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Cathy Wilcox

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He’s a potent danger to democracies across the world. Watch our film about Rupert Murdoch pic.twitter.com/7rlAlVaBGy

— Led By Donkeys (@ByDonkeys) June 21, 2023

 

THE ROBODEBT SCHEME: a tale of rampant ambition, abuse of power, systemic cruelty, venality, incompetence and cowardice

In September 2013, the Liberal-National Coalition, led by the then Liberal MP for Warringah & Prime Minister Tony Abbott, won government on the back of an election campaign predominately focussed on removal of the so-called ‘carbon tax, fiscal responsibility and the size of the national budget deficit.

By 2014-15 the concept of a fully automated system of data-matched debt creation was posited to reduce the federal budget deficit - which at that time stood at est. an underlying cash deficit of $37.9 billion.

It was expected that this data matching program would come online sometime in the 2015-16 financial year and generate over $1.7 billion in recoverable debt over 5 years.

The sole target of this debt creation was to be those Australians who received or had ever received federal government cash transfers as pensions, benefits or allowances (with the exception of those receiving veteran or aged pensions) during a period extending back in theory as far as 2006.

In February 2015 the then Liberal MP for Cook & Minister for Social Services, Scott Morrison, approved this new policy proposal and what was eventually to become colloquially known as the Robotdebt Scheme began its journey through various departmental and Cabinet processes towards a short pilot program followed by full implementation in December 2016 by a 3 month-old Turnbull Coalition Government.

On 5 December 2016, then Liberal MP for Aston & Minister for Human Services Alan Tudge appeared on national television to discuss Centrelink’s ‘welfare crackdown’. The Minister stated: “we’ll find you, we’ll track you down and you will have to repay those debts and you may end up in prison”. [ACOSS, 27 March 2017]

In addition to that particular Ch 9 “A Current Affair” interview this ACA clip was released probably sometime in January 2017:

[Ch 9 “A Current Affair”, 2016]

For the next three and a half years Scott Morrison - first as Social Services Minister, then Treasurer and finally Prime Minister used the disastrous and illegal Robodebt Scheme as a vehicle to support & maintain his personal ideological and political war on the poor and vulnerable of this nation.

In this he was assisted to a significant degree by members of his own Cabinet and the Murdoch media empire.

Until the combined pressure of expert legal opinion, Administrative Appeals Tribunal decisions, a class action before the Federal Court of Australia which the Commonwealth was obliged to settle, ongoing public calls for the scheme to end coming from activists and a significant number of voters in the national electorate, forced Morrison & his cronies to suspend automatic debt creation.

The Robodebt Scheme formally ended on 30 June 2020 and in 2022 the not quite 3 month-old Albanese Labor Government announced the creation of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, under Letters Patent dated 18 August 2022.

The Report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme was released of 7 July 2023 and can be found at:

https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/report

The following are excerpts from that report under general headlines created by me for clarity with some media grabs for context:

COMMISSION HAS SERVED THE PURPOSE

The recommendations made are collected at the beginning of this report. I hope that they are of use.

At the least, I am confident that the Commission has served the purpose of bringing into the open an

extraordinary saga, illustrating a myriad of ways that things can go wrong through venality, incompetence

and cowardice. [Report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, July 2023, pp.659-660]

ON NEED FOR CHANGE

But as to how effective any recommended change can be, I want to make two points. First, 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.

Second, politicians need to lead a change in social attitudes to people receiving welfare payments. The evidence before the Commission was that fraud in the welfare system was miniscule, but that is not the impression one would get from what ministers responsible for social security payments have said over the years. Anti-welfare rhetoric is easy populism, useful for campaign purposes. It is not recent, nor is it confined to one side of politics, as some of the quoted material in this report demonstrates. It may be that the evidence in this Royal Commission has gone some way to changing public perceptions. But largely, those attitudes are set by politicians, who need to abandon for good (in every sense) the narrative of taxpayer versus welfare recipient.
[Report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, July 2023, p. iii]

