Morrison & Co continue to turn the National Disability Insurance Scheme into a hollow husk of its former self

The Saturday Paper, 3 April 2021:

The minister formerly in charge of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Stuart Robert.
CREDIT: AAP / MICK TSIKAS

Last Saturday, shortly after lunchtime, it all exploded. The WhatsApp group – set up between state and territory disability ministers and the then Commonwealth minister, Stuart Robert – had been seething with anger for a while. Then suddenly it was too much.

“I may actually self-combust with incendiary rage before this thing is over,” the ACT minister for Disability, Emma Davidson, messaged her colleagues.

It had been more than 24 hours since a leaked proposal for changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme was reported in Nine newspapers. But state and territory ministers, who share half the oversight of the $25 billion scheme, had still not been given a copy of the legislation. None of them had seen even a briefing note.

At no point since has the federal government – or Stuart Robert, who was moved from the NDIS portfolio earlier this week in a cabinet reshuffle – made the document available to the states and territories.

The Saturday Paper has spoken with several members of the WhatsApp group and the Disability Reform Council, both of which include Robert.

“He thinks it is okay to have state ministers begging to see a copy of the draft legislation,” one minister for Disability says.

“Robert says he is up to draft 80 on this and no one outside of the federal government has seen it. Not state ministers and certainly not people with disability.”

“Stuart Robert is taking all of the King Henry VIII powers,” one legal source said. “You cannot get a more pure power grab. That is a God power.”

After Davidson’s message, New South Wales Liberal minister Gareth Ward offered her a thumbs-up. Within moments, he phoned to express his support.

In the Northern Territory and Western Australia, ministers called for Robert to release the official draft. Until that happens, state and territory ministers are working from a leaked document that outlines an alarming future for the NDIS, including a “God power” for the federal minister to remake the scheme at will.

Robert offered no reply to his fellow ministers at the weekend. It was only after Scott Morrison’s Monday cabinet reshuffle – which saw Robert transferred to the Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business portfolio – that the Queensland MP popped back up in the chat.

Robert told the other ministers he was removing himself from the group and adding in the new minister for the NDIS, Linda Reynolds.

Reynolds, who remains on paid medical leave following revelations about her handling of former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins’ rape allegation, politely said hello to the ministers with whom she soon would be working.

Sensing an opportunity, they again requested the draft NDIS legislation. Reynolds did not reply, and has not been in the chat since.

The Saturday Paper has obtained a leaked copy of the proposed changes to the NDIS Act, dated December 2020.

The documents signal plans for a broad, sweeping and potentially irrevocable consolidation of power within the scheme to a single person: the federal NDIS minister.

In its 323 pages, bureaucrats have taken the current NDIS Act and tracked changes throughout. They have added entirely new sections to the legislation and deleted key clauses that have underpinned the very nature of the scheme.

Central to the seismic shift is a new ability of the Commonwealth minister to make so-called “rules” at any time, which the chief executive of the National Disability Insurance Agency must follow when interpreting the legislation…...

The Commonwealth minister would be given unilateral power to rule on general supports that will be provided under the scheme, and to dictate the criteria for “determining the total amount of funding allocated for the purposes of a plan”.

This change will strip the states or territories of the veto power they now hold.

But this is not the only significant proposal. The draft legislation includes an expanded debt recovery power, which would allow the NDIA to claw back money from participants who breach the new rules, sparking concern about its similarity to the controversial robo-debt scheme.

In effect, the agency could raise a debt on an individual if they spent their NDIS funding on “ordinary living expenses” or on a service or support the Commonwealth minister decides should have been funded by a state or territory government. These decisions could be entirely arbitrary.

Moreover, as one sector source pointed out, the government is “building a capability to surveil” NDIS participants in order to watch what they spend and where, in close to real time. Using technology solutions such as blockchain – already trialled in the scheme – the government wants to see what people are spending and will launch a new NDIS app in coming months to consolidate these features.

A new section of the act, 46C, would hand the Commonwealth minister the extraordinary power to ban any kind of support and to force states and territories to potentially fund others.

“A participant who receives an NDIS amount, or a person who receives an NDIS amount on behalf of a participant, must not spend the money to acquire goods or services prescribed by the National Disability Insurance Scheme rules for the purposes of this subsection as goods or services acquired as part of ordinary living expenses,” the documents read.

