The automated robodebt scheme unlawfully used earnings averaging to wrongfully take $720 million from welfare recipients between 2015 and 2020.
Porter was Social Services Minister from 2015 to 2017 and in January 2017 was filling in for Alan Tudge as Human Services Minister.
Today, the previous treasurer instructed the Royal Commission a authorities division gave him incorrect details about the way it labored.
“As we went further into the process of interrogating what was actually occurring, it seemed to my Office and I that the processes hadn’t been very well designed,” Porter stated.
“So I was very frustrated by the end of it.
But Porter said he did raise his concerns with then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
“That the scheme had a variety of inherent procedural flaws and unfairness, that its basic and preliminary design may have fairly merely prevented these, that the view that we shared was that they may very well be repaired and glued briefly order,” he instructed the royal fee.
Porter recalled being told by someone from the Department of Human Services that the scheme was legal, but when his office asked for proof it never came.
Asked whether he took any responsibility for the scheme, the former minister said “I do”.
Porter announced he would quit politics in 2022, following a string of highly publicised controversies.
Porter cited the “harshness of recent politics” as a reason for choosing not to recontest his seat of Pearce.
Source: www.9news.com.au
