Fresh challenge to robodebt public interest immunity claims

The Commonwealth agreed to pay nearly $1.2 billion to almost half a million Australians impacted by its automatic debt raising regime on Monday.

This includes the $721 million it agreed to pay back in May to more than 370,000 people who were wrongly pursued, waiving a further $398 million in debt wrongly raised and $112 million in compensation.

Parliament's community affairs references committee had extended its inquiry into robodebt until next May.

Greens senator Rachel Siewert has signalled the committee would embark on a new pursuit of documents related to the scheme.

The government had previously claim public interest immunity over the legal advice given about the scheme and an executive minute cited by the Commonwealth ombudsman.

"There are a number of issues that need pursuing including matters on the legality of this government program," Senator Siewert said.

"The committee has not accepted the public interest immunity claims by the government and has reported this to the Senate.

"I think the committee will be keen to pursue the public interest immunity claims made by minister Robert and which have been rejected by the committee.

"No government minister has taken responsibility for this debacle and the government continues to obfuscate on who knew what and when."

The Not My Debt group has expressed frustration about the settlement as it means no minister, senior staffer or public servant would have to give evidence in court.

The grassroots campaign was integral in getting hundreds of millions of dollars in debts overturned.

"No one in a position of power has lost their job over robodebt. No one has been held accountable. And it remains unclear how this callous automation of inequality was designed, approved and maintained for years within the Australian system of government. We badly need a royal commission to get to the bottom of this," organisers said.

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Government Services Minister Stuart Robert tried to claim credit for axing the scheme when asked about the settlement on Tuesday.

"The use of ATO averaged income data to determine eligibility for benefits goes back decades and decades, almost 30 years to the Hawke and Keating era," he told Sky News.

"So this has been a part of the social welfare or social services platform for decades and decades and decades, simply this government has determined that is at odds and has finally decided that further proof points will be sufficient to raise debts. So unfortunately it's been a long-standing practice."

But Labor's government services spokesman, Bill Shorten, described these claims as "complete rubbish".

"Governments have tried to match data from Tax Office to Social Security before this government, but this government were the only people silly enough or mean enough to take out the human checking," Mr Shorten said.

"What would happen in the past is on a small number of people they'd have what they said to the Social Security Department checked against the Tax Office and then a human would go and check with the employers and chase up the records.

"This government took out the human oversight element, the checking of what the computers spat out, and it moved from 20,000 cases a year to 20,000 a week.

"It was just a straightforward revenue grab to patch up their budget."