The robodebt scheme involved the use of annual tax data to average a welfare recipient’s income and automatically generate a “debt” the recipient either had to contest online or pay up. It began life in the bowels of the Department of Human Services (DHS) in late 2014 as a “broad-scale cleanup of the PAYG reviews”.
It was an idea departmental executives were keen to put forward as a savings measure in the 2015 budget, particularly after the arrival in December 2014 of new social services minister Scott Morrison, who portrayed himself as a tough welfare cop. The policy could raise up to $1 billion or more, they thought.
Except robodebt was illegal under the Social Security Act — raising of welfare debts had to be based on actual income earned in a fortnight, not on annual income averaging. It was also unfair, because it generated “debts” that didn’t exist or were far too high. And everyone involved, with the possible exception of some junior officials in the DHS, knew it was illegal.
How did some of the most senior officers of the Australian Public Service, which once considered itself one of the best civil services in the world with a strong reputation for competence and integrity, develop a policy they knew was illegal and unfair?
Catherine Holmes’ robodebt royal commission report shows how — and who did it. For anyone who has worked in the public service, or who is interested in public policy, it makes for ugly, yet compelling reading, like watching the crew of the Titanic steam across the Atlantic. It reflects what happens when bureaucratic practices and a rotten departmental culture and leadership meet with a uniquely mendacious politician, in Morrison.
Officials of the Department of Social Services (DSS) — the DHS’ policy counterpart and Morrison’s own department at the time; Marise Payne was the minister for human services — knew the moment robodebt was floated that it was illegal. They got legal advice by December 2014 that it was inconsistent with the Social Security Act and relayed it to the DHS. If the proposal was to proceed, it would require legislation to change the act.
That was a major problem for the department. The Abbott government already had a host of what became “zombie” savings measures in the disastrous 2014 budget stalled by the Senate. It was clear that a bill to amend the Social Security Act to allow for welfare recipients to be pursued on an unfair basis would never get through. Moreover, it was clear that even if there was a chance, it would take far longer than the time required for the measure to form part of the 2015 budget.
So DHS officials pursued what turned out to be an effective end-run of the Senate and the DSS. They told themselves that the DSS’ legal advice — which would be reaffirmed twice between then and the 2015 budget process — was wrong, and got their own legal advice from their own lawyers, though the request was vague and addressed other legal issues, not income averaging. And in January 2015, they began preparing a minute that would make its way through Payne to Morrison about the proposal, in consultation with the DSS.
That meant the DHS had to find a way around or through the DSS. They opted to pretend that the income averaging at the core of the proposal had been removed. The commission found that DHS official Mark Withnell “had changed the wording of the PAYG proposal to remove any reference to ‘smoothing’, ‘averaging’, ‘apportioning’ or the need for legislative change … It seems that, DSS having raised legal and policy issues with income averaging, DHS’ solution was simply to remove reference to income averaging in the brief”.
And Withnell’s boss, DHS deputy secretary Malisa Golightly, called a DSS senior officer, Cath Halbert, and demanded DSS soften its opposition to the proposal and suggest there was “latitude” to make the proposal work, when there was none. DSS duly softened its position, though the final minute that went to Morrison noted that DSS believed legislative change would be required and DSS and DHS would continue to work on policy and legislative change.
But when the late Golightly spoke to her DSS counterpart after Morrison saw the minute, she told her “Mr Morrison had ‘expressed an interest’ in developing the ‘PAYG proposal’ as part of the 2015-16 budget but that it was’difficult to pass legislation through the Senate at the time’ … Ms Golightly said that Mr Morrison ‘wanted to implement the measure in a way that did not require legislative change'”.
The next step was the development of a new policy proposal (NPP) for the 2015 budget process. Crucially, DHS crafted the NPP to suggest robodebt would not be a change to the way overpayments were calculated for welfare recipients — despite its senior officials Withnell, Golightly and secretary Kathryn Campbell knowing perfectly well it was all about income averaging, which was a fundamental change.
