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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

With over 100 witnesses and nine weeks of hearings, the commission into one of the greatest failures in the history of the Australian government has already given us unforgettable insight into the thinking of our public servants and leading politicians.

But there are still questions to be answered, like, how could so many find themselves in lock-step behind a policy that was unlawful?

Today, senior reporter for The Saturday Paper, Rick Morton, on what we learned from inside the commission’s hearings.

It’s Tuesday March 14.

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RUBY:

So Rick. The final week of public hearings at the Royal Commission into Robodebt has just ended. And I suppose the first question I have for you is how are you feeling?

RICK:

I am glad it's over from a really personal point of view, but I'm glad we had it. I think I was trying to count the number of hours of hearings we've had in public, and it's close to 200 hours, if not more. And we've heard a lot of evidence and we've started to get to the truth of this thing for the first time. So I think there is a sense of relief from a lot of people who've been waiting for this moment and a little bit of nerves now waiting for the final report.

RUBY:

And I think one of the most shocking things to hear as the Royal Commission has gone on is just all the ways in which ministers, and public servants, and everyone who was involved, kind of ended up all together in lockstep behind this policy. That at the end of the day, it was unlawful. So where do you think that all of that began?

RICK:

One of the excellent achievements of this commission is it really clearly spelled out that robo-debt from the very beginning was the expression of a political desire, and that was a political desire that met with this idea that was already percolating in the public service. And so when you get these two forces coming together, you get robo-debt, and you get the saga that we've been living with now for years.

And one of the crucial moments came back in January 2015, when Scott Morrison was only a month, really, into his portfolio as Minister for Social Services.

Archival tape – Graham Richardson:

“In our Canberra studio is Scott Morrison, the man who stopped the boats and is now going to stop. Who knows what we'll find out today. G'day Scott, how are you?”

Archival tape – Scott Morrison:

“G’day Graham mate.”

RICK:

And he was talking about a crackdown on welfare.

Archival tape – Graham Richardson:

“Now who are you going to crack down on, because a bloke like you, he's not going to sit there and do nothing. Now, does that mean that anyone on the dole is going to look out?”

Archival tape – Scott Morrison:

“Well, anyone who's trying to rip it off does, anyone who's trying to rip off the welfare system.”

RICK:

And, you know, putting a tough new welfare cop on the beat.

Archival tape – Scott Morrison:

“So there does need to be a strong welfare cop on the beat and I'll certainly be looking to do that.”

RICK:

And it set off a chain of events still being resolved today.

At 2 pm, January 22nd, The Department of Human Services Deputy Secretary, Malisa Golightly, emailed just the link of that full interview to her boss, the Secretary of the Department, Kathryn Campbell.

Archival tape – Catherine Holmes:

“Ms Campbell I’m not sure if you took an oath or an affirmation but whatever it was it still binds you, you understand?”

Archival tape – Kathryn Campbell:

“Yes commissioner.”

RICK:

And Kathryn Campbell is really an important person to keep in mind here because she will return again and again and again throughout this whole saga.

Archival tape – Justin Gregory:

“And do you recall that Ms. Golightly sent you an email in respect of that interview and a link to the full interview about 2:00 that time?”

Archival tape – Kathryn Campbell:

“Yes.”

RICK:

And it was put to her in evidence by Justin Greggery KC, the senior counsel assisting the Royal Commission, that that was a significant moment.

Archival tape – Justin Gregory:

“And the statement of the minister, I take it was significant to you and Ms. Golightly because it indicated the direction that Minister Morrison wanted to go in respect of his leadership of the portfolio generally?”

Archival tape – Kathryn Campbell:

“Yes.”

RICK:

And it showed that Kathryn Campbell and Malisa Golightly, the two most senior people in the Department of Human Services, were very, very in tune, or at least wanting to keep abreast of exactly what Scott Morrison wanted.

RUBY:

And they make good on that promise, don't they, to crack down on welfare. We know that the public service had this proposal that had been brewing for a long time to use algorithms to predict debts. And they turned to that, didn't they?

RICK:

Yeah. So Kathryn Campbell met with Scott Morrison, essentially by accident because Marise Payne, her Minister for Human Services, was on leave in December 2014 when Morrison became minister. And so it was Katherine Campbell that first briefed him. And it was in that first briefing where he said, I want to look at welfare compliance. Now she goes back to her people, including Malisa Golightly, and it says, “Bring forth what you've got. What are you working on? Shake the tree”, And they did that. They shook the tree.

