The coup de grâce to the Morrison era came in the form of two seminal documents: the devastating, uncompromising robodebt report from royal commissioner Catherine Holmes, and Scott Morrison’s stereotypically deluded response. Lest we ever forget the serial mendacious cruelty that marked the governments in which he was a leading player, these twin pillars will stand as a reminder.
But where to from here? The Albanese government that established the royal commission has promised its final report will not just gather dust. Government Services Minister Bill Shorten declared his priorities are to first get past his anger and then do what’s needed to ensure a travesty like robodebt never happens again.
The hard long-term work, it is true, will be the responsibility of government. Holmes was adamant that the political culture of punching down on welfare recipients — not exclusively the Coalition’s fault — has to stop. Her findings also pointed to the deep systemic failures that permeate Australia’s public service, after decades of being gutted, corporatised and compromised.
In the first instance, however, there are irresistible consequences of what Holmes found. Individuals failed in their duty of public service, manifestly and comprehensively. In a sealed section of her report, she recommended criminal and civil charges against some of these people. Referrals have been made to four agencies, including the new National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC).
At this early stage, we can only speculate on what actual consequences people are facing, picking through the details of the report and holding them up to the light of laws and regulatory regimes that might have been infringed. We shouldn’t jump too quickly to firm predictions.
Still, I’m happy to take a bit of a stab and be proved wildly wrong later.
The intentional cruelty of robodebt did not render it criminal. It was unlawful, because there was no legal basis for the practice of creating debt obligations from averaged data, such that any relationship between what robodebt claimed a recipient owed the government, and what that person did owe (if anything), was purely coincidental. Literally, robodebt made shit up.
That unlawfulness by itself was also not criminal. It was in the series of decisions and choices made by a long succession of people to push for the scheme’s implementation, hide or maintain wilful blindness to its illegality, and keep doubling down on it for years after that illegality was so obvious it could be seen from the moon that something far more sinister and potentially criminal emerged.
Without pointing to any names, it seems that the most likely scope for criminal charges in this aspect is the offence of “abuse of public office”, found in the Commonwealth criminal code. It applies to public officials and arises if they engage in conduct in the exercise of their duties, or use information they’ve obtained in that capacity, with the intention either of dishonestly obtaining a benefit for themselves or someone else, or of dishonestly causing detriment to another person.
Hypothetically, based on Holmes’ findings, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that some individuals acted dishonestly in relation to the robodebt scheme. There were concerted efforts to conceal its illegality, including manipulation of advice and instructions, as well as what looks a lot like a conspiracy to deceive the ombudsman (successfully).
The trick, however, is in establishing criminal intent. Were those individuals motivated by gain, for themselves or others? Were they aiming to harm robodebt’s victims? These will be very fine and hotly argued distinctions if anyone is prosecuted.
Another area of potential criminal culpability could arise from the practice under minister Alan Tudge, which Holmes excoriated, of leaking to the media the personal information of recipients who were criticising the government over robodebt. It’s not too difficult to see how this conduct may be characterised as a dishonest misuse of information to cause harm.
NACC-wise, there is plenty of scope for investigation of potential corrupt conduct. The breaches of public trust were many — underpinned by deliberately deceitful behaviour.
Numerous public servants could face disciplinary action for blatant failures to perform their one job: to act in the public interest. Robodebt exemplifies the breakdown of the ethos of the public service and its corrosive shift from independence to craven enabling of the political wishes of the government of the day. That’s cultural, but also personal. People could, and chose not to, act ethically.
Speaking of ethics, some lawyers may be in bother. Again, Holmes was scathing in her criticism of the complete failure of government lawyers to stop robodebt in its tracks, or at least to ensure that they were not a party to the deception. Instead, she found a whole lot of going along.
Lawyers’ professional ethical obligations, however, don’t allow for just going along. They demand fearless independence, impartial advice and willingness to call things out when they’re wrong. Failure to meet that standard can have serious career consequences.
Anyone hoping to see a long trail of heads on pikes by Christmas will be disappointed; any criminal prosecutions will be hard to get up, and whatever punitive processes are going to be pursued will take years to unfold. The cooling of passions in the meantime will strip away any ultimate consequences of much of their meaning.
So while I agree that where personal culpability exists it should be chased down, because actions should have consequences, the truth is that the hard work — the let’s-not-go-down-this-path-ever-again work — will be what really matters.
All of this is very much in the weeds – once again, this program received enthusiastic public support throughout several election cycles.