These banned “goods or services” – note, the scheme’s common language of “supports” is not used here – may be things the minister decides ought to be funded by “other general systems of service delivery or support services, whether or not they are currently being so funded or provided”.

The states and territories are concerned this will shift responsibility back to them – as, prior to the introduction of the NDIS, they were the major providers of disability services.

This particular clause, 46C, appears designed in response to a number of Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) findings made against the NDIA…...

Legal experts who spoke with The Saturday Paper were astonished at the breadth of this section in the proposed changes.

“He [Stuart Robert] is taking all of the King Henry VIII powers,” one legal source said. “You cannot get a more pure power grab. That is a God power.”

In law, Henry VIII clauses are often described as subordinate pieces of a primary legislation – in this case NDIS rules under the NDIS Act – that subvert or amend the legislation itself, typically through executive power.

This consolidation of power continues throughout the document.

Proposed changes to section 27 of the act would give the Commonwealth minister unfettered ability to decide, for example, whether people are mentally ill to the degree required for NDIS support. It could allow the minister to deny early intervention funding if they believed the evidence about its “benefit” in the future was unclear.

Most strikingly among the draft changes, though, is the removal of the entirety of section 34, which currently declares that participants will be given “reasonable and necessary” support funding “to pursue [their] goals, objectives and aspirations”.

Contrary to other media reports, there has been no suggestion from the Commonwealth that this is a mistake in the drafting or that it will be unwound.

On March 26, Stuart Robert tweeted, “We are introducing reforms to the NDIS because we believe access to the scheme and a participant’s plan should not be determined by your postcode or how much someone can pay for a report.

“This does not extend to removing the term ‘reasonable and necessary’ from NDIS legislation.”

Robert’s wording is deliberate. The term will likely remain in the legislation but not as a descriptor for what participants should receive in terms of support. Now, the term “reasonable and necessary” will describe a participant budget. The difference is subtle, but the latter places more emphasis on the financial metrics of the NDIS and, according to legal sources, would allow rationing of support without an avenue for legal challenge.

Where the draft discusses what is currently written as “reasonable and necessary supports” for individuals with disability, the reference is struck through and replaced only with “funding for supports”.

No less alarming to disability advocates, but more discreet, is a slew of language changes throughout the new document.

Under this proposal, for example, people with disabilities will no longer be entitled to “reviews” of their own funded support package but will instead be submitted to a “reassessment”. This language is changed throughout, and the word “request” has been changed to “requirement” for assessment information. Privately, NDIA staff and Stuart Robert’s office believe they do not need legislative force to introduce controversial independent assessments (IAs) – by government contractors who will examine disabled people to determine their functional needs, breaking the often years-long relationship between people and their treating health professionals – but these are included in draft proposals.

“A requirement … may specify that the assessment or examination is to be conducted by a person included in a class of persons made known to the prospective participant,” the draft clause says.

Public Interest Advocacy Centre senior solicitor Chadwick Wong, who leads the organisation’s project to institute a fairer NDIS, says the combined effect of independent assessments and the leaked legislative changes create new “transparency, accountability and governance issues”.

“The government’s cost-cutting overhaul of the NDIS includes a number of disturbing changes that will erode the ‘choice and control’ promised by the scheme to people with disability,” Wong says.

“The removal of the word ‘co-design’, as seen in documents leaked to the media … also points to a concerning step away from meaningful engagement with the disability sector.

“We urge the government to stop the implementation of these changes immediately, and to properly consult with the community so that improvements to the NDIS may be co-designed with people with disability.”

Taking all of the proposed and planned changes together, the impact on people with a disability is significant. Here’s how independent assessments will work with the government’s desired legislative overhaul.

The eight-year-long experience of people turning up to a planning meeting, expressing their goals and ambitions to live life in the community and having each of those goals funded through a “reasonable and necessary” support to achieve them are over.

Instead, a person’s first experience of the NDIS will be a functional assessment carried out by a team of strangers for a few hours. This assessment will automatically generate a “draft budget” based on software that splits them into categories. These categories will be informed by the functional need score, their age and, according to the agency itself in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry, “the impact of their environment, such as the informal supports available to the participant and other contextual factors such as locality or circumstance”.