It now turns out in the middle, in the bowels of the Department of Human Services, they used an algorithm and income averaging, using that pay as you go tax data, to tell them whether there might be a debt, maybe?

Now, this proposal was floated up the chain pretty early on in the end of 2014. And we know from this royal commission that the Department of Social Services got legal advice from one of their lawyers Anne Pulford, and that legal advice was really clear “You can't do this. It's illegal income averaging in this way is not consistent with the legislation.”

Now, despite all of this, ten days after that Morrison interview — the one that was flagged by Malisa Golightly to Kathryn Campbell — Campbell met with the then Human Services Minister, Marise Payne, who's back from leave as of January 2015. Still, the senator made an entry in her notebook that indicated the discussion had turned to Morrison and that welfare crackdown. And her note say “what can we do without having to legislate?” Now, this is crucial because if you remember at the time, the Senate was a bit ratty, and it was difficult to get stuff through, and they didn't want a fuss around. They wanted something that could start immediately.

On the other hand, they should have known that robo-debt was unlawful, unless the legislation was changed because they were told about it. And Scott Morrison himself was told about it in the first brief that he received with the proposal that he had asked Kathryn Campbell to go out and find.

And he circled pursue, which is one of the options given to ministers, pursue or do not pursue. And that was that.

And everything that followed that moment can be seen through the light of the panic of highly paid and, quote unquote, “responsive public servants” who morphed into political servants themselves by their own considerable ambition. And they were willing to ignore or actively cover up, as we've heard, a program that stalked and tricked vulnerable people by the hundreds of thousands into paying back debts they never owed.

RUBY:

Well, let’s talk a bit more about these people, these senior public servants like Kathryn Campbell. How are they thinking about the program at this point — as it begins to take shape. Are they thinking about what the implications are of going forward with robo-debt?

RICK:

Yeah, it's a really good question, because despite giving evidence that she was paying close attention to every single budget proposal, Kathryn Campbell says she just never noticed that suddenly any reference to income averaging — which was the part that made this thing illegal — had been removed. But the policy parameters themselves had never changed, so they changed the language in the brief in the new policy proposal, but they never changed the actual policy.

Archival tape – Kathryn Campbell:

“I was not responsible for the passage of the legislation, and we had relied on the DSS’ advice about the legislation.”

RICK:

Now, she's been essentially saying, “look, I'm the secretary. I trusted the advice of the Department of Social Services. I trusted my deputy secretary, Malisa Golightly.” She assumed that Malisa Golightly and the deputy secretary at DSS had worked together and that suddenly the proposal really had changed so that they no longer needed to change the legislation.

Archival tape – Catherine Holmes:

“I am just trying to understand what your position was. Did you think that averaging was just legal across the board?”

Archival tape – Kathryn Campbell:

“No.”

Archival tape – Catherine Holmes:

“Well, then why was it legal for people who hadn't responded?”

RICK:

Now, Commissioner Catherine Holmes wasn't really having much of that, because she's pretty well versed in disbelief already at these hearings. And she expressed some more of it when she said, you know, these were your department's customers.

Archival tape – Catherine Holmes:

“And you're responsible for the impact on… we don't quite know the number of customers because 866,000 interventions doesn't necessarily equate to that many customers, but we can probably assume half a million. Was it not a concern to you that it would have this kind of impact? On a customer base of that size.”

RICK:

How could you not worry about that? How could you not wonder how this was going to be done and whether it would be done?

And Campbell just kept repeating this key line of hers as if, really genuinely, as if it were a prayer.

Archival tape – Kathryn Campbell:

“These were matters that were discussed with DSS. I did not discuss them in detail with DSS at this time.”

Archival tape – Catherine Holmes:

“Ok thank you.”

RICK:

She said she falsely believed it was being used as a last resort and that people wouldn't receive any fake debt if they'd just updated their information with Centrelink. And Commissioner Holmes was blunt and said.

Archival tape – Catherine Holmes:

“And if they didn't contact, it was just. It served them right, did it?“

Archival tape – Kathryn Campbell:

“No.”

Archival tape – Catherine Holmes:

“Well how did it work?”

RICK:

She was repeatedly asked by Justin Greggery KC why did you persist with the scheme that you knew to be wrong even if you thought it was legal? And she kept saying…

Archival tape – Kathryn Campbell:

“Can you repeat the question, Mr Greggery?”