A BRIEF OUTLINE

Budget control and debt reduction had been second in the Coalition’s list of policy priorities in its election manifesto. Consistent with that policy, in July 2014 the Hon Kevin Andrews MP, the Minister responsible for the Department of Social Services (DSS), proposed the setting up of an interdepartmental committee to develop a whole-of-government strategy for recovery of debt owed by members of the public to the Australian Government. The terms of reference included examining data matching, using online and self-servicing options, using external debt collection agencies and applying a standardised interest charge to debts. And in relation to welfare services, in January 2015 the newly-appointed Minister for Social Services, Mr Morrison described himself in an interview as planning to be a “strong welfare cop on the beat;” because Australians were “not going to cop people who are going to rort [the social security] system." Approved by the latter, they made their way in the form of a New Policy Proposal (NPP) through Cabinet with remarkable speed. In May 2015, as part of its 201516 Budget, the government adopted a measure named Strengthening the Integrity of Welfare Payments. Described as a package for “enhancing ... fraud prevention and debt recovery and improving assessment processes” in relation to the payment of social security benefits, it was expected to save $1.7 billion over five years. Most of those savings were to come from the Employment Income Matching measure, the initiative which began Robodebt, which was proposed to recover overpayments resulting from incorrect declarations of income. Another measure in the package, titled “Taskforce Integrity”, involved the secondment of Australian Federal Police officers and was designed to crack down on welfare fraud. The two were often, and not coincidentally, mentioned in the same breath.

It was in this climate that the essential features of the Robodebt scheme were conceived by employees of the Department of Human Services (DHS), were put by way of an Executive Minute in February 2015 to the Minister for Human Services, Senator the Hon Marise Payne, and to Mr Morrison as Minister for Social Services. [Report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, July 2023, p. xxiii]

SCOTT MORRISON

current Liberal MP for Cook, a former Minister for Social Services, former Treasurer, former Minister for the Public Service, former Coalition Prime Minister

The Commission rejects as untrue Mr Morrison’s evidence that he was told that income averaging as contemplated in the Executive Minute was an established practice and a “foundational way” in which DHS worked.…

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. The proper administration of his department required him to make inquiries about why, in the absence of any explanation, DSS appeared to have reversed its position on the need for legislative change. If he had asked Ms Wilson, she would have told him that it was because DHS had (ostensibly) reversed its position on using income averaging. He chose not to inquire.

Mr Morrison allowed Cabinet to be misled because he did not make that obvious inquiry. He took the proposal to Cabinet without necessary information as to what it actually entailed and without the caveat that it required legislative and policy change to permit the use of the ATO PAYG data in the way proposed

in circumstances where: he knew that the proposal still involved income averaging; only a few weeks previously he had been told of that caveat; nothing had changed in the proposal; and he had done nothing to ascertain why the caveat no longer no longer applied. He failed to meet his ministerial responsibility to ensure that Cabinet was properly informed about what the proposal actually entailed and to ensure that it was lawful. [Report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, July 2023, pp. 102 & 106]

CHRISTIAN PORTER

former Liberal MP for Pearce, a former Minister for Social Services, former Attorney-General

On 2 March 2016, Mr Tudge, along with the Minister for Social Services, Christian Porter, issued a joint media release signalling the government’s intention to introduce a Budget Savings (Omnibus) Bill, in order to “ensure people pay back their welfare debts if they have received payments they are not entitled to.”

Mr Porter was quoted in the media release as saying that, under the Bill, “the government will impose an interest charge on debts, remove the six year limit on debt recovery and prevent social security debtors from leaving the country.”….

On 3 January 2017, Mr Porter was interviewed on ABC Radio National in relation to the OCI program. His responses were largely based on the talking points that had been provided by DHS.

He told the interviewer that the debt recovery scheme was “working exceptionally well.” He also made the following statements:

- I think this [the Scheme] is about as reasonable a process as you could possibly derive…

- Ultimately, if a real discrepancy does exist then eventually we raise a debt, and that happens much later than this initial letter, and even then, there are many ways in which you can dispute that debt, if you think that a mistake has been made…

- It really is an incredibly reasonable process…

- Only in 2.2 per cent of instances [do people need to provide things like payslips]…

- 169,000 letters and the complaint rate is running at 0.16 per cent. So that’s only 276 complaints from those 169,000 letters. That process has raised $300 million back to the taxpayer.

Mr Porter was also asked, “How important is this debt recovery to the budget bottom line?” and replied:

It’s very significant. Four billion dollars over four years is evidently a very significant amount of money. That is helping us get back into surplus.