Rather than building a support package from scratch, participants will arrive at their first planning meeting with a generic draft budget and then have limited opportunity to argue for individual changes.

Advocates are calling it “robo-planning”. If the NDIS was the greatest policy achievement in a generation, these changes represent the greatest disfiguring of its original intention. They lay the groundwork for an NDIS that is less generous, less fair and less accessible – all under the caprice of a single minister. And he just left the chat.

Federal MP Stuart Robert channelled $70,000 from his Liberal Nationals Party campaign fund to three local government candidates

This was MP for Fadden Stuart Robert, the then Australian Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Minister for Human Services newly appointed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, on 28 November 2015:

Fast forward to May 2016 and this is the Member for Fadden.

The Australian, 3 May 2016:

Sacked Turnbull cabinet minister Stuart Robert secretly bankrolled the campaigns of three independent council candidates on the Gold Coast, fuelling calls for his disendorsement by the Liberal National Party on the eve of the federal election.

The funnelling of at least $70,000 out of Mr Robert’s LNP branch fundraising arm, the Fadden Forum, into the campaigns of the independents before March 31 local government elections has already led to the ­demotion of LNP state director Lincoln Folo.

Mr Robert, under investigation by the Australian Federal Police over a 2014 trip to China with a donor friend, may have breached party rules by directing the LNP funds to the independents without the approval of his branch.

It is understood Malcolm Turnbull is aware of the emerging scandal after a meeting of the LNP’s state executive ­decided not to take any action against Mr Robert, who holds the Gold Coast seat of Fadden, despite internal calls for his disendorsement.

Instead, Mr Folo — who made the transfers at the behest of Mr Robert — was removed last month as state director and appointed campaign director in a move the LNP has publicly claimed was part of plan to split the roles because of growing ­administrative duties.

LNP state president Gary Spence yesterday defended the decision to keep Mr Robert as the LNP’s endorsed candidate despite conceding the transfer of the LNP supporters’ funds to the independents was “inappropriate’’……..

The funds were given to John Brent, the now-ousted long-serving mayor of the Scenic Rim Regional Council on the Gold Coast hinterland, and newly elected Gold Coast independent councillor Kristyn Boulton.

Mr Brent yesterday confirmed his campaign was given $10,000, while Ms Boulton — who refused to confirm or deny if Mr Robert had supported her campaign — is understood to have received $30,000.

A third independent candidate on the Gold Coast, who was ­unsuccessful at the election, ­received $30,000 but did not ­return calls yesterday…….

Gold Coast Bulletin, 6 May 2016:

INDEPENDENT Gold Coast City Council candidates Kristyn Boulton and Felicity Stevenson did not reveal the $60,000 in LNP donations they received through Federal MP Stuart Robert when confronted by voters and rivals during the election.

Candidates in their divisions have also told the Gold Coast Bulletin they were intimidated by a volunteer at a pre-polling booth if they told voters the LNP was bankrolling or backing the party workers.

Mr Robert, for the first time, yesterday revealed he told his former office workers in early February that they would be getting financial backing from his rich fundraising arm, the Fadden Forum, to beat Labor rivals.

“I’m fighting Labor. I now have an interest. I will provide you with some support,” he said.

But Facebook posts, community debates and verbal exchanges at the pre-polling booths by early March show neither Ms Boulton nor Ms Stevenson told anyone their biggest financial backer was their former boss.

On February 18 on Facebook, Ms Stevenson wrote: “Honesty and transparency are important so I thank you for contacting me to ask these questions. I am funding my campaign from my own savings and local supporters.

“I have recieved (sic) no funding from developers. I am not a member of any political party. I have not received funding from any political party.”…….

ABC News, 17 May 2016:

Gold Coast City councillors and their financial backers are under scrutiny by state and federal authorities following allegations of undisclosed Liberal National Party (LNP) funding of candidates in the March local elections.

It comes after revelations federal Liberal MP Stuart Robert channelled tens of thousands of dollars from his national LNP campaign fund, the Fadden Forum, to council candidates who stood as independents.

Mr Robert has confirmed he gave candidates Kristyn Boulton and Felicity Stevenson $30,000 each from the Fadden Forum to run their campaigns.

