Top government lawyer to take stand at robodebt inquiry

Top government lawyer to take stand at robodebt inquiry

A high authorities division lawyer will give proof on the illegal robodebt scheme when the royal fee into the scheme resumes.

The second day of the ultimate listening to block of the robodebt royal fee will hear from the previous chief counsel for the Department of Social Services Paul Menzies-McVey.

Other witnesses scheduled for Tuesday embrace Services Australia’s compliance and debt operations officer Jeannie-Marie Blake and Attorney-General division’s assistant secretary Michael Johnson.

The fee is inspecting who knew in regards to the legality of the scheme and the way robodebt was carried out.

The last spherical of hearings, which started on Monday, is specializing in the inquiry by the commonwealth ombudsman into the scheme, proposals to develop robodebt, the influence it had on victims and the way it was wound up.

The influence on victims and their households was the topic of a lot of Monday’s hearings, which heard from the mom of a robodebt sufferer, who dedicated suicide after receiving numerous debt notices.

Jennifer Miller, whose son Rhys Cauzzo died in 2017, stated the debt discover of greater than $17,000 which was calculated utilizing unlawful averaging strategies, exacerbated his earlier psychological well being situations.

She advised the fee makes an attempt to acquire data from authorities departments and related ministers had been stonewalled.

“Not once did I get a truthful answer,” she stated.

The correspondence additionally included letters to then human companies minister Alan Tudge.

She stated correspondence she obtained from Mr Tudge following Rhys’s dying simply contained platitudes.

The last block of hearings will run for 3 weeks, with the ultimate report due on the finish of June.

Commissioner Catherine Holmes final week wrote to the federal government requesting a two-month extension of the inquiry.

Source: www.perthnow.com.au