notices from Dun & Bradstreet on the fridge.
22:32And there was a photo, a picture that Rhys had drawn with him having a gun through his mouth and dollar signs coming out.
22:43That added up for me absolutely entirely.
22:46So, 2015, I was part of the compliance team that did data matching.
23:00RoboDeck comes along.
23:01And then 2017, you're starting to get a lot more information coming out.
23:07You had that wonderful whistleblower who went to The Guardian.
23:10You're getting some of the media, particularly the online newspapers.
23:19So they were finding out little by little what was going on.
23:22And the next thing, we got an all-staff bulletin from Catherine Campbell.
23:27Catherine Campbell was the secretary of the department.
23:30And so she was basically as high as you could go.
23:33I'd never seen her apart from her picture on the banner headline of the memos that come out.
23:40The internal memo said,
23:42We're sorry all that you have to go through, but we really appreciate what you're doing.
23:46And this was the crucial bit.
23:47The way we are raising debts and recovering debts has not changed.
23:52And 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.
24:07My only concern was that she obviously doesn't know.
24:11Because I thought, well, you know, at secretary level,
24:14you're not going to be across the minutia of everything.
24:16So I got a right to her direct in excruciating detail.
24:2032 pages.
24:21She got all the things that were wrong.
24:23I set out what it was like before, what it was like after.
24:27I included, as a compliance unit, we shouldn't be the ones stealing from our customer.
24:34I mentioned that when we had reported that we were being asked to commit fraud,
24:39I got the 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.
24:52Because it was like, finally, someone's going to listen.
24:55And this is one of the top people.
25:06And the phone hookup was arranged for the next day.
25:09We 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
25:19and this will be much quicker.
25:21And I thought, I didn't say that.
25:24I thought, oh, I went out and I said, I don't think she listened to a word I said.
25:32I was already not feeling very proud to be a public servant.
25:36A lot of the fight went out of me.
25:38I still held some hope that something would happen.
25:42But within a matter of weeks, I knew nothing had.
26:08This.
26:09Oh.
26:10Oh.
26:11Such a gorgeous boy.
26:15And maybe this one for the booklet thing.
26:30Thanks, love.
26:43I've got to make all those phone calls.
26:47Do you have to?
26:50I want them to know what's happened.
26:53Hi, thank you for calling down to Bud Street.
27:00Can I just confirm a full name and a date of birth, please?
27:05Okay, it was in the name of Mr. Reece James Corzo.
27:09Okay, and is he available to speak with at all?
27:13No, because he's dead.
27:15Okay.
27:16Ah, okay.
27:17Just bear with me a second.
27:20Due to these letters.
27:21Hi, thank you so much for holding.
27:23Thank you for letting us know about that.
27:25We'll have that followed up now.
27:27And you can just disregard this one, alright?
27:30If we do need any further information or anything, we will try to contact you.
27:37But 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.
27:49Just have a rubber and we'll just rub Reece's name out.
28:00Heartbreaking.
28:03Heartbreaking.
28:04Heartbreaking.
28:05Heartbreaking.
28:06Heartbreaking.
28:07Because that's what you're dealing with.
28:11So, um, I think I need new heart.
28:20At the funeral it was a packed house.
28:24Rhys just had so many people that loved him and adored him and you know even all his neighbours
28:33came and and his people from work came and when I spoke to his boss and she was the one that brought
28:41it to my attention when I was telling her about these debt notices that I'd found and she goes
28:47oh my god that makes so much sense there's this thing called robo debt and she goes I bet you
28:54it's got something to do with that and she happened to know the owner of the the Saturday paper so she
29:01rang him and said do you want to have a chat to Jenny because I think we've got a robo debt on our
29:12hands and the article went onto the front page of the Saturday paper on the 18th of February 2017
29:20god no what's up there's been a suicide we heard this story was coming and we checked the guys file
29:33and told them there's nothing to do with the scheme can't find my boots well you can't be held
29:38accountable surely hello boots garage journalists can't get away with this this is the most disgraceful
29:47piece of reporting I've ever seen I'm gonna have to go in so it sets off a chain of events within the
29:58government straightaway within human services minister's office people are trying to undermine
30:06the reporting saying that it's wrong the Saturday papers untrustworthy it should be ignored and the
30:12government goes into a form of what I would call damage control it starts briefing other journalists
30:20using race's personal Centrelink information so protected Centrelink information you know you
30:26your personal life your personal circumstances is going to be there for everybody to see to
30:32basically undercut the story but I've become really quite desensitized I was just like this
30:40is part of what happens you know in a in a big welfare system we've got a lot of people who are getting
30:45payments there are going to be people who who who suicide there are going to be people who you know
30:51lots of things happen there was formal signed legal advice we were able to release those details
30:58when there is misinformation which is put out there the law allows us to correct that misinformation it
31:07was a risk taken because we're at the point where the usual strategies of us you know putting out
31:12counter narratives are not working the article was quite one-sided in our opinion and so we were
31:20frustrated about that to be frank I didn't really know what what to say an exceptionally difficult
31:27time and I was tired and I I really empathy I just didn't have any left to be frank you just do what
31:41your minister wants you to do in September 2016 I said you know you cannot do this to people people
32:03will commit suicide and then in 2017 it was reported in the media that Reese Corso had committed suicide
32:11I remember going into the manager's office and waving the paper and going look it started because
32:20to me I thought oh my god you know this is not going to be an isolated case it was very affecting