The effect was to mislead the expenditure review committee, the cabinet subcommittee tasked with putting together budget proposals. In particular, the NPP was marked as not requiring legislative change. Who was responsible for misleading cabinet into approving the establishment of a scheme that would immiserate tens of thousands of people and lead many to suicide?
Mark Withnell:
Mr Withnell did not misunderstand the true nature of the proposal and was not under some misapprehension that DHS had abandoned the concept of averaging. He knew that the NPP did not describe the averaging component to the proposal, or the legal impediments to it and he knew that it was likely to mislead cabinet by those omissions. He was a party to that process … The commission’s view is that Mr Withnell engaged in deliberate conduct designed to mislead cabinet.
Malisa Golightly:
Ms Golightly was responsible for the development of the NPP, and was a senior public servant. She was heavily involved in clearing the draft NPP, and engaging with Mr Withnell in developing the NPP. The commission concludes that she was aware that, as presented to cabinet, it was misleading.
Kathryn Campbell:
In oral evidence, Ms Campbell accepted that the NPP was apt to mislead cabinet. She contended that her failure to eliminate its misleading effect was an ‘oversight’. That would be an extraordinary oversight for someone of Ms Campbell’s seniority and experience. The weight of the evidence instead leads to the conclusion that Ms Campbell knew of the misleading effect of the NPP but chose to stay silent, knowing that Mr Morrison wanted to pursue the proposal and that the government could not achieve the savings which the NPP promised without income averaging.
And what about Morrison? Was he a hapless victim of bureaucrats? He insisted to the royal commission that he believed at the time income averaging was “foundational” to the way welfare operated and thus didn’t need legislative change — but was unable to produce the slightest piece of evidence to back up his claim. The commission investigated the use of income averaging and the advice provided by bureaucrats about it (it had only been used previously with the agreement of recipients in the past) and concluded there was no way for Morrison to credibly claim he’d been told that. That is, Morrison misled the royal commission.
And Morrison allowed his own colleagues to be misled.
Mr Morrison knew that the use of income averaging was the primary basis of the ‘new approach’ described in the executive minute and that DSS had advised DHS that legislative change was required to implement the DHS proposal in that way. The NPP represented a complete reversal of the legal position without explanation. Mr Morrison was not entitled without further question to rely upon the contradictory content of the NPP on the question of the DSS legal position when he proposed the NPP to the ERC … Mr Morrison allowed cabinet to be misled.
It would not be the last time that Morrison misled his colleagues. His mendacity to voters, the media and his own fellow ministers would become a characteristic of his political career. But unusually, on this occasion, he was enabled by public servants who have profoundly tarnished the reputation of the APS and provided a textbook example of allowing serving the minister to get in the way of basic integrity.
Had the legislative change been sought and passed to make income averaging legal, the debts would still have been incorrect because individuals on income support aren’t earning a consistent wage every fortnight. That’s why they receive income support entitlements. I worry we’re all losing sight of this fact because the welfare bashing hasn’t stopped. All it will take is the government of the day – either Labor or Coalition- making it legal to use income averaging. We already have tens of thousands of Robodebt victims vowing they’ll never apply for their income support entitlements again because they’re terrified of Human Services and don’t trust the government. They’re teaching their children to stay clear, too. If a government of the day makes income averaging legal, no Australian will be safe to apply for income support ever again.
I can hear you all thinking “ They’d never make income averaging legal”. Wouldn’t they? Would you have believed the APS and the Australian government could have or would have concocted and implemented Robodebt before it happened?
I’m nearly 60, and the welfare bashing has been the back drop of my entire adult life. It’s all I’ve ever heard from politicians. ‘Dole bludgers’ ; ‘deserving and undeserving’; ‘welfare recipients versus taxpayers’; ‘lifters and leaners’; ‘Well, Fran, I believe the best form of welfare is a job’. The propagandising has been so thorough and consistent it’s worked, too. Have a look on Twitter or elsewhere online today. Lots of members of the public still sinking the boot into people on income support.
And most frighteningly, lots of people out there who will still ask you what Robodebt is when you bring it up. The media’s profound lack of interest in Robodebt achieved its aim. The welfare bashing continues uninterrupted.
