The Coalition’s robodebt scheme was illegal, unfair, cruel, failed to achieve its goals and was the result of the Department of Human Services misleading both the Department of Social Services and cabinet, and Scott Morrison allowing cabinet to be misled as to the legal status of the scheme.
That’s the conclusion of the robodebt royal commission report by Catherine Holmes AC SC, released this morning.
The report describes the near-complete collapse of proper process within the cabinet of the Abbott government and the Department of Human Services (DHS) — making for one of the worst moments in the history of the Australian Public Service — as an “ill-conceived, embryonic idea and rushed to cabinet”.
The legislative changes necessary to make the robodebt income averaging process legal were quietly removed from key documents as then-minister Scott Morrison took the proposal through cabinet — despite clear advice that income averaging as a basis for raising welfare debts was inconsistent with the Social Security Act.
Holmes is scathing of Morrison, who “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”.
Moreover, Holmes concluded Morrison misled the royal commission as well, rejecting as “untrue Mr Morrison’s evidence that he was told that income averaging as contemplated in the executive minutes was an established practice and a ‘foundational way’ in which DHS worked”.
DHS’ leadership is also savaged for misleading both the Department of Social Services and cabinet, and minister Marise Payne, for downplaying or omitting entirely the role of income averaging, in order to avoid issues around the legality of relying on income averaging; its “officers … misled cabinet as to what it involved”. It identifies a number of senior officers as being aware that cabinet was being misled and failing to take any action, including then-secretary Kathryn Campbell.
In oral evidence, Ms Campbell accepted that the NPP [new policy proposal] 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.
Not merely was robodebt disastrous as a policy process, but its implementation was also a catastrophe, “the result of its being put into operation in haste, rather than conscious decision-making”. Its “disastrous” effects became clear from September 2016, the report finds, and by the start of 2017, “robodebt’s unfairness, probable illegality and cruelty became apparent”.
Instead of amending or ceasing the scheme, the Coalition relied on a faulty Ombudsman’s report — the result of more deception — “as proof of the legality and appropriateness of robodebt against all comers”. “Meanwhile, the scheme trundled on, with the government engaging PricewaterhouseCoopers to assist with some of its clumsier components (although never taking receipt of a critical report prepared by the consultancy).”
The scheme completely failed to achieve any of its intended goals: none of the cost savings ever materialised — “the online component was an abject failure, with the result that large numbers of employees had to be drafted on short-term contracts or by way of labour hire into the DHS to cope with enquiries. And it became apparent, partly as a result of that factor, but also because of the overestimation in the first place of the numbers of debts and their average amount, that the touted savings would never be reached. The cover-up continued.”
The result was compensation of $746 million to 381,000 Australians targeted under an illegal scheme and multiple deaths.
A separate, unreleased chapter recommends referrals of individuals for both civil and criminal prosecution. The question of who misled whom may yet be played out in court.
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