32:28because it was like okay it's it's really hit rock bottom now you know if you've done the worst
32:36damage you can do you know you looked at their pictures in the paper and you thought what a waste
32:40for what for what what was the final straw for me was the reaction to it because what we had was the
33:00depart from the department saying well you know there are lots of lots of things happening in people's
33:07lives that lead them to suicide and denying that it had anything to do with robo debt and you come
33:14out with to all of Australia to all his friends to his family he lied to Centrelink just unforgivable I
33:25decided that I would retire so I put in age retirement and I was retiring in July but come May I
33:36I knew I couldn't go back into the office I just knew I couldn't and so my cop-out was some
33:44so I went on sick leave and then I retired and I know from talking to my colleagues they were told
33:54no one's to ask why Colleen's not coming back to work I believe that the stance they took internally
34:13to release people's private information just cause so much harm for people and they ignored that harm that
34:23they were causing was consistent I mean they did not acknowledge that people were vulnerable they
34:32did not acknowledge that people were suffering and they just didn't do their job in leadership as you
34:41would think that they should do for the people of Australia I think I wrote to everyone that you
34:48could possibly think of the coroner's ombudsman numerous MPs the letters that I received back
34:56were patronizing they were condescending they were just platitudes it was like me hitting a brick wall
35:03okay this is a letter that I received from Alan Tudge it is headed the honourable Alan Tudge but I
35:13I tend to leave it just as Tudge dear Miss Miller thank you for your correspondence on 3rd of March 2017
35:22about the death of your son Rhys please accept our sincere condolences during this difficult time
35:29following receipt of your letter I asked my department to undertake a thorough review into
35:36its interactions with your son while the review identified some minor errors of administrative nature
35:43it concluded that both the department and its agents interactions with your son were handled
35:49appropriately professionally and sensitively you'll sincerely Tudge
36:00makes me sick reading it
36:06no answers absolutely nothing so I was going to keep fighting
36:19I 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
36:34I loved my job when 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 in 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 right
37:01was trying desperately to keep my house my grandmother taught me this trick actually because she was she
37:07was a single one with four kids herself you know just give the kids their food they won't eat at all
37:13you eat what they don't eat which is what I did
37:16anyway here I was working for three different organizations but I just finished getting my
37:25bachelor degree in counseling and I was getting a payment from the government it was helping me
37:31make ends meet it wasn't very long until they called me
37:37hello hi that's Sandra Bevan it is sorry to bother you today I'm just getting in contact
37:43you because uh we've said some correspondence has been set out over the last month in regards to a
37:48uh online uh check and update your past income review oh yes it's to make sure that over that year
37:55if you were receiving benefits you were paid the right amount and you reported correctly
37:59so I I report exactly what I earn exactly so I had these little diaries that would fit in the car and
38:09I'd write in the diary which company I was working for how many hours I did which pay bracket and how much
38:20and then I would calculate that all up at the end of the fortnight and report that income now I am
38:27pretty bad at math but because it's not my strong point I would triple check and I would just make sure
38:34that I had the exact amount every time I was coming home and I got another call from them
38:42hello saying that I owed nearly three thousand dollars to centralink because I'd been overpaid
38:50my maths is pretty bad but it's not that bad
38:54what the what the department is asking you to do is to either use that Australian tax office information
38:59for the review or provide bank statements and payslips to make sure that all our information
39:04is right and give you all as well what what you don't have to do that what the they wanted me to
39:14provide evidence and so I went around calling up these three different organizations that I had worked for
39:22well one of them no longer existed the other one had been taken over by another organization
39:28so all the records were gone but I did have my diaries I had all the information in there
39:35they only wanted the records from three months of the year and I thought
39:43that's wrong I thought they're averaging they're using an average and they were averaging out my whole
39:51year based on those three months that's wrong so the method simplifies the process and unfortunately
40:05leaves the law behind you take the person's annual tax return and you don't investigate
40:14what 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
40:25person and ask them to show that it's wrong it was very wrong I have two days off where do you think
40:37that I'm going to have the time to do all that shit I cannot retrieve my pay slip from four years ago
40:46that's not possible the tragedy of robo debt is that we had people left completely in the dark
40:53thinking that they were alone and that there was no one to help them they didn't know that they
40:57could get an administrative review they didn't know that they could go to court they didn't know that
41:03there are free legal services out there that might be able to help them I think I tweeted like maybe
41:0915 000 times about robo debt in those years people would direct message me I would direct people back
41:15towards the not my debt website you'd try and refer them to services that might support them
41:20I wanted to prove myself I had all the information there to prove that I didn't owe a debt
41:28I knew Sandra we we can only do a reassessment with what information that you've provided us
41:36now all right well I have to I have to get more information to you then because I have not I have
41:43not been overpaid and if I have been overpaid it's not my fault because I reported my income exactly and
