Extract from ABC News
Analysis
Let's just stop and remind ourselves of what led to the Robodebt fiasco that has once again been laid bare at royal commission hearings in Brisbane.
Robodebt came about because people living in highly disadvantaged circumstances did what the government asked of them: they tried to get work, rather than just relying on government income support.
The resulting annual income — usually paltry — that they received from any of this work and reported to the tax office was then matched up by computers against their regular statements of what they were earning, looking for discrepancies.
Checks on earnings of welfare recipients had long been part of the system.
But what happened with Robodebt was that, after several decades of being characterised in the political maelstrom as bludgers, the bludger presumption was programmed into the very fabric of the systems used to provide income support.
Public servants keen to show a "can do" approach promised ministers that there was the potential to make the budget look better by billions of dollars by using technology to dramatically escalate the assessments process.
Without any human intervention, computer programs were deciding that more than 400,000 people were ripping off the system. It was impossible to challenge what regularly turned out to be wildly inaccurate assessments.
And then it turned out that the whole thing was unlawful. And the government knew this for quite a long time. But did not immediately shut it down.
'Massive personal misgivings'
At the royal commission, we've heard ministers who oversaw the portfolio during this period say they weren't responsible for what their department officials did.
And this week, former minister Stuart Robert claimed that he could repeatedly make statements he personally believed to be false on the basis of "cabinet solidarity".
"As a dutiful cabinet minister, ma'am, that's what we do," Robert told Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes.
Holmes replied: "Misrepresent things to the Australian public?"
Robert had told the royal commission he may have had "massive personal misgivings" about the scheme by the middle of 2019 but was waiting for legal advice and holding the government line in the meantime.
But the commission also heard evidence from Robert's former department head Renee Leon and chief departmental counsel Timothy Ffrench that Robert had dismissed the advice as just an opinion, even when he did receive an opinion from the solicitor-general later in the year.
Robert denied receiving a verbal briefing in July 2019 on an earlier legal opinion — from the Australian Government Solicitor — contradicting Ffrench's claim he had brought a hard copy of that advice (received in March) and spoken to it.
Leon claimed she had been forced to stop the scheme in November 2019, before the government agreed, because of the personal legal risk she faced as a public servant by administering a scheme believed to be unlawful.
So a cabinet minister ignored legal advice that a multi-billion dollar scheme he was administering was unlawful. And justified lying repeatedly to the Australian public about it on the basis of cabinet solidarity. And of administering a scheme over which he had grave personal misgivings to boot.
Ignoring legal advice, justifying lying
The most depressing thing about this, of course, is that we have got to the stage of not being all that surprised by any of it.
The current government services minister, Bill Shorten, quite rightly observed on ABC radio on Friday morning that it was "peak bizarre that you can say that cabinet solidarity allows you to give false statements".
"Cabinet solidarity means you've got to support a policy but I don't think it means that you're allowed to make up facts to support the policy.
"Cabinet solidarity, in essence, is a doctrine which says that cabinet ministers can talk through policies in the sanctity of cabinet. But once a decision is made they all have to support it."
When this royal commission is over, we need to have a serious conversation about our Westminister conventions. Because they are only that.
The way it always worked in the past was that ministers were responsible for things that happened within the portfolios they ran, and resigned if there were big problems of which you should be aware. And (spurious arguments that it justified misleading the Australian people aside) cabinet solidarity meant that if you didn't agree with a policy position of the cabinet, you resigned.
It's been a long time since anyone regularly observed these conventions.
But it's about time we talked about what those conventions should be.
There is also the issue of the entire culture in the Department of Human Services (DHS) which, ironically, is one of the central agencies that actually interacts with members of the public.
It's not just Robodebt
It has not just been Robodebt that has betrayed a spectacular capacity to argue bureaucratic idiocies while studiously avoiding the purpose of the policies it was supposed to be delivering.
Take an exchange in late 2020 in the Senate estimates.
You will remember the long and passionate debate about winding back the COVID supplement that had effectively doubled the support many low-income households received.
There were multiple analyses done at the time which estimated the supplement had lifted around 400,000 people out of poverty after decades in which social security payments had not been increased.
About that time, Labor Senator (now finance minister) Katy Gallagher asked officials from DHS in late October 2020 about what advice the department was providing the government on poverty and how many people might be falling below the poverty line.
A central figure in the Robodebt saga, Rene Leon's predecessor Kathryn Campbell, told Gallagher:
"I don't think that's how we frame the advice".
There were some minutes of discussion about how definitions of poverty could be "very theoretical and relative".
Gallagher asked:
"So do you not use poverty as a measure during your policy development work? Presumably you've been dealing with this issue of adequacy of the unemployment payment. As part of that, surely you have to consider people's…"
Campbell interrupted her to say:
"It's about what does the word 'poverty' mean? It's about how much support is provided to people; what are their expenses versus the support base? Those are the issues, but we haven't provided advice about a definition of poverty".
Of course, Gallagher wasn't asking for a definition. She was asking whether the department which is supposed to look after people doing it tough could say whether government support was forcing people to live in poverty or not.
But facing pleas to not cut back the supplement — and force people back into poverty — the government didn't want to hear any talk about poverty.
And there certainly wasn't any in the Senate hearing from Kathryn Campbell, who went on to be promoted under the Morrison government to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
"I was not alone in my thinking that her elevation to the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was a very good reward for someone who had no background in diplomacy," Leon told the royal commission this week.
By contrast, Professor Leon — who is now vice chancellor of Charles Sturt University and president of the Institute for Public Administration Australia — was sacked in December 2019, a month after she advised Stuart Robert that she would be closing the Robodebt scheme because it was unlawful.
When the Robodebt Royal Commission is over, we also have to have a serious talk about the culture of the public service.
Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.
No comments:
Post a Comment