Archival tape – Kathryn Campbell:

“I’m having difficulty following this question.”

Archival tape – Kathryn Campbell:

“Mr Greggery could you break the question into parts to allow me to better understand what you’re asking.”

RICK:

And it was agonising with truly, truly agonising.

Archival tape – Justin Greggery:

“We’ll be here a very long time if you don’t answer it.”

RICK:

And Campbell just kept offering those variations of “I relied on the legal advice” Greggery, unimpressed went on. He said, “I don't doubt it, but it doesn't mean you have to implement a system where you actually know that it might lead to the recovery of money from people who don't owe a debt.” And eventually, finally, Campbell just said, “I didn't turn my mind to it.” Which really is the only answer they can give, which is another way of saying we just didn't care.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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Archival tape – Catherine Holmes:

“And now you’re calling Mr Robert?”

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“I call Mr Robert.”

Archival tape – Catherine Holmes:

“Mr Robert, will you take an oath or an affirmation?”

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“I’ll take an oath.”

Archival tape – Catherine Holmes:

“Thank you.”

RUBY:

Rick, we heard some interesting testimony came from the former Government Services Minister, Stuart Robert. Could you go back and just tell me a bit about when Stuart Robert enters the picture in terms of Robodebt — and how it was that he came before the Commission?

RICK:

Yeah. So Stuart, Robert is a very interesting case study.

Archival tape – Unknown:

You are presently a member of the House of Representatives, Mr Robert?

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“I am.”

RICK:

He was the Minister for Government Services from May 2019 until early 2021. So in the final stages of Robodebt, Stuart Robert is fully in the frame. He is the minister responsible for implementing it.

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“If I can take you back Mr Scott if I may…”

Archival tape – Unknown:

“Sure.”

RICK:

Now, Stuart Robert is fascinating and unique, I would say, in all of the witnesses, because not only does he have a bad memory and doesn't recall things when it would be convenient to the commission for him to have a recall.

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“I do not recall this being briefed to me. I don't recall my department saying, on the 4th of July, “we have an AGS advice.””

RICK:

But he's got a very good memory when it comes to his own heroics, because he claimed the credit for stopping Robodebt. He says it was him that did it.

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“When the SG advice arrived, my department had had it for seven or eight weeks. I had it for 2 hours before I walked straight into the Prime Minister's office unannounced, put it down and said, “We need to stop this.”

RICK:

Honestly, it was some of the most bizarre hours of testimony at this entire royal commission, because even while he was there giving this amazing swashbuckling story about marching into the prime minister's office with the legal advice and slamming it down on the table and saying, “We need to stop this.”

And while he's giving that evidence in that previous week, we'd heard …the precise opposite.

RUBY:

Okay. And could we kind of unpack some of the contradictions between what Stuart Robert is saying now, versus what he was actually saying when Robodebt was still active. What was he saying to the public when he was a minister?

RICK:

Yeah, it's a pretty fascinating story.

On the 14th of November 2019, Stuart Robert gives a speech at the National Press Club, and he's asked a question by Paul Karp from The Guardian, “ If you're so confident Robodebt is legal, why has Centrelink never defended it in court?” And up until that point they never had.

And Robert gets up and at first he tries not to answer the question at all and then gets quite grumpy and says “Okay. If you want an answer, I'll give you one.” And he gets up there and he says, you know, “Robodebt is absolutely appropriate.” He says the system is totally appropriate.

But at the hearings, on the stand under oath, I might add, he said something completely different.

Archival tape – Unknown:

Could I ask you, Mr Robert, to turn to your tab 61 in volume 2, Exhibit 6296, Doc ID SRO.001.001.0141.

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“National Press Club speech?”

Archival tape – Unknown:

“Yes.”

RICK:

Now, according to his own evidence, he was fully, formally, properly briefed on November 7. That’s when he walked into the Prime Minister’s office and said “We need to stop this”, a full week before the National Press Club. And yet he still gets up — after knowing that Robodebt is illegal — and he lies.

RUBY:

Did he say why he did that?

RICK:

He lies because he says there was no alternative but to lie.

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“I kept my words very tight because I knew the decision had been made. I knew I could not communicate anything about it.”

RICK:

And that he knew he was lying because it was his job.

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“It’s a dreadful place for a minister to be in, that’s why I tried to deflect at first”

RICK:

He said I was a Cabinet Minister. Cabinet solidarity demanded that I back the position of the government and essentially it was my job to lie. He said that's just how the Westminster system works.

