As it happened: Suspected Medibank hackers post stolen data; ADF review ordered following reports China asked former pilots for intel

Wilson described Morrison’s ministerial style as fast-moving, energetic and “highly interactive in a verbal setting”.

She said her own understanding of the scheme was different to what was implemented by the other department.

“At the time, I thought we had come to an understanding ... the essential elements of what became the robo-debt scheme, and in particular the income smoothing or averaging, would not go ahead,” she said. “In hindsight, I was clearly wrong.”

But when she realised in 2017 that income averaging - an unlawful calculation method - was being used to determine debts, she did not alert anyone.

Wilson said she “lacked courage” and was “consumed with other responsibilities”.

“Human services were running and implementing the program and it was a difficult position [for me] to be in,” she said. “Now, I’m ashamed and in hindsight I could have spoken up.”

The commission heard Wilson’s notebooks that could have contained details of meetings about robo-debt were destroyed when she retired.

“They were not official records, they were personal jottings that were mainly lists,” she said.

Robo-debt, which operated between 2015 and 2020, was an initiative of the former Coalition government that falsely accused welfare recipients of owing money.

Hundreds of thousands of Australians were sent debt notices under the scheme, which recovered more than $750 million.

Yesterday the commission heard that people who did not respond to debt notices issued under the failed robo-debt scheme were assumed to be “satisfied” they owed the money.

Commissioner Catherine Holmes said the “cynical view” was that the department went ahead with the program because the pilot showed more than half of people who were issued notices wouldn’t respond, and the debt could then be raised.

But the former director in the department’s compliance branch, Jason Ryman, said they wanted customers to engage with them.

The commission is accepting submissions from people affected until February 2023, with a final report due by mid-April.

“What I want my group to do and what the secretary wants the department to be doing every day, is looking at ways that we can usefully advise the government, along those lines.

“It’s absolutely the case that advice to governments – plural – on super tax concessions [is] the pressure they are placing on the budget and the trajectory over time.”

Jeremenko pointed to the 2021 intergenerational report, which found the cost of superannuation tax concession will exceed the cost of the age pension by 2040.

“That’s a very stark reminder to policymakers, across the department and across the government, that it’s an area that we need to be alive to and constantly be working on,” he said.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher confirmed there was a “live discussion” about it.

“This would help protect tenants and reduce the burden on managing agents and landlords to collect and store this personal information,” Dominello wrote.

Dominello backed calls for better protections.

“It’s often the most vulnerable in our community that are exposed to data breaches for a range of reasons, including inequality of bargaining power. All of that personal information goes into a mystery box and nobody knows where it goes thereafter,” Dominello said.

He asked for preliminary advice to be delivered by the end of November.

Environment reporter Laura Chung answers all your questions in an explainer.

The thing is though that plastic recycling can only do so much, as long as the industry keeps manufacturing new plastic.

In Australia, just 16 per cent of plastic is recycled. OECD figures suggest that globally, only 9 per cent of plastic waste is recycled while 22 per cent is mismanaged. (I guess the stockpiles of soft plastics in the REDcycle warehouses would fall into the “mismanaged” category.)

Plastic consumption has quadrupled over the past 30 years, and global plastics production doubled from 2000 to 2019 to reach 460 million tonnes, the OECD says.

As well as plastics being a major source of marine pollution, they are also usually made from fossil fuels. The OECD says plastics account for 3.4 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.