Well put. But we live in an age where two-thirds of the population are content to see the other third struggle to pay rent, mortgages, or face homelessness, so if the long-term aim of our political Right is to ensure a supply of victims and scapegoats for the rest of the population to feed off or persecute, they are doing rather well. Robodebt is just one example of a nasty trend.
Indeed, and it’s just the latest. In the 90s the government dragged thousands of Australians into court on fraud charges for compliance errors they’d already repaid. Never mind these individuals were now working and not receiving any income support. Never mind a conviction would cost them their employment. Never mind the only legal counsel these individuals could afford was a solicitor who knew conveyancing and little else, if the individual could afford legal counsel at all. It won’t surprise you most of the individuals were advised to plead guilty.
Robodebt wasn’t the first time the government came after vulnerable Australians and I fear it won’t be the last.
Well said, and listened to ABC RN Saturday Extra with guest a PS related publisher, about Robodebt Report.
However, headlined to blame ‘public servants’ (senior & specific yes, in general no), the inspiration and source of the LNP government’s weaponisation a mystery and managed not to mention a single Minister, or the PM from the previous LNP govt. (if they did, one missed it).
It came across as dog whistle, on behalf of LNP etc., belittling the public sector as a whole, but deflecting from specific people and ‘commissioners’ in positions of responsiblity.
Yep like their funding “increases ” to medicare, the Ndia/ s , the Jobs Providers and their affiliate “training organisations the prime funding is chanelled upstream – the parasites and lobbyist ” stakeholders” are getting public loot
The ancient art of scapegoating: it used to be witches and heretics – now it is those on welfare
Welfare bashing is disgusting. The level of unemployment is set by the government. Someone has to be unemployed. The RBA’s Deputy Governor has recently stated that the unemployment rate will need to rise to tame inflation. Then those people who draw the short straw are dehumanised and treated as second class citizens. How morally bankrupt does one have to be to say that someone else must “take one for the team” by losing their income and their home?
Added to the welfare bashing are some persistent beliefs that are complete nonsense. E.g. The way to become a billionaire is by hard work, and those who are going without are simply not working hard enough. A person’s success is due solely to their own hard work. Someone who is stuck in low paid, insecure work has made bad choices.
We don’t all have 130+ IQ and we can’t all earn CEO salaries. Where there’s an average, by definition some people have to be below average. There is also a tendency to look down on some forms of employment. Don’t scorn those people who empty your bins. Disease spreads when there is no one to take away the rubbish. Those people are performing a valuable service to society.
We need a universal job guarantee that pays a liveable income to those who can work, in a job that they are capable of doing, and in a suitable location. For those who are unable to work, or are forced to give up work to care for someone else, they also need a liveable income and have the right to live with dignity.
“The level of unemployment is set by the government. Someone has to be unemployed. The RBA’s Deputy Governor has recently stated that the unemployment rate will need to rise to tame inflation”
The RBA have used mass unemployment to supposedly tame inflation since its charter was modified in the 90s. That’s what the NAIRU is – the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment. The RBA usually put the figure at between 4.25 – 5% of the working population. That’s a lot of Australians to be denied work. It’s also why the LibLabs have doubled down on welfare bashing since the 90s. If the Australian electorate had woken up to what structural mass unemployment – the NAIRU- actually means, they might have been a bit unhappy.
Interesting that the RBA have never seen a conflict of interest between their Charter compelling them to commit to full employment and advance the well being of all Australians and inflicting mass unemployment and/or even recessions on us, isn’t it?
“The level of unemployment is set by the government.”
Whilst this is correct based on the current approach to economics, it’s actually a pretty bizarre idea if you think about it….
The only reason there should be unemployed people is because we’ve got all our work done.
We’ve cured cancer, won the war on climate change, AND solved the 42 most annoying things in the world https://www.netmums.com/life/most-irritating-things-in-life.
This is a classic example of how economics (or the prevailing neo-liberalist theory/religion) is actually preventing humanity from reaching its potential – no less.