The Commission accepts that Mr Porter was simply repeating information from the talking points given to him by DHS staff. As it transpired, that information was wrong. The rate of complaint was most certainly not as low as 0.16 per cent of reviews. The Commission heard evidence that, in fact, the information with which Mr Porter was provided did not include complaints specifically relating to OCI that were held in DHS’s central complaints repository,11 and that even if it had, there were systemic problems with the recording of OCI complaints in that repository in any event.

Mr Porter’s comments, based on the talking points provided to him, suggested a high degree of confidence in the program generally and in particular the reasonableness of it, which was reiterated. They also gave the impression that recipients seldom had to provide information, and that the rate of complaint and internal review of debts generated under the Scheme was very low, suggesting that such debts were unobjectionable and, in turn, accurate.

On 9 January 2017, Mr Porter said on ABC Radio that “debts raised under the automated system were ‘fairly and legitimately calculated’.” He also noted that, in circumstances where a person did not respond to the initial letter, “it will be the case that the ATO estimate will be the preferred reporting and there will be an averaging out process.”

By the time Mr Porter made the statement about debts being “fairly and legitimately calculated,” it is likely that he was starting to appreciate that this position lacked credibility; that income averaging was liable to produce inaccurate results as to the existence and quantum of debts….

The statements Mr Porter made in media interviews about the fairness of the process, and the statistics he cited, were wrong. One has to recognise, however, that he had been plunged in a maelstrom of media enquiries and public complaint about the Scheme, and there was not much he could do but rely on what DHS staff told him about the program. His performance in the short period he was Acting Minister for Human Services cannot fairly be criticised.

That is not true, however, of Mr Porter’s response in his role as Minister for Social Services. He was responsible under the AAO for the lawful administration of the Social Security Act and the Administration Act. The responsibility for ensuring that DHS officers lawfully exercised their DSS-delegated powers of overpayment identification and debt recovery under the legislation lay with him.

On 28 December 2016, the first day of Mr Porter’s acting position as Minister for Human Services, his office requested “talking points” on the OCI program and, later in the day, a briefing from DHS about the program. The request for the briefing said that the Minister wanted it to cover “averaging out of income provided to ATO by CLK [Centrelink] impacting on people who only earned income seasonally (e.g. students) – it appears CLK is averaging income over 26 fortnights and then raising debts.”

This was an obvious question to ask, as was accepted by Mr Porter in his evidence before the Commission. Inaccurate results produced by income averaging, with respect to both the existence and quantum of debts being raised by the OCI program, had been squarely raised as an issue in the media at the time. Mr Porter was trying to “get an understanding of some of the basic fundamental mechanics of the program.”

On 9 January 2017, Mr Porter asked, during a meeting with Mr Britton, a question to the effect of whether Centrelink could be given more frequent data on a person’s income. He evidently appreciated that the use of yearly data to calculate a person’s income was likely to give rise to inaccuracies, and that the provision of more frequent data would produce more accurate results. His office had already raised the query with DHS about its effect where the income of seasonal workers was concerned.

Mr Porter may not completely have understood what the OCI process was, but he did know it involved income averaging. It did not take a genius to see that averaging a person’s annual income to arrive at a fortnightly figure was likely to produce inaccurate results unless the person was on a consistent income.

Mr Porter, from his inquiries, clearly appreciated that. It was not a big step from there to ask whether the Social Security Act allowed this. Mr Porter, as Minister for Social Services, should have made that inquiry.

In an ABC interview of 31 May 2020, Mr Porter said in respect of the Scheme: “We received advice at the time that the program was put together that it was lawful. Many governments have used ATO averaging….” That suggested that at the inception of the Scheme, the government had obtained legal advice that the use of averaging in the way proposed was lawful; which it had not. [Report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, July 2023, pp. 137, 156, 157]

ALAN TUDGE

former MP for Aston, a former Assistant Minister for Social Services, former Minister for Human Services

On the same day, 5 December 2016, Mr Tudge was interviewed on radio station 2GB by Chris Smith. Mr Smith observed that, from the media coverage he had seen, he had not been able to get an understanding of what percentage of overpayments were a result of deliberate fraud. Mr Tudge replied that “It’s very hard to assess.”

However, it did not appear that it was too difficult to assess, particularly if the question had been asked.

The very next day, on 6 December 2016, Mr Tudge’s advisor was provided with a copy of a brief to the Minister for Social Services, Mr Porter, which contained data that was current as at 30 June 2016.

