A failure as shameful as robodebt leaves questions only a royal commission can examine

Three years later, after what can only be described as the gaslighting of anyone who complained or raised the alarm, the government admitted to the federal court that the whole thing was unlawful.

Putting it very crudely, the calculations that the government used to assert hundreds of thousands of welfare debts were wrong. It later settled a class action for $1.8bn, which included the owed interest on the debts unlawfully issued to 443,000 people, some of whom were the most vulnerable in the country.

This included people experiencing mental health challenges, some who were homeless or had disabilities. Many were poor, some desperately so. There were at least three reported suicides among those caught up in the scheme, and a broader mental health toll: the stress, depression and anxiety from those who suddenly owed the government thousands of dollars, who were hounded by private debt collectors, or had had their tax returns garnisheed without warning.

For some people on the lowest incomes, such a financial hit changed the course of their lives.

Such a failure begs the question: how could the federal government have gotten it so wrong? Did it not get legal advice first? If so, what did it say? Were ministers warned of any risks? Who proposed the scheme?

Was it pushed by executives at the then Department of Human Services, which runs Centrelink and ran the crackdown, or by the Department of Social Services, which runs social security policy?

Did it come from bureaucrats or were they responding to requests from government ministers who wanted to bolster the budget bottom line? And what was the internal response when appeals tribunals, and then esteemed legal minds started questioning its legality?

These are basic questions that we should be able to answer after what is believed to be largest settlement between the Australian government and its citizens in history. Yet two years after the courts stepped in, the public is none the wiser. No ministers lost their jobs.

Many will focus on the role of the prime minister in the robodebt scandal. He appears to have been involved near the start, banked (and spruiked) the revenue from further expansions as treasurer (savings that never eventuated of course), and as prime minister oversaw a strategy that stonewalled until the courts said otherwise. And in settling the class action, the government accepted no wrongdoing.