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“And as a dutiful cabinet minister, ma'am. That's what we do.”

Archival tape – Commissioner:

"Misrepresent things to the Australian public?"

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“I wouldn't, respectfully, put it that way, because until such time, Commissioner, as I've got the legal opinion, I could be wrong.“

RICK:

So there's all this political pressure and it just paints a very grim, and a very real story, one that is almost beyond doubt now, which is that nothing else mattered except the money.

RUBY:

And so when you try and assign responsibility here, you know, you've got the government, the mentality in the public service, the ministers, the lack of any sort of one person taking responsibility. And after sitting in those hearings and hearing this testimony, how do you kind of grapple with the question of accountability here?

RICK:

They're all responsible. There is no one person to blame for Robodebt and I know that people have wanted one person to be responsible. And I know a lot of people have wanted Scott Morrison to be responsible. And Scott Morrison was deeply, deeply involved in this whole thing from the very beginning. But he is not nearly alone. There is a cast of dozens of people from government ministers, yes, who set the ambient mood music for the destruction of people's lives through welfare crackdown. So that's kind of the tone they set, right. And over many years, the public service has been sharpened into the tip of the spear that is held and wielded by the people in power, and they serve those people.

And Renée Leon gave evidence that secretaries of departments who were more, quote unquote, “responsive to the government agenda”, particularly under the coalition government, were rewarded. And those who weren't were sacked. She was sacked. She was the one who gave advice that ended Robodebt, and she was sacked.

So there is a cast of dozens of people across both the political sphere and the public service. Everyone of the people who designed this thing knew the debts weren’t accurate. You know who did know who the debts weren’t accurate? Centrelink's frontline workers, they were getting calls from people threatening suicide. They were getting more calls than ever, and they were losing social workers at a rate of knots because it was devastating to them to have their entire world flipped upside down, and have to deal with the vicarious trauma of what the system was doing to people. And they knew, one look at their client record, and they could tell that Centrelink had been averaging their income over an entire year when their income was not even over an entire year.

This is a complex web of deception and moral cowardice that led to this thing happening. And that’s what the commission has to try and intervene on.

RUBY:

And just on the idea of of closure, I mean, you spoke about the people who were pursued by the scheme, the people who were calling up front line workers and talking about suicide. And I know that you've spoken to too many of these people over the years, and their families who suffered under Robodebt. And for a long time, I think many of them were sort of denied answers about what had happened. That's obviously changed with the royal commission. So what has this commission meant to them? To have the people involved actually forced to answer questions about what they knew?

RICK:

Yeah, I think people would discount that. But for the people who are actually caught up in this or who lost loved ones to this. They were not just lied to, but they were deceived in an incredibly complicated way over many years.

And what people wanted was to hear that their instincts were right, that this was never okay, this was never correct, mathematically legal, ethically, morally, even just purely as government administration, even if you wanted to be as cool as they were, the administration of this thing was an absolute abject failure. So at every level, the government failed. And all the way through they said there's nothing to see here. They were actively, actively misled.

So this is the kind of stuff that victims we're dealing with. And it's just really hard to put into words I think, the the explanatory power of a royal commission to tell you that you were right to be alarmed.

And that's kind of the evidence we got from Matthew Thompson, who gave you know, he said that “we were made to feel like we were welfare cheats.” You know, was hit with $11,000 in a Robodebt. And he said, “I have such little faith in the system.”

And that is the real burden that they bore was this idea that they were the ones who were defective, they were not the ones who were defective. There was nothing wrong with them. They were right. Their instincts were right. They did the right thing. They reported their income as was always required by centrelink. They always did the right thing. It was the government that was wrong. That government was defective and cynically so, and deliberately so. And now the people know. And I think once you know something it is harder for people to deceive you again. I think that’s the real value of this Royal Commission.

RUBY:

Rick, thank you so much for your time.

RICK:

Thanks Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Saudi oil company Aramco has posted a record profit for any publicly listed company in history.

The oil company posted a yearly profit of $243 million dollars — Fuelled by rising energy prices following the war in Ukraine.

And…

A man has been found dead after a 10-hour police siege in Townsville from Sunday night through to the early hours of Monday morning.

The siege began after gunshots were fired at nearby houses and cars.

The 50 year old man was found dead inside the house, with Queensland police still investigating.

I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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