The brief contained detailed information about social security debt, sourced from Mr Tudge’s own department’s systems. That information revealed that fraud accounted for 0.1 per cent of the debt raised in the 2015-16 financial year, and just 1.2 per cent of the outstanding debt base as at 30 June 2016. Mr Tudge’s advisor indicated to departmental officers that he was going to show the brief to Mr Tudge “over the next day or so.”

Mr Tudge did not have a specific recollection of the brief. However, in circumstances where the brief was copied to Mr Tudge “for his information,” the data was sourced from his own department, and where his advisor had indicated that he was going to show Mr Tudge the brief “over the next day or so,” it can be inferred that Mr Tudge had knowledge of the contents of that brief…..

The opinion piece related to that person’s experience with Centrelink concerning a debt that was not raised under the Scheme. However, its relevance to the Commission’s investigations was that it occurred in the context of a media strategy to discourage public criticism of the Scheme. It was a response, from both DHS and the minister’s office, to a person who had described their negative experience with a Centrelink debt. The information released related to a particular named individual, rather than being an anonymised case study or part of an aggregate of data about a number of case studies and it was released by both the minister’s office and DHS.

Mr Tudge said that, in hindsight, he considered that the information should have come from the department to “correct the record,” and not from his office.

This particular release had an observable impact on the willingness of people to publicly speak out about their experiences in the media. Ms Miller commented that, as a result of the release of this personal information, “there were less people speaking out in the media, which was the intention.” It had the effect of shutting down most of the personal stories appearing in the media which were critical of the Scheme. Ms Crowe, from ACOSS, described the release of the information as “a shocking abuse of the government’s power at the time.” She was worried that it would “silence people who were affected by Robodebt” and agreed with the proposition that the release of the information in fact had “a chilling effect” on people who wanted to complain about DHS.

There may well have been other reasons for the drop in Robodebt stories at the time, but it is reasonable to infer, particularly given the observations of Ms Miller, a media professional, and Ms Crowe, who dealt regularly with recipients subject to the Scheme, that it was largely due to the release of information by the minister’s office in response to complaints.

It can be accepted that a minister may often be called upon to defend government policy in the media, including unpopular policy. However, this strategy went further than that. Mr Tudge submitted that the use of case studies, and the release of information relating to a particular person, was intended to “correct the record” in the media. Correcting errors in reporting may be a legitimate exercise. But this was not done openly. Instead, the minister’s office fed information to the press, and in the case of the 26 January article in The Australian, Mr Tudge the same day exclaimed over the “significant story” on radio without disclosing that his office had been the source of it.

If “correcting the record” were the only purpose for the collation and release of this information, then it would have been equally important for the minister’s office to do the same in respect of at least some of the cases where DHS or the system had made mistakes. Instead, in instances where debts had been discovered to be incorrect, recipients were dealt with by contact with DHS. The effect of the strategy employed by the minister and his office, of publicly correcting the record by emphasising “legitimate debts,” “preferably large debts” and “top 20 $ value potential overpayments” without doing the same with respect to instances where mistakes were also occurring, and debts were either inaccurate or non-existent, was that it was apt to create a general perception that debts under the Scheme were owed and the system was working.

Mr Tudge’s engagement in this media strategy, and use of the media in this way, had the effect of discouraging criticism of the Scheme, and inhibiting open dialogue and analysis of the flaws of the Scheme.

It also had the effect of undermining the credibility of complaints and concerns about flaws in the Scheme.

As a minister, Mr Tudge was invested with a significant amount of public power. Mr Tudge’s use of information about social security recipients in the media to distract from and discourage commentary about the Scheme’s problems represented an abuse of that power. It was all the more reprehensible in view of the power imbalance between the minister and the cohort of people upon whom it would reasonably be expected to have the most impact, many of whom were vulnerable and dependent on the department, and its minister, for their livelihood. [Report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, July 2023, p.140, 315]

STUART ROBERT

former Liberal National Party MP for Fadden, a former Minister for Human Services, former Assistant Treasurer, former Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, former Minister for Government Services

On 11 June 2019, the Hon Stuart Robert MP, Minister for Human Services, was given a brief on the Masterton case. It indicated that if the litigation were to result in an adverse decision concerning the lawfulness of the debt, consideration would have to be given to “legislative or revised administrative arrangements” for the Scheme. Ms Leon had reviewed a draft of the brief some days earlier. She had noted on the draft that the minister would “also need to be briefed orally.”

