The Robodebt Royal Commission has begun. 

The Royal Commission is inquiring into the Commonwealth debt-matching scheme designed to recover alleged Centrelink debts from hundreds of thousands of Australians using an algorithm to estimate recipients' incomes.

On its first day, the inquiry heard that government departments failed to obtain high-level external legal advice about Robodebt, despite their own lawyers questioning the legality of the scheme over a year before it was implemented.

Counsel assisting Justin Greggery KC opened the hearing by highlighting that high-level external legal advice had not been sought about the scheme.

“In view of the scale of the debt recovery program initiated by the commonwealth against its citizens, it now seems obvious that the advice from the solicitor general or other eminently qualified barrister ought to have been obtained before the scheme was implemented,'” he said.

“Plainly that was not done.”

Mr Greggery said the Solicitor General provided legal advice in 2019 at the government's request, following concerns being about the scheme.

This advice reportedly raised the question of whether the Commonwealth Government had been recklessly indifferent to the lawfulness or otherwise of the use of averaged PAYG data obtained from the ATO to allege and recover debts.

Mr Greggery also revealed that in 2014, the department's own lawyers raised concerns about the scheme’s automated estimates.

“That advice at the very least raised significant questions about the legality of the scheme,'” he said.

“One such advice obtained by the Department of Social Services from its internal legal department in December 2014 concluded and I quote: 'The proposal to smooth a debt amount over an annual or other defined period may not be consistent with the legislative framework'.”

Mr Greggery said evidence will show the inquiry why external advice was not obtained from the solicitor general or eminent counsel.

He said this evidence would also show there was “an expectation within the departments that the external and authoritative advice may not be favourable in the sense it may not support the legality of the scheme”.