We actually believe that inflation is a bigger threat to humanity than climate change. We think future generations will be more annoyed if leave them with debt (which isn’t really a thing) than a burnt out planet with no resources (which actually is a form of debt since there won’t be anything left to consume).
This is like talking to some person in the Middle Ages who is explaining why they need to sacrifice their goat (So you don’t eat the goat? You just sacrifice it? That seems like a waste of goat?).
May I suggest that other animals be the subject of sacrifice from now on? It was Tony Abbott who first announced the sacrifice of goats as a thing, but why would any thinking person listen to him?
Sheep are much more suitable candidates for placating the gods: the bible emphasises that sheep are docile, biddable and will follow anyone who offers them food or an afterlife, with extra food.
Goats meanwhile are curious, intelligent and won’t follow you unless you give them a good reason to. Food works but not always. You have to appeal to their intellect.
Which is why the bible refers to the followers of christianity as sheep with god as their shepherd, but discourages identification with goats because they think for themselves.
Please leave goats off the menu and the altar.
Nothing wrong with a good lamb sambo or a mutton curry.
Well to quote The Wiggles, I really like goats, goats, goats, with their hairy throats, throats, throats….
I’d be happy to see Tony Abbott sacrificed.
“we can’t all earn CEO salaries”
May I suggest that CEOs are paid big salaries but rarely earn them?
Well put. In my late 60’s and as a child raised on welfare (my mother was widowed with 4 children under 5). I don’t believe that we were considered welfare “cheats” in any way. This was in Menzies time and the thinking was much more charitable (as long as you were widowed or aged). Along with free tertiary education and the Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme all 4 children attended university and worked our way out of the poverty that was suddenly imposed on our family. We were fortunate.
It was the backlash against the introduction of the single parent benefit that brought out the wolves. Baying about single mothers being bludgers. In fact it allowed women to raise their own children (rather than relinquish them) and to leave abusive relationships.
Paul Keating was a strong proponent of this policy.
It is the LNP and allies that have promoted the notion of bludgers, leaners and lifters etc. It has sadly been the other side who have failed to justify in the strongest sense what social welfare actually is about. Their failure to provide a dignified living for ripienos says much about their view of welfare as a cost rather than an investment.
*recipients.
The LNP would have preferred single mothers stayed in abusive relationships. Better for the budget, or something.
The reason the “dole bludger” myth has taken hold is:
a) people actually think that the money that goes to welfare recipients (or any other government expenditure) comes from their “hard earned” taxes; and
b) related to a), people like to look down on people on welfare because it makes them feel better about themselves.
In fact the hardest thing about educating people about the way the government budget actually works is people’s egos.
So how does the federal (and by extension the state’s) budget work?
The government creates money out of thin air. It doesn’t, and it makes no logical sense for it to, raise revenue from taxes, not least because how can we pay taxes in a currency until the government creates it? It follows that taxes are not used to raise “revenue” but actually to destroy money that is already in circulation (to prevent inflation).
If we understood this then the whole narrative around tax and spending changes. We don’t have to wait for billionaires and multinationals to pay their “fair share” of taxes BEFORE we can fund healthcare. This takes the power away from the wealthy. They do not have more money than countries (because they can’t create money).
When it comes to welfare it removes the notion that anybody’s “hard earned” taxes are going to welfare recipients. I pay taxes because I have too much money so I need my spending curtailed to manage inflation. My taxes don’t go to you as a welfare recipient. They go into a shredder. The government creates money out of thin air to give to you as a welfare recipient. There is no limit to how much money the government can create so there is no “burden” on “taxpayers”. The main downside to having too high welfare payments (purely in terms of the accounting question of the federal budget) is that it will put more money into circulation but that also means that welfare payments that keep people just above the poverty line are less inflationary than say higher income earners with more disposable income.
But like I said there is the question of ego. It’d be a much harder sell to people if we said “you pay taxes because we need to take money away from you to stop you spending it”. Instead we say “Thank you, thank you for your hard earned taxes, now we can build a hospital”. We equate morals with taxpaying and in turn moral superiority between tax payers and tax recipients (other than people with negatively geared properties).