Both are former staffers in Mr Robert's electorate office.

Queensland law was changed in 2007 following a corruption inquiry into the 2004 Gold Coast elections, creating three categories of candidates: independents, groups and political parties.

All candidates must now declare their status, with heavy fines for failing to disclose which type applies.

There are now calls for a broad inquiry into the conduct of this year's local election on the Gold Coast, which has the second-largest council in Australia after Brisbane, with an annual budget of more than $1 billion.

By law, council candidates are not obliged to disclose details of their financial backing until weeks after the election. The deadline in this case is July 4…….

The Electoral Commission of Queensland (ECQ) said that "in light of the allegations and reports" it would "inquire into the activities" of the Fadden Forum once the disclosure deadline expired.

"If candidates are running as a group, as defined under the LGEA, then they must declare their membership of that group," the ECQ said in a statement to 7.30.

"Candidates cannot work together to promote themselves or fundraise during the election unless they register as a group with the returning officer."

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) told 7.30 it, too, would look into the matter after it was raised in Senate estimates this month.

"The AEC will undertake appropriate inquiries to determine whether there has been a breach of disclosure requirements by any of the parties mentioned," it said…….

It has also emerged that as many as five or more candidates may have used an LNP-linked lobbyist and former public relations adviser to Mayor Tom Tate, Simone Holzapfel, for campaign advice and support, giving rise to questions about their connections.

7.30 has established that Cr Tate, Division 7 Councillor and former mayor Gary Baildon, and Division 12 Councillor Pauline Young all used Ms Holzapfel's services.

All three deny acting as a bloc.

Planning committee chairman and Division 3 Councillor, Cameron Caldwell, told 7.30 he had received no donation or gift in kind from Ms Holzapfel but declined to comment on whether she had worked on his campaign.

Cr Boulton, who was elected in Division 4, was reported in the Gold Coast Bulletin as having received Ms Holzapfel's help, but she did not respond to 7.30's requests for comment.

Mr Robert's former staffer Felicity Stevenson, who was not elected, and former president of the Young LNP and Division 11 Councillor Hermann Vorster — who had campaigning support from Young LNP volunteers — also did not respond……

Ms Holzapfel was previously a staffer in former prime minister Tony Abbott's office when he was health minister in the Howard government.

Her clients have included developers ASF, which wants to develop a cruise ship terminal on the Gold Coast and Sunland, which has plans for a 44-storey twin tower scheme on undeveloped beachfront land at The Spit.

Ms Holzapfel reportedly donated $114,000 to the Fadden Forum in 2013 in multiple small amounts, although this does not appear in publicly available disclosure documents.

7.30 has no evidence that either Ms Holzapfel or the candidates acted improperly.

The Fadden Forum does not make separate disclosures of its activities to electoral authorities as electoral watchdogs consider it to be part of the LNP…….

Surrounded by political scandals and allegations of wrongdoing as he is, an ordinary person might have thought that the Turnbull Government would quietly distance itself from him.

However, there was Treasurer Scott Morrison with Stuart Robert on 17 May 2016 – the ninth day of the federal election campaign:

UPDATE

This 19 May 2016 front page says it all about the Robert attempt to install what could be suspected to be political glove puppets..... 

Minister for Human Services & Minister for Veterans' Affairs showing his contempt for the Australian electorate

Liberal MP, Minister for Human Services & Minister for Veterans' Affairs, lobbyist and professional investor, Stuart Robert, elevates the non-answer to an art form in an effort to keep the Labor Opposition, mainstream media and voters in the dark – as evidenced by these examples of his answers to questions without notice in the House of Representatives.

Question Time, House of Representatives Hansard 9 February 2016:

Mr DREYFUS: My question is to the Minister for Human Services. I refer to the minister's trip to China in August 2014 and the statement from the minister's office in The Courier Mail:

Mr Robert was on approved leave and attended in a private capacity.

Minister, is this accurate?

Mr ROBERT (Fadden—Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Minister for Human Services and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) (14:42): I thank the member for his question regarding a visit I undertook overseas in a personal capacity in 2014. Can I say to the House: I am confident I have not acted inappropriately and, as the Prime Minister said yesterday, this matter has been referred to the highest public servant in the land, Dr Martin Parkinson PSM, for review and I, of course, will fully assist the secretary in his review.

