Alan Tudge ‘closely involved’ in robo-debt complaint counter-attacks

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Former Liberal human services minister Alan Tudge has been accused by the robo-debt royal commissioner of trying to intimidate welfare recipients through his close involvement in releasing details of people who complained about the scheme to the media.

newspaper were used to counter what Tudge labelled an “orchestrated campaign” in the press against the controversial welfare crackdown.

The royal commission on Wednesday was shown emails from Tudge to his staff in which he edited draft rebuttals relating to recipients quoted in the media, in a strategy that caused fierce backlash, but which he said he was comfortable was lawful. Holmes said the strategy “made very clear if someone wanted to criticise Centrelink in public, they were taking a risk”. Tudge said that wasn’t his intent.

Tudge also said he knew the robo-debt scheme produced inaccurate results from early 2017 but issues around its legality were not obvious until years later.Tudge, who in 2016 and 2017 was responsible for the welfare crackdown that illegally used income averaging to calculate debts, told the royal commission he would have expected to be warned about the program’s unlawfulness.

Source: Loan Digest (loandigest.net)

 

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