Alan Tudge claims prison threat for Centrelink debt dodgers was 'taken out of context'

The former Minister for Human Services, Alan Tudge, has claimed he was taken out of context when he told A Current Affair in 2016 Centrelink debt dodgers could end up in prison.

Tudge, who was the minister during the height of robodebt, fronted the royal commission into the scheme today in Brisbane.

A Current Affair ran a story in December 2016 on the government's welfare payment crackdown where the then-minister was quoted saying: "We will find you, we will track you down, you will have to repay those debts and you may end up in prison."

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Under questioning today by senior counsel assisting Justin Greggery KC, Tudge was asked why he didn't make it clear that fraudulent payments only made up a miniscule 0.1 per cent of all payments.

"You would appreciate that the conflation of the concepts in the media at that time could give rise to the impression for recipients of letters that they might fall into the fraud category," Greggery said.

"I think that people would honestly know whether or not they had committed fraud," Tudge responded.

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He further added: "I always made it my practice to differentiate between fraud and inadvertent overpayment, because they are two different things and that's why I was annoyed by that A Current Affair program and even more annoyed that critics would use that quote continuously for the next five years."

The counsel assisting suggested it could have been an easy fix to clarify the comments made.

"I don't think from my media experience that me putting out such a press release would have had the same impact as doing A Current Affair," Tudge said, adding in hindsight he could have gone further to clarify.

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Greggery then suggested the overlay of fraud made it more likely people would engage and repay the money, to which the former minister disagreed.

Tudge then added: "In this instance, I was completely, in my view, taken out of context."

Commissioner Catherine Holmes then interjected: "Well, your media releases are your own work. Will we ever find one of them where you ever point out the extremely small percentage of fraud cases?"

"I would have to go familiarise myself with (what) was is several folders of media statements and comments," Tudge replied.

The royal commission is investigating how and why the unlawful robodebt scheme was established.

The automated debt recovery scheme ran until 2019 and ended with a billion-dollar settlement to hundreds of victims.