Shadowminister,

Sigh.

Please read your own link.

A debt being raised is not the same as monies collected.
As the article says: “The total value of the debts raised is much larger than the refunds being issued because much of the money has not been paid back, in many cases because people have sought payment plans, including through forced deductions from their Centrelink benefits. Overall, it means about three-quarters of all money banked from the robodebt program will likely need to be either repaid or wiped. It is also understood an estimate of the service delivery costs of processing the hundreds of thousands of refunds – which is expected to take about three hours for a complex debt – was in excess of $200m.”

Let me know if you require any further explanation.

We don't need an inquiry to find out why the scheme failed.

It was a government run programme....of course it failed.

I'm not sure what the Robodebt was all about
or why it even happened. However I do know that
innocent voters got badly hurt so it does seem
to be appropriate that an independent body would
provide voters with answers.

95 % of the Public Service is Labor. How can anyone expect any commission royal or otherwise to reveal what really happened !
They'll just blame the Coalition & that'll be it !

95% of the Public Service is Labor?

What's the basis of that "fact", considering the history of stacking the the upper levels of the Public Service with Liberal Party appointees? The role of the Public Service is to implement Government decisions. They are basically "drones" doing the bidding of their masters and not responsible for bad policy.

How is this one different from the Pink Batts Commission or the traditional ones into Unions held at every opportunity - apart from the number of casualties and the financial penalties subsequently funded by taxpayers? Even that amount doesn't compare to the wasteful Jobkeeper handouts given to big business.

One thing that's obvious is that Morrison's fingerprints were all over it at each stage of Robodebt's implementation.

I hope this is just the entree to a wide-reaching Federal ICAC to follow.

Shadow,
You're correct that "The problem is not with the algorithm that helped locate welfare cheat" but you're wrong to blame it on "the aggressive nature of the ATO which treats all tax queries with the assumption of guilt" – for it was not procedures the ATO that was to blame, but the government ordering Centrelink to treat its output as debts to collect rather than potential debts to investigate.

What we don't know is why! Was it just another of ScoMo's cockups? Someone else's cockup? If so, why didn't procedures prevent those cockups from occurring?
Another more serious possibility is that it was deliberate. That's far less likely IMO, but considering its potential seriousness, it shouldn't be ignored. At the moment we can't be sure that no crime was committed.

As the Banking Royal Commission has demonstrated, Royal Commissions can find out a lot more than is expected at the outset. So although this appears at first to be a waste of money, it's likely to turn out to be money well spent.