Nat Barr has fired up at Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce after he sought to rewrite the previous federal authorities’s file on robodebt.
In his Monday morning look on Sunrise, the previous deputy prime minister claimed the previous authorities had deserted the robodebt scheme when it turned conscious it was unlawful.
“People have to know – as soon as we knew it was illegal, we stopped the scheme, the Coalition stopped the scheme, but that is not good enough,” he mentioned.
Barr pulled Mr Joyce up on this, quoting royal commissioner Catherine Holmes, who, in her report handed down on Friday, discovered that the previous authorities had pressed on with the scheme even once they knew it was illegal.
“Actually (that’s) not what the royal commissioner says,” Barr mentioned.
“She said that you pressed on even though the legal advice was unlawful and doubled down.”
The report was damning of former ministers Scott Morrison, Stuart Robert, Alan Tudge and Christian Porter, who all had some oversight over the scheme in its 4 years. All former ministers bar Mr Morrison have resigned from parliament.
Pressed on whether or not Mr Morrison ought to now observe the lead of the others and resign, Mr Joyce refused to offer his opinion on the previous prime minister’s future.
“Look, I don’t like telling other politicians to leave politics,” he mentioned.
“That’s their decision. They will make that decision and when they decide to make it, they make it.
“It’s a decision that’s made by the person themselves as to what they want to do with their career, not for other people.”
Despite the report discovering him partly chargeable for the scheme that impacted practically half 1,000,000 Australians and was chargeable for no less than two suicides, Mr Morrison – who was social providers minister throughout robodebt’s inception – on Friday launched a prolonged assertion denying all findings towards him.
On Friday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese mentioned it was as much as Mr Morrison as as to whether he resigned however famous he had been talked about “countless times” within the report.
“I think that these findings that I have read out in the public domain make it clear that Scott Morrison‘s defence of this scheme and of the government’s actions over such a long period of time were, to quote the report, ‘based upon a falsehood’,” Mr Albanese mentioned.
“And that is a damning finding that is there. People will make their own judgments about this.”
Senator James Paterson, the opposition’s spokesman for residence affairs and cybersecurity, was additionally requested to weigh in on Mr Morrison’s future on Monday morning.
“Neither me or any of my other colleagues are in a position to direct Scott Morrison on how he responds to this report,” he instructed ABC Radio.
Pressed additional on what he considered Mr Morrison’s rejection of the findings, Senator Paterson mentioned he was “entitled to take whatever position he wants”.
“I’m not in a position to direct Mr Morrison to say or do anything any more than any other member of the Liberal Party in Canberra,” he mentioned.
“All we can control is our own response, which I think has been very responsible and appropriate because this is a very serious matter and we’re taking it seriously.”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