Mr Robert read and signed the brief on 22 June 2019, adding a comment that the deputy secretary, Integrity, (Ms Annette Musolino) was to brief him in the first week of July. That briefing duly took place on 4 July 2019. There is controversy as to what occurred at it…..

What was the subject of dispute was whether Mr Robert was nevertheless briefed orally about the Draft AGS Advice. Ms Leon had made a notation on a brief delivered to her that the minister was to be briefed orally, in order to keep distribution of the advice itself to a more limited group than would receive a written ministerial briefing. Mr Ffrench said that in accordance with Ms Leon’s instruction, he attended the 4 July meeting, with Ms Musolino and others, to brief the minister. His evidence was that he took a copy of the Draft AGS Advice with him and explained to Mr Robert the difficulties raised by the Advice in relation to aspects of the Scheme. He informed Mr Robert that, as a result of the Draft AGS Advice, steps had been taken to obtain an opinion from the Solicitor-General.

According to Mr Ffrench, Mr Robert did not ask whether there was any existing legal advice on the issue of averaged PAYG data and did not say anything about obtaining external legal advice on the question. He believed that it might have been in this meeting that the minister made a statement to the effect that a  legal advice was merely an opinion until a Court declared the law. Unfortunately, however, Mr Ffrench did not document the meeting in any way….

Despite what Mr Robert said was his “strong personal view” that income averaging led to incorrect calculations of debt, he was prepared to advocate for its use. In particular he claimed publicly that in 99.2 per cent of cases where a debt was raised, the debt was correct. He explained this figure in different ways.

In an interview on 31 July 2019, Mr Robert asserted that in 99.2 per cent of the 80 per cent of cases where recipients could not explain their income, Services Australia had conducted a review which showed that the recipient in fact had the debt. In a later doorstop interview, on 17 September 2019, he said it was based on a calculation that of the 80 per cent of cases where the recipient had not explained their earnings satisfactorily, only 0.8 per cent had been overturned on appeal, which meant a 99.2 per cent effectiveness rate. (A media release authorised by Mr Robert on the same day made a similar claim).

In evidence, Mr Robert suggested that the 0.8 per cent might consist of cases which succeeded on application to the AAT or, more generally, cases where error by Services Australia or the ATO had been identified.

The Commission has tried to establish how a figure of 0.8 per cent could have been arrived at as representing the percentage of inaccurate debts in those cases where a debt was raised. To begin with, the claim that debts were raised in 80 per cent of cases is flawed. According to figures provided to the Commission by Services Australia, across the life of the Robodebt Scheme, debts were actually raised in about 55 per cent of cases where recipients were required to respond to a discrepancy between declared income and PAYG data.

Turning to the figures for debts raised, a percentage as low as 0.8 per cent could only be arrived at confining consideration to debts revised after review in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. This is to ignore debts revised internally after reassessment by Services Australia officers, after Subject Matter Expert (SME) review and after Authorised Review Officer (ARO) review, which, on the figures provided by Services Australia, accounted for about 16 per cent of cases where debts were raised. And, of course, it was based upon the unsafe assumption that if a recipient did not have the capacity to seek review, the debt raised against them must have been accurate.

The statement made in the 31 July 2019 interview was untrue (Services Australia had not reviewed 99.2 per cent of the cases where the income discrepancy had not been explained, let alone found the debt to be correctly raised). The statement made in the 17 September 2019 interview was, at best, misleading; it suggested that only a fraction of debts had been challenged and that the balance of 99.2 per cent was therefore correct….

The Commission’s view is that the weight of the evidence is strongly against Mr Robert’s having given any instruction to Ms Leon on 7 or 8 November 2019 to cease income averaging as a sole or partial basis for debt raising. What seems to have happened at the meeting on 8 November 2019 was a canvassing of options. It is reasonable to suppose that Mr Robert still hoped to salvage the Robodebt Scheme in some respects.

The lack of a clear instruction to Ms Leon to cease income averaging is not surprising in light of the Government’s intention to publicly announce, through the minister, the end of income averaging in the most palatable terms it could find. Plainly, if a direction were given to departmental staff to end the process there was a strong risk that the announcement would be pre-empted by the media’s being informed of it.