We need a national reckoning, where the public moves past accepting cruelty as a national sport and actually start getting disgusted again but such harm inflicted.
We also need a fully legality independent public service, because under any system where ministers can sack APS will just repeat this in the future. I fully believe we will see Morrison-likes again in the future and we need systems to protect ourselves from that.
this program received enthusiastic public support
Any evidence for this? I doubt if this issue changed votes.
Well Labor had been fighting this as early as 2017 (see link below), so despite the human cost being known and reported, the LNP still went on to win the 2019 election. You could argue that the average Australian cared more about other policy issues, but what does it say about us.
We are both right here – knowing about LNP sanctioned cruelty didn’t change votes against them. But in our system of democracy a vote for is consent for the complete policy package, we don’t get to lock and choose bits.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/centrelink-debt-scare-backfires-on-labor/news-story/9834217a0daa8a2f249ba65415ccb037?amp&nk=cf9ffa0769cf578168f0a0ba35607870-1689056369
A very poor reflection on many too many ignorant voters. Exactly the same as malevolent lying Trump and his locked in support from the majority of Republicans.
It’s not clear that this was the case. They almost lost the previous election under Turnbull, which is one reason he got the flick, and that’s the one where the Murdoch press were in full cry supporting robodebt. The article you’ve cited was one of the ones that Tudge fed to ‘friendly’ media, so I don’t think you can take it as representative. And when Labor lost the 2019 election, they were skewered on a whole stack of other policies (including franking credits and negative gearing) that had nothing to do with robodebt. This was in the period that Holmes identifies as the phase where Tudge’s use of the Murdoch press to mount personal attacks on robodebt opponents had discouraged them from going public.
Of course Robidebt was about votes – same as the performative cruelty to refugees. Being seen to kick ‘dole bludgers’ in the teeth, and consequently scaring people away from Centerlink, was the whole point.
Red meat for the base, as they say. This is a fkn UGLY country.
Morrison follows other toxic “leaders” like Howard and Abbott and Baaanaby.
Given that robodebt was trumpeted by the LNP as a fearless and bold cost cutting measure, one thing that I’d like to see, is a summation of what the whole thing actually cost. That is, a totalling of how much it cost to set up, how much it cost to administer and how much money had to be repaid to the wrongly accused. You could also throw in the cost of the royal commission, and the cost of all the legal fees charged to the public to defend the scheme and the politicians involved. You could probably also put some sort of monetary value to the excess cases of depression and suicide that it caused. And there’s undoubtedly other costs that I can’t think of right now.
Of course, doing all that might add a few more costs, but it’d be nice to get a rough idea, of just how much the coalition’s venal ineptitude cost the public.
And having just read David Hardaker’s article, you could probably add the cost of stacking the Administrative Appeals Tribunal with their ideological fellow travellers.
You missed the costs of debt collectors that hunted people like prey, lierally to death in some cases.
Yes, and there’s sure to be more. The cost to Centrelink from decent workers walking out in disgust? Further reputational damage to the public service?
The worst of the damage has no dollar figures attached – the suffering of victims, both public and in the centrelink organisation.
Blatant nation-wide fraud can be made to look like Father Christmas by a lawyer. Robodebt, in the guise of stamping out fraud, was fraud. It was known to be so by the perps and they should be tried for it. The victims were clearly defrauded of money, with the perpetrators being in a position to deny truth and justice by applying menaces. Clearly not your average fraud, more at the elite end of the crime. To “Ensure that it never happens again” is the usual bs to take the heat off the crims. And Shorten will be visiting the excuse factory.
Exactly. I thought we had laws against extortion. A quick google search:
The offence of demanding money with menaces is set out under section 99 of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW). An individual convicted of this offence is liable to 10 years imprisonment (14 years if done in the company of another person).
Albanese’s already visited the factory. One of the recommendations was scrapping Section 34 of the FOI Act. Albanese was straight out of the gate defending Section 34 the day the RC Report was released.
Quelle bloody surprise.
When a the rustedons going to realise that ‘Labor’ is the Evil of Two Lessers.
Vote Indi, Green or anyone you know & trust rather than the huggermugger duopoly pretend party.
This one calls for heads on pikes. If no-one goes to jail, which I am sure systems are currently being rigged behind the scenes to prevent, then will be telling the world that Australian politicians can get away with whatever they like. Politicians will take note and continue as usual.
We desperately need a scalp or two here.
Governments do not seem as keen to look closely at the Veterans Affairs Department and its administration nor at those claiming what is similar to ‘welfare’