There is a Protestant work ethic that underpins a lot of this as well that associates idleness with sin. It’s a shame because with the dawn of AI we could all be enjoying idleness and a universal guaranteed income.
Great comment.
Machines have replaced so many jobs that the only people now working should be those maintaining the machines. Or in service industries like health. All the filing clerks and typists and bank tellers who were replaced by computers should continue to be paid their salaries. The fact that they aren’t proves our absence of intelligence as a species. So from age 3 to 67 we are convinced we must do stuff we don’t want to.
Along with the welfare bashers are those who display a complete indifference to welfare recipients. Payments such as JobSeeker would not be at a level well below the poverty line if a culture of both bashing and indifference was not pervasive.
And context is illuminating for anyone who thought there’s a ripoff going on …..https://michaelwest.com.au/robodebt-and-robododger-pwcs-consulting-operation-revealed/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-07-10&utm_campaign=Today+s+news+from+Michael+West+Media
and the real bludgers are the middlemen costing the ignorant you speak to billions more than even the worst dole bludging could achieve
Spot on. It’s difficult to imagine what the legislation could have done. If the entitlement to Newstart remained one based on income in a given fortnight then it is difficult to see how you could pass legislation allowing debt notices to be raised based on smoothed annual earnings.
Disclaimer: I worked as a policy officer in DSS in the pre-Howard 1990s. I am ashamed of what the APS has become. I am ashamed that at least one of those named was among the best and brightest of their generation of graduate recruits to the department.
I’m also gobsmacked by today’s media reports of Jane ‘Chikdren Overboard’ Haltoon chiding public servants for their failure to give frank and fearless advice.
And the media’s reporting Honest John Howard’s ‘wonder-wall’ Halton, sans context – of her own protection racket for Howard, Reith et al?
Agree completely, though the human capacity for self-delusion must never be underestimated.
The rot started, as so often, with John Howard. Howard got his henchman Max Moore-Wilton to take his proverbial axe to the professional public service. Moore-Wilton was openly contemptuous of the concept of the duty to give “frank and fearless” advice. During the “children overboard” it became abundantly clear that the role of the public service had become not so much frank advice but the provision of plausible deniability for ministers, who had to be shielded from inconvenient facts. Public servants were now expected to act as a bodyguard of liars, protecting their bosses from encounters with the truth. That was two decades ago, and the rot has deepened since. Crikey readers may well be gobsmacked that one of the main perpetrators of the rododebt outrage is still today sitting in a plum public service position worth a reported $900,000 a year. Look up Jane Halton’s name in histories of the “shildren overboard” scandal, then add up all the highly paid public sector roles she has been in since. The precedents have been set, it is only a question of whether Holmes’ report can be a circuit-breaker. Hefty custodial sentences would help.
Just as an aside, when I was a mid level DSS Exec, my (Labor) minister asked me privately what I thought about a particular policy proposal. I gave the minister my honest opinion and was quite surprised to hear it then so argued in ERC which I was privileged to sit in on.
John Howard changed the Public Service Act in 1998 so that public servants served the government of the day and not the public. He politicised the public service. Public servants generally do not question any government policy. They can be fired if they dare challenge the Minister. Now we all know Ministers have a high opinion of themselves. We also know many Ministers are narrow-minded and dumb individuals. The combination of narcissism, stupidity and fear means we get things like Robodebt, Aukus, climate-change denial, sports rorts, etc.
I find it interesting Jane Halton, who has prospered from her involvement in the Children Overboard fiasco, had the temerity to discuss APS ethics on RN this morning.
Chutzpah, thy name is Jane.
The change to the “frank and fearless” was really set in concrete when contract were introduced for Executives and then all senior appointments became political. If you can dismiss an executive without reason and with little legal recourse….then what do you expect?
A person in charge of anything logically believes he or she must know more than anyone else which is why they have been put in charge. This human foible combines very easily with the other deadly sins to produce what we have. Kings of old had a court jester to prevent just this. With mixed results, I admit.
