-- News analysis for the The Mandarin | Government’s ‘anti-welfare’ robodebt scheme rooted in wicked issues over frank advice
Robodebt, the illegal Australian government welfare scheme that “made people feel like criminals”, has been described by the final royal commission report as a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal.
It was a dark day for everyone in Canberra on Friday with the delivery of the 900-page robodebt royal commission report to the governor-general, and subsequent tabling of the document.
The three-volume final report, with its 57 recommendations, was released to the public just after 11 am and a press conference with prime minister Anthony Albanese and government services minister Bill Shorten followed 45 minutes later.
The PM apologised to victims for the robodebt scheme – a “gross betrayal and human tragedy” that pursued erroneous debts against thousands of people, many of whom did not owe a dime.
“We have arrived at the truth because of the courage of some of the most vulnerable Australians — people who have shown bravery in the face of injustice, hardship and sometimes terrible grief,” Albanese said.
“The courage stands in stark contrast to those who sought to shift the blame, bury the truth and carry on justifying this shocking harm.”
The PM was referring to a long list of ministers and senior bureaucrats who the royal commission said were “startlingly” responsible for myriad of events that “failed the public interest”.
The report found actors had shown little interest in ensuring the legality of the debt-raising scheme and gave little thought to how this would affect Australian welfare recipients.
An especially pointed observation came in commissioner Catherine Holmes’s preface message, expressing her dismay over revelations of “dishonesty and collusion” to cover up robodebt’s shaky legal foundations from becoming known.
The failure of institutional checks and balances, which theoretically should have filtered all the bad aspects of the scheme from ever being approved — least of all implemented — was also disheartening, the commissioner said, lashing agencies including the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s Office, the Office of Legal Services Coordination, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, who should have stopped robodebt in its tracks.
Reinforcing the capability of oversight agencies was one of the major recommendations to emerge, including strengthening the APS more broadly, and improving the processes at the Department of Social Services and Services Australia.
“Whether a public service can be developed with sufficient robustness to ensure that something of the like of the robodebt scheme could not occur again will depend on the will of the government of the day, because culture is set from the top down,” Holmes said.
“Politicians [also] need to lead a change in social attitudes to people receiving welfare payments … Anti-welfare rhetoric is easy populism, useful for campaign purposes … largely, those attitudes are set by politicians, who need to abandon for good (in every sense) the narrative of taxpayer versus welfare recipient,” she said.
Never again can a ‘mean-spirited’ government program have such a human toll, PM says
Nothing like robodebt should have ever happened, Albanese said, outlining how the illegal scheme caused stress, anxiety, financial destitution and an extreme human toll.
He admonished the former Coalition government for furthering the harm by ignoring multiple concerns raised by vocal victims, public servants, community organisations and legal experts who advocated for years to have the illegal program dismantled.
“The report goes on to say, ‘What is certain is that the scheme was responsible for heartbreak and harm to family members of those who took their own lives because of the despair the scheme caused them. It extends from those recipients who felt that their only option was to take their own life, to their family members who must live without them’. [It’s] an extraordinary finding from this royal commission,” Albanese said.
Quoting again from the report, the PM said: “‘As to whether the Australian government sought to prevent scrutiny of the robodebt scheme, there is no doubt that there was a constant misrepresentation that the scheme involved no change in the way income was assessed or debts were calculated’.
“When I read that, I recalled the multiple times where we asked questions in the parliament and then prime minister Morrison responded by saying that there were no changes that occurred, [and] that this somehow went back to the period prior to the change of government that occurred in 2013. It makes it very clear that that isn’t the case,” he said.
The robodebt saga was equivalent to four-and-a-half years of the previous government and senior public servants gaslighting its citizens, Shorten said, adding the injury of the fiasco to democracy and trust in institutions was serious because Australians were not helped — they were hurt.
“Today my thoughts are with the victims, the 433,000 vulnerable Australians who were identified in the Federal Court, and tens of thousands of others,” Shorten said.
“They were literally shaken down by their own government; by a government who didn’t have the power to raise debt notices against them, and in fact, [broke] the law. [Robodebt victims] had the onus of proof reversed, they were treated as guilty until proven innocent.
“And for those who had the temerity to complain they were subject to vile political tactics — today is about these victims,” he said.
Consequences for bad faith actors caught in the crosshairs and priming bureaucrats for frank advice
Sanctions and consequences for those most responsible were by far and away the common theme among questions put by the media. It is widely understood that a range of criminal and civil legal options are on the table, including the possibility of prosecution and sackings.
Neither Albanese nor Shorten would be drawn on whether 20 individuals had been named in the sealed component of the report.
Journalists were hungry to know about a sealed dossier, which even Albanese himself has not seen but has been given to PM&C head Professor Glyn Davis, listing those facing adverse findings and referrals. Several questions were put asking what this section meant for those elected officials who had been named and shamed.
To some extent, the PM and Shorten shared this frustration – the moment of reckoning today’s report tabling was meant to represent has been undercut by the strong desire for due process to follow.
The government services minister reminded people that for proper accountability to land, proper processes needed to be played out. This meant not rushing to fire some of those named in Holmes’ sealed chapter.
“When I first read commissioner Holmes’ letter [referencing the sealed section], I had conflicting emotions,” Shorten said.
“I know lots of people out there who feel ‘Will anyone ever get punished?’ but … to the people worried about that, there are adverse findings, there are bodies who have now been asked with a brief of evidence to look at these matters. There will be accountability,” he said.
The sealed section may not remain out of bounds forever, but the government has not taken advice from the Attorney-General’s Department on this issue.
Avoiding prejudice was an important aspect of the next steps, Albanese said, and proper processes and procedures must be followed.