Mr DREYFUS (Isaacs—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business) (14:46): My question is to the Minister for Human Services. I refer to the minister's previous answer where he said he travelled to China in August 2014 in a personal capacity. Did the minister's declaration on his outgoing Australian passenger card reflect the statement he has just made to the House that he travelled in a personal capacity?

Mr ROBERT (Fadden—Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Minister for Human Services and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) (14:47): I thank the member for his question and, with great respect, I refer the member to my previous answer.

Mr DREYFUS (Isaacs—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business) (14:51): My question is again to the Minister for Human Services. I refer to the minister's previous answer where he said he had travelled to China in August 2014 in a personal capacity. Did the minister's declaration on his official Chinese visa application form reflect the statement he has just made to the House that he was travelling in a personal capacity?

Mr ROBERT (Fadden—Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Minister for Human Services and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) (14:51): I thank the member for his question and I refer the member to my previous answer.

Mr DREYFUS (Isaacs—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business) (14:55): My question is again to the Minister for Human Services. I refer to the minister's trip to China and his statement to the House: that he was in China in August 2014 in a personal capacity. But today, the Australian Financial Review reports that on the same trip the minister attended a Nimrod Resources signing ceremony. The minister also met with China's Vice Minister of Land and Resources. Did the minister meet with China's Vice Minister of Land and Resources as a private citizen?

Mr ROBERT (Fadden—Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Minister for Human Services and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) (14:56): Let me thank the member for his question and I refer the member to my previous statement.

Question Time, House of Representatives Hansard 10 February 2016:

Mr DREYFUS: My question is to the Minister for Human Services. I refer to the minister's trip to China and his answer yesterday that he would fully assist the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in his review. Has the minister informed the Parkinson inquiry that, as a private citizen, he not only met the Chinese vice minister for land and resources while in China, but was accompanied to that meeting by executives of Nimrod Resources? Will he also confirm this information to the parliament?

Mr ROBERT (Fadden—Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Minister for Human Services and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) (14:29): I thank the member for his question and I refer the member to my previous answer yesterday.

Mr DREYFUS (Isaacs—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business) (14:38): My question is to the Minister for Human Services. I refer to the minister's previous answer. The minister has referred the parliament to his statement yesterday. Given that his statement was silent on what would be provided to the Parkinson inquiry, will he now answer the question: has the minister provided the Parkinson inquiry with evidence that proves that at the time he undertook his trip to China the minister paid for his own flights, accommodation, internal travel and incidentals?

Mr ROBERT (Fadden—Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Minister for Human Services and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) (14:38): I thank the member for his question and I refer the member to my previous response yesterday.

Mr DREYFUS (Isaacs—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business) (14:42): My question is to the Minister for Human Services. I refer to the minister's trip to China and his answer yesterday that he would fully assist with the Parkinson inquiry. Given that it is not clear from his answer yesterday what information he has provided to Dr Parkinson, has the minister provided the Parkinson inquiry with a copy of the letter of appointment he presented to an official of a Chinese state-owned company? Will the minister also provide this letter to the parliament?

Mr ROBERT (Fadden—Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Minister for Human Services and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) (14:43): I thank the member for his question and I refer him to my response yesterday.

Meanwhile, despite the best efforts of the Minister for cartier & Rolex Watches, more home truths are coming to light......

Courier Mail, 10 February 2016:

EMBATTLED Liberal minister Stuart Robert organised a dinner in his Parliament House office with Tony Abbott and a Chinese business mogul at the request of his donor mate, Paul Marks.

Mr Robert hosted the dinner — three months out from the federal election in 2013 — so businessman Li Ruipeng could meet senior Liberals including shadow resources minister Ian Macfarlane.

The Herald Sun has obtained a photograph of the dinner, which shows Mr Marks, Mr Abbott and Mr Li among guests at the dinner in Mr Robert’s office…..

Mr Robert is being investigated after the Herald Sun revealed he secretly joined donor mate Mr Marks in Beijing to attend a signing ceremony between Mr Marks’s firm, Nimrod Resources, and Chinese government-owned Minmetals.

The Herald Sun then revealed Mr Robert also led a delegation, that included Nimrod representatives, to meet a Chinese government minister while he was claiming to be on holiday; and that Mr Li gave MPs who were at the 2013 dinner designer watches worth $250,000.

