Christian Porter’s robodebt evidence offers rare glimpse into how politicians use talking points

The robodebt royal commission has provided rare insight into how Australian politicians seek to avoid accountability by using talking points to spin media coverage. 

Christian Porter admitted at a hearing on Thursday he had little personal insight into robodebt and relied heavily on talking points supplied by others when he responded to media criticism in a series of interviews in late 2016 and early 2017. 

At the time, Porter — who was the social services minister in Malcolm Turnbull’s ministry — was filling in for Alan Tudge as human services minister while Tudge was on leave.

Criticism of the robodebt program was escalating in the press at the time. 

“There were lots of things in those talking points, that through this process and information from my lawyers, provided to me through this process, I now understand were inaccurate or untrue,” he said. 

“I placed enormous reliance, I must say, on … those talking points.” 

The commission has previously heard Tudge’s former media advisor Rachelle Miller explain how media requests were handled internally. 

“[Tudge] became quickly aware that the prime minister was unhappy with, you know, the sort of escalating media issue around this,” she said earlier in the week.

“And minister Porter — at the time when minister Tudge was away, we were trying to sort of decline as many media opportunities as we could, obviously because the main minister was away.”

Miller explained the strategy was aimed at “containing” the story and avoiding as many critical interviews as possible. 

Meanwhile the “friendly” right-wing media was used to plant stories that would make the Coalition look good, Miller said. 

“In the kind of, you know, left-wing Canberra circles, it appeared to be quite a crisis,” she said.

“But we were getting feedback from the Prime Minister’s Office that actually this was playing quite well in marginal seats, western Sydney, that type of thing.”

Miller said ministers even took care not to steal media “glory” from each other when preparing for media interviews.

“Minister Tudge was very cautious about doing anything that might offend minister Porter, but at the same time he was often reluctant to let minister Porter take all of the media glory,” she said.

Porter became the first out of four ex-Coalition ministers to take responsibility for the robodebt failure during his hearing on Thursday. 

“I do. I look back on this and I see myself through the correspondence getting quite close at points to taking the next step of inquiry,” he said.

“I didn’t do that. I wish now that I had, but I also see the reasons that I didn’t.”