Former human services minister Alan Tudge refused to accept that he had ministerial responsibility for failures of his department to confirm the lawfulness of the robodebt scheme.
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The robodebt royal commission heard that the former Coalition government minister was forwarded a media article by his prime minister Malcolm Turnbull questioning the legal basis for the scheme.
Mr Tudge told the commission he was not concerned about the lawfulness, as that was something that should have been addressed by the Attorney General's Department when the scheme was approved by cabinet.
Similarly, he was of the belief that lawyers for the Department of Social Services, as the agency responsible for the legislation, would have checked those issues and that was not his responsibility as the minister of the implementation agency.
"When I came back [from leave in early 2017] I was very much focused on the implementation of the scheme, because there were a number of issues which had been raised in the media," he told the commission.
He said it was "unfathomable" that his departmental secretary Kathryn Campbell would have implemented the scheme knowing it was not lawful, but did not expect to have had any of those issues raised with him.
"She's going to solve that question before raising it with the minister," he said.
"A secretary is not going to just come up to you and say, 'hey, I've got this big problem, which happens to be within the department - I haven't even thought about I'm just raising it with you to cause you anxiety.'
"You reached the senior levels of public service in Canberra, then you're very senior, you're very experienced, very good, and if they thought that there was an issue, they would have got that checked."
But if there was a significant issue with implementing a government policy, he felt that the secretary had an obligation to raise it with the minister, he said.
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The commission's senior counsel assisting Justin Greggery asked Mr Tudge if he understood the concept of ministerial responsibility in the broad sense that a minister was responsible for everything which occurs in their department.
Mr Tudge was asked if steps ought to have been taken by at least June 2017 after seven lawyers in the department had attended a law conference where the scheme's lawfulness was challenged by a senior legal figure from the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
The former minister did not accept that he had responsibility for the department's action at the time.
"I wasn't even aware of the conference that was occurring," he responded.
"To say the way that you put it that I was responsible because the chief legal officer did not speak to the chief legal officer of the Department of Social Services. I don't think that's right.
He said accepted the concept of Westminster ministerial responsibility, but was only responsible for the implementation of the scheme.
Harley Dennett
Former federal politics bureau chief for the Canberra Times, via a career that's taken me from rural Victoria to Washington DC. Telling the stories of my local LGBTI community brought me to political journalism, where I've covered eight budgets, four national elections in two countries, Defence, public service and international governance.
Former federal politics bureau chief for the Canberra Times, via a career that's taken me from rural Victoria to Washington DC. Telling the stories of my local LGBTI community brought me to political journalism, where I've covered eight budgets, four national elections in two countries, Defence, public service and international governance.
