Former Liberal minister Christian Porter will be grilled over what he knew about the implementation of the unlawful robodebt scheme when the royal commission into the program resumes.

Mr Porter, who held the social services portfolio between 2015 and 2017, will be the fourth coalition minister to appear before the robodebt royal commission.

The Centrelink debt recovery scheme operated between 2015 and 2019 but continued well after significant concerns were raised about its legality.

It recovered more than $750 million from more than 380,000 people and several people took their own lives while being pursued for false debts.

Mr Porter will be the first of two witnesses to appear before the commission on Thursday, with former social services group manager Janean Richards also giving testimony.

The testimony will come a day after former human services minister Alan Tudge took the witness stand to discuss his involvement with robodebt.

The commission was told on Wednesday Mr Tudge knew the robodebt scheme had the potential to create inaccurate debt notices.

“I was aware that the system, even from an income averaging perspective, had the potential to create inaccuracies,” he said.

“The way the system was designed was that the onus was put on the recipients to provide the evidence of their income if – through the data-matching process – there was a discrepancy between what was self-reported.”

Mr Tudge denied he was responsible for checking with his department whether the robodebt scheme was legal.

“It is unfathomable for a (department) secretary to be implementing a program which he or she would know to be unlawful. It is unfathomable,” he told the commission on Wednesday.

– AAP

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