41:51I did have to take time off work I went to Centrelink and they only wanted to photocopy those three months
41:58and so I went to the library and I photocopied the whole year
42:16so I sent them back I 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 I had just every time
42:32the phone rang I would be thinking oh good god don't be Centrelink calling and then I'd be lying
42:40awake in bed thinking about it they're going to take this money off me no matter what evidence I provide
42:46I was sick as well as having to get these calls relentlessly I gave up on trying to get my masters
42:57because I just couldn't do it I couldn't cope it was it was horrible good god it was awful
43:16the Canberra bubble it's just a world away from what I would call real Australia
43:28I feel like it's an environment in which people who are more psychopathic kind of thrive
43:35I was walking on eggshells all the time to just do a better job
43:40I was also under a lot of pressure at home
43:42my family were pretty reliant on my income at that time I was really working hard to just hold
43:49it all together it's after two is it bloody hell
44:00quit your job it's not worth it
44:04you can't you can people do this is no way to live
44:17you think I see that I don't know what to think anymore
44:22if I quit now
44:25it'll look like I've been pushed out scapegoated
44:29you might never get another job in politics
44:43the power and the privilege is a really toxic combination
44:49you've got no power you 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 yes minister we'll do that you know that that there
44:58wasn't really any other answer
45:05I never spoke up against it because I was to be honest with you I was afraid of going up against
45:11the actual system I was being treated like a criminal
45:13it just feels like you're fighting this kind of like faceless like a machine
45:17this is the first time I'm publicly speaking up against the system
45:21although I didn't accept it um I didn't see how the heck they figured I owed that much really
45:35so I put all in all the information I took time off work
45:39to do all of this stuff and then I was driving home from some late night thing and
45:47I got a call from a debt collecting agency saying they wanted three thousand dollars
45:55I thought what I said look they told me they were going to take this information that I've given them
46:01and they were going to recalculate the debt and they said well they have recalculated the debt and
46:07it's this much and you have to pay it and I said I'm not paying it because I don't owe them any money
46:14and I just thought why am I doing this why are they chasing me like this when is it
46:22ever going to stop because they were calling me day and night saying to affect my mental health
46:29and just thought I can't do this anymore I don't want to defend myself anymore and I was just thinking I
46:39want it to be over and the only way that I could think of it to be over was if I killed myself
46:49I just thought I'll just drive into that tree and kill myself I'll just put my foot on the accelerator
46:56and then it'll be over but I wasn't going to give in I was not I was not going to pay them anything
47:15and I was not going to let them push me
47:25into killing myself
47:37it's a safety net for the country's most vulnerable but Centrelink's accused of provoking depression
47:42anger and frustration as a result of its debt recovery program we first became aware of the
47:49robot issue in 2016 we ran a social security advice line we started to get a tsunami of calls what
47:56became clear is that the automated processes allowed the government to initiate debts at a scale that was
48:03incomprehensible to us previously
48:09Victoria Legal Aid works across a range of practice areas that have a real impact on
48:15people's everyday lives so help people to resolve complex issues that can make a real difference
48:21between living in despair and living with dignity and we see that every day in our work
48:27from the get-go we thought this was likely unlawful we really needed to contemplate a test case to
48:33definitively determine whether it was lawful or not and that's when we started scoping a federal court
48:38challenge everyone in the legal community was waiting for a case we were waiting for
48:49for what most people regarded as the inevitable day when this pyramid scheme would collapse on the heads
48:59of some very arrogant people we 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 this was a day that everyone felt had to come
49:19it was that outrageous the case felt high stakes i'd never been involved in a case that was so
49:29consequential we trialed a model we're actually having two lawyers working on the case so myself and
49:35charlie brumby rendell you know you just don't want to make a mistake in litigation bringing
49:41litigation against the government can be a scary thing to do for some people there's a stigma that's
49:46attached in australia to receiving send link payments let alone having a debt in high stakes
49:52litigation you can see really aggressive tactics inside the courtroom and outside the courtroom in
49:57the 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
50:12so there was some particular challenges with finding a test case there was a lot of conversations
50:17with people going on what became clear over time was that the person had to have had absolutely no
50:25engagement with centerlink and that's where deanna ramada came along
50:29i really needed to make sure i was ready and confident to do it because to take on the
50:40government is yeah a really scary thing
50:54uh
51:05robo debt was a constant for three years and it was really clear the trauma that this was causing at a
51:11mass scale it reeks of injustice a royal commission to find the truth it's momentous there's just so much
51:21to lose for the government here.
51:24People acted in ways that I don't think they would get away with in any other workplace.
51:29We have to have justice.
51:51If you or someone you know require immediate assistance or support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14
52:11or visit lifeline.org.au or Suicide Callback Service on 1300 659 467
52:18or visit suicidecallbackservice.org.au or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636
52:26or visit beyondblue.org.au or talk to your local GP or health professional.
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