It has now emerged those MPs returned the watches to Mr Marks, not to Mr Li, because by the time they realised that the watches were not fake, Mr Li had disappeared.

Mr Macfarlane, who went on to become science and industry minister, yesterday told the Herald Sun: “I have a receipt showing I handed the watch back to Paul Marks.”

Also present at the gathering was the then president of the Liberal National Party, Bruce McIver, a party powerbroker recently appointed as a director of Australia Post.

A spokesman for Mr Abbott said last night Treasurer Scott Morrison also attended the dinner briefly.

Mr Abbott’s spokesman said that the then Opposition leader had originally declined to attend due to other commitments, but “agreed with a request from Mr Robert to drop in’’.

“He was not aware of any guests attending the dinner until he arrived. It is accurate that Mr McIver and Mr Macfarlane were present and earlier in the evening, Mr Morrison had joined the group,’’ the spokesman said.

“Mr Abbott was not responsible for the dinner, its purpose or guests.”

As for handing Mr Marks the watches, the spokesman said: “As it was not possible to return them to China, the office provided them to Liguancheng Global Investment Holdings Group’s (Pty Ltd) Australian business contact, Mr Paul Marks, with the request that they be returned to Mr Li Ruipeng.”

The Herald Sun can also reveal former Abbott staffer Simone Holtzapfel, whom Mr Robert praised in his inaugural speech, previously acted as a lobbyist for Nimrod Resources…..

Just three months later, Mr Abbott was prime minister, Mr Robert was assistant minister for defence and Mr Macfarlane was resources minister.

And Mr Li was nowhere to be seen.

He vanished shortly after Chinese President Xi Jinping launched a crackdown on corruption.

Herald Sun, 11 February 2016:

New Matilda, 11 February 2016:

In Estimates hearings this morning, it emerged that the Department of Foreign Affairs understood the Chinese government to be dealing with Robert in a “ministerial capacity.”

It beggars belief that Robert was able to access these high offices simply as a citizen of Australia. He was there because he was an Australian minister. 

Disgraced Liberal MP blots his copy book again and another Liberal minister is found wanting

This was disgraced Liberal MP for Fadden, former Minister for Veterans' Affairs and former Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC, Stuart Robert, tweeting on ANZAC Day 2016 and then deleting the tweet around three hours later once he finally realised that using soldiers to play politics on the major national day of remembrance in this country was not a good idea.

http://www.politwoops.com/p/unknown/stuartrobertmp
25 April 2016

As New Matilda editorialized online; Yes, At the going down of the sun over our multiple investment properties, We will remember them.

To make matters worse Robert tweeted an apology at 1.17pm the same day and then deleted that eight minutes later - probably after the first journalist rang him to confirm the apology. 

 He then had second thoughts and tweeted his lame excuse again.

Oh dear.....with friends like Stuart Robert in an election year, Malcolm Turnbull doesn't need enemies.

However, Robert is not the only fly in the election ointment.
On 26 April 2016 ABC News reported on Country Liberal Party Senator for the Northern Territory and Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Nigel Scullion:

Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion has asked the board of the Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC) to change a controversial section of its annual report that dealt with the corporation's $320 million acquisition of the troubled Voyages resort at Uluru.

The extraordinary intervention is revealed in documents released under Freedom of Information (FOI) amid an ongoing battle between Senator Scullion and the former chair of the ILC, Dawn Casey…..

A draft briefing paper by acting ILC chief executive Leo Bator and released under FOI asserts that Senator Scullion threatened to "withhold permission to table the (annual report)" unless it was amended.

The annual report's publication was delayed by months as a result of the conflict, and appears only to have been published in February following media inquiries.

The delay in its publication prevented Senate Estimates from examining the Voyages acquisition last October.

The documents released by the ILC under FOI reveal the current board of the ILC, and senior members of its executive, were deeply concerned at the request by Senator Scullion for amendments to the foreword and by the delay in the report's publication.

The ILC director of strategy warned last year that the agency would "attract scrutiny about the delay and any deletions to the annual report" at Senate Estimates.

