I just asked Bill Shorten about the AGL scandal, in which it overcharged people on welfare through the Centrelink payment facility, Centrepay.
The Federal Court found the power company overcharged 483 Centrepay customers from 2016 to 2021, and has slapped it with a $25 million fine.
Centrepay is a service that lets people allocate bills to be paid out of their support payments before they get their cash.
Its had a lot of issues identified, and is now being reformed.
Bill Shorten, who is set to retire from politics in February, is currently the minister responsible for Centrelink.
He got very fired up this morning over the AGL issue.
ET: What did Centrelink know and how long did it take to fix this situation. Did it know about AGL taking this money incorrectly for months, years?
BS: The incident occurred under the Liberals. I don’t know what Scott Morrison or the Liberals knew, but since I’ve come in 2022 we have overhauled the Centrepay system.
ET: Should AGL be banned from Centrepay now?
BS: Pretty good point. I’ll raise that with our
people, and it is an abuse of trust.
ET: I know you’re saying 25 million is a big spanking for the company, but they are saying that they don’t expect it to impact their profit margins for this financial year (so) is 25 million really a spanking?
BS: If they think the $25 million is a just a day at the beach … For them, I think that would be the worst example of corporate communications since the people who were, you know, promoting the Titanic. The reality is that if you think the $25 million is just a speeding fine, then you are so out of touch.
ET: And the company has also said that it will look at the judgment and consider whether it should appeal. Would you support it appealing?
BS: Corporations have legal right in this country, not going to say that they don’t.
But if I was doing the government relations, reputation management for AGL, I would look in the mirror and say, really? We’ve been caught out, essentially unlawfully taking money from some of the poorest people in Australia.
They did the wrong thing. They’ve coped a fine, and as a result, I think the best thing you can do is put a big ad in the newspaper and say, sorry.
The real thing is they should never have done it to begin with, not have some existential navel gazing with lawyers about how much money they’re going to spend appealing being caught out.
