Former human services minister Alan Tudge requested access to the private Centrelink files of robodebt recipients who had appeared in media stories about the unlawful scheme, a federal inquiry has heard.
The royal commission examining the Centrelink debt recovery scheme heard evidence on Tuesday from Mr Tudge’s former media adviser, Rachelle Miller, who served in the role between 2016 and 2017.
Ms Miller told the hearing select pieces of information from personal files were also provided by the department’s office to some journalists in an effort to “correct the record” in the media following negative stories about individual cases who had received a robodebt notice.
“The minister requested the file of every single person who appeared in the media so that we (could) see the exact transactions that they’d had with Centrelink and understand what the details of their case was,” Ms Miller said.
“The legal advice to us was that we were able to (provide personal information to journalists) but just the specific pieces of information … it was just specific lines that contradicted what had been said in the original (media) piece.”
The former adviser said the strategy was deployed after attempts at pushing counter-narratives about the scheme were unsuccessful and groups of journalists reporting on robodebt at the time became “vindictive”.
Ms Miller said Mr Tudge was forceful about finding case studies of people who had received Centrelink debt notices so they could be used in the...
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