Felicity had $11,500 wrongly taken from her bank account. She’s ready for vindication
Save articles for later
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.
Felicity de Somerville was attempting to pay for medication for her one-year-old daughter, who was fighting a bad chest infection, when she realised about $11,500 had been drained from her bank account by Centrelink in 2017.
At the time, it was equivalent to six months of her wages. Now – six years later – she is ready for vindication.
On Friday, the final robo-debt royal commission report will be handed to the governor-general in an effort to ensure such a failure never occurs again.
About $11,500 was taken out of Felicity de Sommerville’s account without warning.Credit: Gordon Legal/Andrew Tauber
The report, which will be handed down by Commissioner Catherine Holmes, comes after hundreds of hours of evidence were heard across nine weeks of public hearings from September as well as a million tendered documents.
The system, which ran from 2015 to 2019, was found to have wrongly recovered more than $750 million from about 380,000 people.
For the affected individuals, the final report is a long time coming.
“Now that it’s come around, I want this chapter to be over,” said de Somerville, a lead plaintiff in the robo-debt class-action case.
“I just hope the government will take the recommendations seriously and take them on board; otherwise it will all be for nothing. I want them to accept they made a mistake, but I am trying to keep my expectations realistic.”
During the public hearings, which wrapped up in February, the commission heard from two mothers whose lives were changed forever after losing their sons to suicide over the scheme.
Jennifer Miller’s son Rhys Cauzzo, 28, took his own life in January 2017 after being notified of Centrelink debts of about $17,000. The commission heard that after Cauzzo’s death, Miller found a handwritten suicide note making reference to the debts on his fridge.
In 2019, Kathleen Madgwick son Jarrad died by suicide three weeks before his 23rd birthday after being issued a $2000 robo-debt just hours earlier.
“My heart goes out to people who lost loved ones and their livelihoods. For them, I hope it’s going to give them closure,” Somerville said.
Former prime minister Scott Morrison appeared as a witness at the royal commission due to his involvement in the launching of the scheme in 2015 as then social services minister.
Morrison told the commission he was never advised the scheme was unlawful and would have not proceeded with the system if he was told of the legal issues at hand.
Gordon Legal partner James Naughton, who is running the class action case into robo-debt, said Friday’s findings were important in providing certainty the matter had been properly investigated.
The class action case is still being finalised in the courts, however, about 400,000 debts have been withdrawn or had their money refunded since proceedings began in November 2020.
“It’s been a long journey to get to [Friday],” he said.
Most Viewed in Politics
From our partners
Source: Read Full Article