In the end, the board decided to publish two forewords to the report, one written by Dr Casey and one by Eddie Fry, who was revealed to have assured Senator Scullion that the ILC would pursue no investigation into the Voyages sale and instead was intent upon tackling its large debts.

Senator Scullion has insisted his intervention was in response to incorrect information being asserted by the former ILC board about the Voyages acquisition. He declined to speak to the ABC yesterday and referred to his published statement.

"What I did was ask the ILC board to consider responding to factual inaccuracies in the statement from the former chair contained in the annual report," Senator Scullion said in the statement.

"It is completely appropriate for me to bring to the attention of the ILC board these inaccuracies."

Excerpts from Dr. Dawn Casey’s statement which was included in the published ILC 2014-15 annual report in question:

Like most political bullies 'Scotty From Marketing' Morrison runs away when he is publicly caught out

Crikey inq, 1 June 2020

Crikey inq, 1 June 2020: 

It’s been a while since Australian politics saw an act as gutless as Scott Morrison’s on Friday. 

Mere minutes after the prime minister finished another of his interminable post-national cabinet monologues and walked away from journalists, Government Services Minister Stuart Robert issued a media release revealing one of the most expensive backflips in Commonwealth history. The government would repay at least $720 million in fake debts it had “raised” against welfare recipients under the now discredited robodebt scheme. 

 At a media conference conveniently on the Gold Coast, rather than before the same journalists Morrison had just walked out on, Robert tried to claim he’d moved quickly to address the scheme’s flaws: “the information presented to me saw a change in November, I acted swiftly on behalf of the government to pause debt recovery and to refine the system.” 

Robert refused to apologise to the 373,000 victims (at a minimum) of the scheme. Christian Porter, appearing on the ABC yesterday, also refused to apologise. Both at least fronted the cameras. 

Scott Morrison ran away. 

Coward. 

This was Scott Morrison’s scheme, one he — the former social services minister — proudly boasted about as treasurer in the 2016 election campaign, claiming it would pump billions into the budget bottom line. 

Now it’s fodder for a Friday afternoon garbage dump, with junior ministers sent out to publicly eat the shit sandwich. 

It’s unlikely the scheme will ever generate a single cent of additional revenue, given the repayment, the likely compensation, the legal costs associated with a number of cases, and the extraordinary costs of implementing the supposedly automated scheme, including the siccing of debt collectors onto innocent welfare recipients. 

Morrison and his colleagues, and the Social Services public servants who devised and implemented the scheme, will be hoping to avoid accountability for the debacle, which goes back to a single fact: there was always a serious question mark over the legality of the mechanism at the heart of robodebt, income averaging. 

The government gave up pretending income averaging was lawful last November, just before settling the case brought by Deanna Amato in the Federal Court. 

Robert is trying to pretend that that was when the penny dropped about income averaging, and the government is refusing to say how long it knew about the lack of a legal basis for its flagship savings measure. 

As is now well documented, however, the lack of a lawful basis was clear from early on. 

Social security law expert Matthew Butt raised serious questions about the legality of income averaging in early 2017, noting the limitations on its use under legislation and that Human Services’ own guidelines recommend that averaging be used selectively. 

Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) member Terry Carney found that there was no legal basis for the debts raised at the same time, in decisions the government declined to appeal. The government instead dumped Carney from the tribunal while it stacked it with former Coalition MPs, staffers and party members. ....

Why did public servants prepare and implement a scheme they knew had a strong chance of being found unlawful? Was legal advice sought? Or did Social Services, like the Department of Health in the sports rorts scandal, refuse to obtain legal advice it knew would show there was no legal basis for the proposed actions? 

The financial cost of the debacle is only one aspect. Robodebt needlessly inflicted misery and anxiety of hundreds of thousands of Australians. The number of suicides caused by the receipt of automatically generated debt letters is unlikely to ever be known. 

Throughout, the bureaucrats involved have sought to stymie or evade accountability. In the most recent round of Senate estimates hearings, departmental officials like Social Services secretary Kathryn Campbell refused to provide basic information, like the number of victims of income averaging, to a Senate committee. 

Similar obfuscation is likely to be used against attempts by the Senate to establish the crucial issue of how much Social Services knew about the unlawfulness of income averaging when the scheme was crafted in 2015, what advice was sought and what was communicated to the minister.....