At the dawn of computerisation, when it was still giant machines with soft machines running back and forth changing reels of tape, the prediction was that in the future the machines would only need two attendants – a man (sic! that’s how far back it was) and a dog.
The man’s jb was to feed the dog and the dog’s was to bite the man if he tried to touch anything.
..” The man’s JOB was…”
First off, I’m not a believer and I don’t wish to cast aspersions on those who are but I’d really like to know how many of the ministers and public servants involved in the Robodebt debacle have Pentecostal or extreme religious beliefs. It seems to me at least, that some who do are extremely judgmental and contemptuous of our most vulnerable and tend to create policies that are against what I believe are good religious values.
That’s those Prosperity Doctrine honkies for you – like a monster in a clown mask.
The prosperity religions and “those Prosperity Doctrine honkies”, while they have caused considerable damage to politics and society, have fulfilled their major objective of providing great prosperity to the con men who run them.
Well, Morrison and Robert have both made a lot of their membership of Pentecostal churches. Whether they have any genuine religious belief is another question. Personally, I reckon that there’s a strong possibility that they’re a couple of fundamentally amoral individuals, who have used religion to create a false image of themselves as having strong moral principles.
Pentecostals are another version of Rotary/Lions…without the passing involvement of charitable works. Just another networking organisation with taxation benefits.
No, they are believers all right and they were following the prosperity doctrine. We prefer to think that these people are always what we imagine good christians to be. Kind and selfless. Some are, but far from all,
The desire to punish our most vulnerable people is not limited to Pentecostals. People of other faiths do it too, as do those with no faith at all.
Other faiths certainly do, but no other faiths spend the amounts and efforts that these Pentecostal prosperity religions do for the purpose of gaining power by destroying society.
Seems to me that the greater their faith the greater their propensity to tell fibs. Safe in their belief that a last minute apology or repentance is all that is required. Look up what Pentacostals like Morrison and co actually believe and then consider that he actually for a time led this country.
The problem with Morrison and his ilk was noticed long ago once most if the rest of us shed our goat herder level intellect. What’s left? Thomas Paine wrote in 1790 “When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.” Sound familiar? Morrison, brother Stewie, etc…Religion in politics is simply the excuse these people use to commit crimes against humanity. A person who thinks you need the threat of eternal damnation to be a good person doesn’t have what the rest us of call a conscience
For your answer, look to the United States and the enormous damage being done by the same religions of hate.
Quote: “And everyone involved, with the possible exception of some junior officials in the DHS, knew it was illegal.”
Bernard, I beg to differ. I think you’ll find that any experienced or trained officer in a Centrelink office would have known it
didn’t reflect the Social Security Act 1991 and would have known it was unlawful. I worked from DSS from 1990 until 2000 when it
became Centrelink and then went off to work at another government department. The very first time I heard about Robodebt,
I knew it was unlawful and was gobsmacked that it got off the ground and then ran for four and a half years.
Agreed. I went into a Centrelink office at Charlestown NSW while Robodebt was running and the frontline officer who served my mother and I was very unhappy. She told us she was very close to retirement and couldn’t wait to get out. She said “ I was employed to help people. That’s not what I’m doing now”. It was only in retrospect that put the time and conversation together.
Frontline staff tried to stop it. We know that from the Royal Commission, just as we know it broke the mental health of many Centrelink staff.
The daughter of a long-time friend was a front line worker at CentreLink for a short time during the Robodebt disgrace. She was dealing particularly with students who had been given a payment and then were told they “owed” that money and given Robodebt notices. When she queried her proposed actions with a senior supervisor she was threatened with constant monitoring because of her “attitude”. Being young and with her employment life still ahead she quickly sought work elsewhere.
While some senior public servants are very rightly facing severe criticism there were many others at more junior levels who had to do as they were told.
and both major parties( for the time being we pray) supported whistleblower laws which are root cause of so much that is wrong in our current failures
A terrible evil of robodebt was that it was automated. Staff were explicitly told they could not intervene, rather they could either watch in horror or shrug their shoulders and take comfort in “computer says no”.