Consequently, the Commission rejects Mr Robert’s claim to have acted to end the Robodebt Scheme quite as promptly as he professes. Ms Leon was in fact the first to take steps for that purpose. [Report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, July 2023, pp.299, 301, 315]

KATHRYN CAMPBELL

current senior AKUS advisor to government, a former Secretary of the Department of Social Security, former Secretary of the Department of Human Services, former Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

As will appear, after the meeting between DHS and DSS on 27 October 2014, DSS obtained legal advice to the effect that the use of income averaging in the way that had been proposed by DHS was unlawful.

However, DSS was not informed of the further work that DHS was undertaking on the proposal until early

2015, after a meeting between DHS secretary, Kathryn Campbell, and Scott Morrison, Minister for Social

Services, on 30 December 2014….

Ms Campbell recalled that, at the time of the meeting with Mr Morrison, significant media attention was focused on “the integrity of welfare outlays” a phrase which she said meant “payments to [sic] which the recipient may not be eligible”. It is likely Ms Campbell had some knowledge of the DHS PAYG proposal, a deputy secretary of DHS having sought information about it on her behalf in November 2014….

Kathryn Campbell, former secretary of DHS, observed in her evidence that “suicide was something that we [at DHS] dealt with frequently.” That is no doubt due to the fact that many social security recipients live in situations of disadvantage or vulnerability. Any debt-raising exercise in that context is likely to increase numbers of suicide and self-harm.

That DHS was aware of this likelihood – that it dealt with suicides frequently – makes the implementation of the Scheme all the more egregious, particularly when there was evidence that they were raising inaccurate debts. DHS had a responsibility to deal sensitively with those people relying on its services, and to provide support rather than inflicting distress….

On 16 August 2017, ACOSS met with Mr Tudge and Kathryn Campbell, the Secretary of DSS. Ms Crowe told the Commission that there were no notes from the meeting, but to her recollection it was a “tense meeting” where they discussed the Scheme and “the use of the AFP logo on taskforce integrity letters.”

ACOSS’s concerns were not resolved in the meeting, and it ended abruptly.

ACOSS told the Commission that historically, when there were social security measures announced, the DSS would convene a meeting with stakeholders to discuss Budget measures in their portfolio, at which meetings ACOSS would provide input. In relation to the Scheme, there was no such consultation….

The CPSU wrote to Kathryn Campbell (secretary, DHS) on 19 January 2017, relaying concerns raised by employees that “debts are being issued where there is no proof that a debt exists.” Neither the Commission nor the CPSU have evidence of any response….

The Commission heard evidence from a number of SES officers who held leadership and other senior positions. The role of SES officers within each department is to provide APS-wide leadership of the highest quality that contributes to an effective and cohesive APS. The most prominent SES officers within each department are the secretaries and deputy secretaries, who were integral to the making of key decisions, communications with ministers, and in directing other APS employees within their departments in relation to the Scheme.

The secretary of a department holds a distinct role as an “agency head”, and is bound by the Code of Conduct in the same way as APS employees. However, as an agency head, the secretary of a department also has a separate statutory obligation to uphold and promote the APS Values and the APS Employment Principles.

The APS Value of ‘Impartial’ requires the public service to be apolitical, and provide the government with advice that is frank, honest, timely, and based on the best available evidence. The Commission heard evidence about APS leaders (both Secretaries and SES leaders) being excessively responsive to government, undermining concept of impartiality and frank and fearless advice. For example, when the Scheme was developed in 2015, the New Policy Proposal was apt to mislead the Expenditure Review Committee and Kathryn Campbell (Secretary, DHS) did not take any steps to correct that misleading effect…. [Report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, July 2023, pp. 40, 49, 337, 366, 393, 643]

Kathryn Campbell: From her own mouth: please watch this revealing/distressing video compilation contrasting 2018 Institute of Public Administration speech and her examination at Robodebt royal commission. 👇👇 https://t.co/SGpgLirZEn

— Quentin Dempster (@QuentinDempster) July 12, 2023

LEGAL REMEDIES

“People may have individual or collective remedies. On the evidence before the Commission, elements of the tort of misfeasance in public office appear to exist. Where litigation is not available, the Commonwealth does have a “Scheme for Compensation for Detriment caused by Defective Administration” (which would be a very euphemistic way of describing what happened in the Robodebt Scheme) where a person has suffered from defective administration and there is no legal requirement to make a payment. It is not appropriate to say any more on that front.” [Report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, July 2023, p.659]

A perspective on the political & social background of the years 2009 to 2022

The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 May 2022:

As the results rolled in it was difficult to grasp: the Liberals of the 2020s, eerily like the Soviet Communists of the 1980s, were suddenly an anachronism. Like the Politburo, they too had become entrapped within their fervent ideologies and grown so distant from reality they lost the moral legitimacy to govern. Power was now haemorrhaging away in a death agony of lost seats.