“We need to make sure as well that you don’t prejudice action, and I think people want action as a result of this,” the PM said.
“We will take the appropriate legal advice there as well; agency heads have received that element of the report [and] they are empowered, of course, to take action, including the potential suspension as an act to ensure proper processes.”
A number of ministers embroiled in the robodebt scandal, including Alan Tudge, Stuart Robert and Scott Morrison, released statements of their own throughout the day.
A partner at embattled firm PwC was also announced among the first to face professional consequences in the wake of the report landing. The Mandarin confirmed the news on Friday.
In terms of curing the toxic elements of the APS exposed by robodebt, including cultural transformation, the PM said there had been a marked change to how the government dealt with the public service since Labor took office last May. He reiterated previous statements about the mission to put “humans back into human services” and service delivery.
“I lead a government that has proper orderly processes; that has cabinet meetings where you have co-ord comments from departments, where ministers go and visit the departments and talk, not just to their departmental secretaries, but right throughout their departments as well,” Albanese said.
“It is a different approach that this government has towards all of these issues,” he said.
In answer to a question about the overuse of cabinet-in-confidence processes, Albanese challenged the view, arguing it was an essential part of receiving frank advice from public servants.
Better government policies and their outcomes could only be achieved if there was a safe environment for bureaucrats to deliver robust advice to their political masters, he said, and robodebt was a “wake-up call” to better facilitate this.
“You want public servants to have the confidence of giving clear advice to government. If it is all out there, you will end up having more verbal advice.
“You will undermine the capacity of the public service to give frank and fearless advice,” Albanese said.
Questions about compensation for 526,000 robodebt victims remain
Responding to questions about how adequate existing compensation arrangements were for robodebt victims, Shorten said commissioner Holmes had also addressed the question. He noted that the royal commission reached the view that a general compensation scheme for victims was not feasible.
“What she identifies is that there were different people who suffered different harms,” Shorten said.
“[The commissioner] does raise the question of whether or not there is a tort of public malfeasance and I think that is something that we’ll no doubt look at further.”
Peter Gordon, a senior partner of the law firm that initiated the federal court class action against the commonwealth, and which reached settlement in 2021 for about $1.8 billion, also issued a statement. He said the royal commission report vindicated an already long-held view that robodebt was a “shameful chapter” for the Coalition government led by Morrison.
“Today’s findings have been a long time coming,” Gordon said.
“Hundreds of thousands of everyday Australians’ lives were stuck by this unlawful scheme. They should hopefully feel a sense of justice.
“[Our firm] was proud to achieve a strong outcome in the class action. But that was just the first step.”
Gordon thanked all the robodebt victims, whose strength and self-advocacy paved the way for a royal commission to be held to examine the complex web of public maladministration.
The lawyer also flagged that the firm would consider whether there was scope to pursue other legal remedies on the basis of Holmes’ findings.
“This royal commission was vital in understanding how something so atrocious could occur and, ultimately, who was responsible,” Gordon said.
“We are grateful to all those who contributed to bringing this unlawful system down, including minister Shorten and the lead applicants in the class action, Kathy, Felicity, Elyane, Shannon and Stephen.”
“We will review this thoughtful and detailed report with the time and consideration it deserves, including whether further claims or actions can be brought on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of victims.”
Praise for victims and those who raised the alarm
A separate joint statement from Albanese, Shorten, public service minister Katy Gallagher, social services minister Amanda Rishworth and attorney-general Mark Dreyfus simply quoted slabs of the report’s scathing assessment of the illegal scheme.
The senior ministers highlighted this choice excerpt from page 29 of the chapter “Overview of robodebt”.
“Robodebt was a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals.
“In essence, people were traumatised on the off-chance they might owe money. It was a costly failure of public administration, in both human and economic terms.”
Establishing the royal commission to unravel how the punitive robodebt misery came to be, why it was permitted to become operational, and which political and public service decision-makers were to blame, was an election commitment Labor made in 2022.
This complemented another key election pledge to establish a federal National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC). The watchdog has been operational for a week.
“Upon receipt of the royal commission’s final report, the government has decided to release it to the public immediately.
“The government will now consider the recommendations presented in the final report carefully and provide a full response in due course,” the statement said.
As an indication of the speed with which the PM wanted to see the report disseminated publicly, he ran his press conference making reference to freshly tabbed notes on Holmes’ key findings.
Albanese extensively quoted verbatim from the report, and said this was in part with a view to give the media time to digest the mammoth three-volume tome but also generally in the name of transparency.
Labor has badged the robodebt fiasco as a Coalition problem, cooked up as a Budget savings measure and implemented in 2015.
“For almost five years, Liberal ministers dismissed or ignored the significant concerns that were raised, over and over again, by victims, public servants, community organisations and legal experts,” the statement read.
“The robodebt scheme only came to an end in 2020 after the Federal Court found that it was unlawful in late 2019.”
But the commissioner’s report also warned that one of the enablers, which saw the public service respond to the policy intent of the government of the day just a bit too well, was the way politicians wielded rhetoric about welfare recipients, demonising them as problems to be dealt with. This was not a feature of any one side of politics, she said.
The senior ministers also thanked the team of public servants who worked to see the gruelling work of the royal commission accomplished, calling out their dedication, professionalism and forensic efforts.
“Throughout the royal commission process we have seen courage, leadership and ethics on display from victims, their advocates and whistleblowers.
“We also acknowledge the individuals, researchers, stakeholder groups, expert witnesses, government and non-government representatives who gave evidence by way of hearings and submissions. This evidence has helped inform the royal commission’s report and recommendations.”
