Robodebt public servants ‘lost their way’ and broke rules
Twelve current and former public servants broke code of conduct rules and failed to show care and integrity when they designed and delivered Centrelink’s illegal welfare debt recovery scheme, an inquiry has found.
The officials breached their code of conduct 97 times through their involvement with the robodebt program, the Australian Public Service Commission found.
The scheme was introduced in 2015 under a coalition government, with former social services minister Scott Morrison taking on the portfolio with the aim of overhauling the welfare system and achieving government savings.
Between 2015 and 2019, the scheme automatically used tax office data to calculate average earnings and issue debt notices.
It claimed more than $750 million from almost 400,000 people, despite legal concerns being raised for several years.
Many welfare recipients were falsely accused of owing the government money, the onus was put on recipients to prove to Centrelink they didn’t owe anything, and the scheme was linked to several suicides.
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“In their dogged pursuit to deliver on a government priority, some respondents lost their way,” a task force report released on Friday said.
“These public servants lost their objectivity and, in all likelihood, drowned out the deafening and growing criticisms of the scheme to pursue an operational objective.”
Four people still working in the public service have been slapped with sanctions ranging from fines, demotions, reprimands and one had their salary reduced.
But there is no framework for punishing a former employee and it is unclear how the others who have retired or resigned would be treated.
Many claimed they had behaved ethically because they acted in line with rules, but the report said they should have considered whether the robodebt program was a “sound and fair” public policy.
“This narrow understanding of the ‘ethical’ value meant that little regard was paid to whether decisions were, in fact, ethical,” the commission’s report read.
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For example, the scheme automatically calculated debt by averaging an individual’s income, but this often failed to accurately reflect their earnings and many were ordered to pay more than they owed.
The commission found “little evidence” of any concern or assessment about whether this approach was the right thing to do, particularly when dealing with vulnerable people who may not have the records necessary to disprove their debt notices.
The report found the workplace culture did not foster critical discussion over the robodebt scheme and any criticism was often perceived as delaying progress towards implementing government policy.
This was because the intimidating senior leadership created a culture where employees felt they could not raise risks and issues.
Some higher-ups would also deflect accountability when they had delegated large and unsustainable amounts of work to junior staff.
This would later be used as a justification to explain why the department had not paid enough attention to robodebt’s legal, ethical and operation risks.
No single person was accountable for the scheme, the report said, but the chain reaction of multiple individual failures led to progressive systemic problems.
A Royal Commission into robodebt delivered a damning report in 2023.
“It is remarkable how little interest there seems to have been in ensuring the scheme’s legality, how rushed its implementation was, how little thought was given to how it would affect welfare recipients and the lengths to which public servants were prepared to go to oblige ministers on a quest for savings,” commissioner Catherine Holmes wrote.
“Truly dismaying was the revelation of dishonesty and collusion to prevent the scheme’s lack of legal foundation coming to light.”
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– with AAP