Morrison was widely credited as the architect of this annihilation. But perhaps he was no more than the sinister final act of a larger story that began decades earlier when John Howard was elected prime minister in 1996. Of all Australian prime ministers, it is Howard who can rightly claim to be the most transformative, reshaping the nation so completely that, other than a Labor interregnum of six years, it has been conservative governments largely in his image ever since. Every issue that defined Morrison's downfall had deep roots in Howard's prime ministership.

It was Howard, after all, who from 1996 on campaigned internationally against binding global carbon emission reduction targets. His reasoning for doing so, he told cabinet in 1997, was that Australia was "a major exporter of energy". His advocacy to key world leaders, cabinet papers reveal, proved "influential". And so we led the world backwards.

He similarly turned back a historic tide of national progress on everything from the republic to reconciliation, refused to even use the word multiculturalism in his early years of prime ministership, and set the dogs of xenophobia onto Australian politics, transforming refugees into a threatening invasion force. He revelled in fomenting culture wars while gutting institutions and corroding civil society, attacking it whenever it stood up for the environment, the rights of citizens, workers, or of the weakest. He purged the Liberal Party of what were then called wets, the moderates of the day, paving the way for the far-right fundamentalist clique it has become.

His success lay in speaking to what was smallest and worst in Australia's breast: fear, greed, apathy, racism. It was a template for all that followed.

Howardism was to be taken up with a new aggression and misogyny by his self-declared love child, Tony Abbott; continued, despite his post-partum revisions, by Malcolm Turnbull; until there came its final decadent phase: the Morrison government, a rabble characterised by sleaze, scandal and self-interest. By then, Howardism resembled a degenerative disease. What once had been merely cynical gestures to win votes or wedge opponents had transformed into a terminal cancer of mystical doctrine. They had come to believe their own baseless babble, and they did not get that harassment in the workplace was not part of the culture wars but lived experience. So too human-induced fires, floods and cyclones. They never realised that their ideology did not stand the test of reality: whether it be rain or flame or allegedly being raped metres away from the prime minister's office.

It was widely noted that they didn't get women, though, as Samantha Maiden noted, it was women who finally got them. At root, the problem was that they didn't get people: not the old, who were left to die unnecessary, wretched deaths while they went to the cricket. Not anyone under 40 who would never own a home, nor the trans kids they damaged or the poor they may have driven to suicide with the illegal and evil "robo-debt", wasting nearly $2 billion of our money in the service of persecution.

They didn't get kindness or decency, that the suffering in the theatres of cruelty they called border defence not only distressed but shamed many Australians. They didn't get that their ceaseless rorting and corruption offended people who built lives around trust and honesty.

While our artists were loathed, our scientists belittled, and our journalists pursued by a politicised federal police for exposing alleged war crimes, party hacks and corporate drones were rewarded with sinecures and board seats and the bling of yet another Order of Australia, a currency now more debased than the Iranian rial…..

Australia was an increasingly illiberal democracy in which we were ever more unsafe and more unequal. We were both inured to and haunted by the idea that politics without a moral basis was the only politics possible. On Saturday that nightmare abruptly ended. It turned out politicians couldn't make up their own morality to explain away their crimes without consequence. The historic significance of the election is that it was the people who put an end to not only the Morrison government but also the Howard ascendancy and with it, the two-party system.

Many weren't voting for a party or a program. Many had lived the Armageddon of climate change as flood and fire and drought. They were not afraid of change for the better. Trusting in each other, in the idea that politicians should answer to them, they held to the principle that they no longer would be told who their member would be and what that member would stand for. They were standing up for a future they were brave enough to believe we should, and we can, address. They dared to hope…..

In which the persistence of a millionaire Qld property developer is countered by the commitment of a Lower Clarence community to protect the James Creek precinct from overdevelopment and other harms

 

Clarence Valley Independent, 12 July 2023:

The Northern Regional Planning Panel has published its reasons for refusing a 336-lot subdivision at James Creek, a proposal that encountered hurdles satisfying council, which ultimately led to it not being recommended for approval.

When a development application DA was lodged with Clarence Valley Council in November 2020 for a staged residential subdivision on James Creek Road at James Creek, it proposed 342 lots, with 336 residential lots, a single park, and a neighbourhood centre for small scale retail.

Soon after the DA was lodged, The James Creek Residents Action Group was soon formed, and on December 7, 2020, the development application was withdrawn on behalf of owner Kahuna No 1 Pty Ltd.

A revised DA was lodged with CVC on November 4, 2021, for a 336-lot subdivision at 104 James Creek Road featuring 329 residential lots, one commercial lot, 4 drainage reserves and associated public space areas.

After working with CVC on the subdivision for more than a year, when Council staff completed their final assessment report for the Northern Regional Planning Panel NRPP, they recommended the subdivision be refused.

On June 29, 2023, when the NRPP met via videoconference to decide on the DA, after hearing submissions from 16 concerned locals, the subdivision was unanimously refused.

The NRPP published their reasons for refusing the DA last week, stating the application was refused for the reasons attached to the Council’s assessment report.

“The Panel agrees with the council assessment that the proposed inward facing urban structure, density, and proposed lot design relates poorly to the existing topographical form and presents a stark change to surrounding rural and semi-rural setting and character,” the determination stated.

“The Panel considers there is inadequate social infrastructure and services to support the proposed development including bus services and given the distances to local shops and facilities.

“The Panel also concluded there was insufficient consideration of flood evacuation, but notes the verbal advice provided by Council staff of an offer by the applicant to upgrade Gardiners Road to enable evacuation in a 1:100 year flood event.

“The Panel agrees with Council’s view that additional information and design amendments which might result in a more integrated ‘village’ style settlement may resolve these and other issues addressed in Council’s assessment report.”

In coming to its decision, the panel considered written submissions made during public exhibition and heard from all those wishing to address the panel.

The panel noted issues of concern included the impact on services, the lack of flood free access from Townsend along Gardiners Road, access to Austons Lane, stormwater management and flooding, impacts on adjoining rural land users and lack of buffers, inconsistency of development with planning proposal and adopted council policies, urban design and local character, traffic, transport and access, lack of Aboriginal cultural heritage assessment and consideration, a bushfire hazard, lack of public consultation and biodiversity.

The owner of lot 104 James Creek Road, Kahuna No 1 Pty Ltd now has the option of working with council to redesign the subdivision and relodge a revised DA, which they did with this DA, or decide not to pursue a subdivision on this site.

Australian Rural & Regional News, 5 July 2023:

Cheers of celebration and relief from James Creek residents erupted when the Northern Regional Planning Panel refused approval for a controversial $33 million 336 lot subdivision on James Creek Road.

The panel met via teleconference on Thursday June 29, to decide whether to approve the development application DA by MPD Investments at 104 James Creek Road for 329 residential lots, one commercial lot, four drainage reserves and two open space areas on the 33-hectare site.

Clarence Valley Council’s assessment report for the ‘regionally significant development’, which required it to be decided by the Northern Regional Planning Panel (NRPP), recommended the DA be refused over concerns with sewage, stormwater discharge, traffic issues, land use conflict, the urban structure and sensitivity of the proposed design to the surrounds.

When the DA was put on public exhibition three times in 2022 and 2023, council received 100 submissions and a petition with 171 signatures against the subdivision.

Clarence Valley Council was represented by Cr’s Ian Tiley and Peter Johnstone on the five person NRPP, after Cr Greg Clancy declared a conflict of interest as he had been to a public meeting with complainants about the subdivision.

NRPP Chair Diane Leeson said there were 18 people registered to speak to the panel about the DA.

Speakers included James Creek resident of 30 plus years, Pat Bowen, and Lorri Brown who spoke on behalf of the James Creek Residents Action Group stating the development would double the population of the village, which went against council’s targeted growth figures for James Creek.

Carolyn Cameron, whose husband’s family settled in James Creek in 1863 said she feared ‘that our close-knit rural community is going to be lost’.

An emotional Sharon Farlow, who holds a routine movement stock permit to move her cattle along James Creek Road which her family has done for 100 years, feared with increased traffic her livelihood would be impacted.

Neighbour Keira Fahey urged the NRPP to follow council’s refusal recommendation as the buffer zone between the subdivision and other properties was not adequate…..

Read the full article here.