The searing findings of the robodebt royal commission contain profound criticisms of our political and government culture. The momentum for change peaked in the 30 seconds after the report was released, as victims finally receive a cycle of front page media coverage – something the scheme never truly received before.
When it all dies down, those who are left living in the system will ask one question: will anything change?
The first thing that drives the recommendations is classic Australian judicial restraint. There is no real effort to frame robodebt in terms of human rights. If robodebt wasn’t a basis to argue for a charter of rights for our vulnerable what else would work? Yet that hasn’t yet happened in broad civil society, outside of attempts by the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Most of the recommendations impose a responsibility to change on the institutions who failed all the way through. They are entrusted to self-correct their culture and learn the lessons of robodebt. My emotions are too raw and I am too close to the issue to say I am confident. We are left hoping the moving evidence of someone like the former senior assistant ombudsman Louise Macleod will catalyse a new era of courage in its work.
Despite personally calling for this commission, my own academic work is clear that most commissions don’t result in lasting change or get full implementation. The closer the recommendations are to the existing position of government, the more likely they will be implemented. Many of the recommendations will have those in power nodding sagely and saying “already under way”. The one glaring exception is robodebt royal commissioner Catherine Holmes’s approach to transparency issues.
The report recommends that we change our approach to cabinet confidentiality. In an interesting moment at the press conference, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, accidentally started contradicting aspects of the royal commission report. He hadn’t yet read all 990 pages. He volubly stated that confidentiality – the fact information will never come out – is what gives public servants courage, despite them being under professional obligations to give frank and fearless advice at all times.
The rebuttal for this is robodebt itself. The public servants who perpetrated it knew people like me could never get evidence. Every damning interaction was protected by section 34 of the Freedom of Information Act and legal professional privilege. The heroic IT expert Justin Warren tried for years, gaslit by Services Australia, to get even a few scraps of information.
The prime minister should reflect on his initial take that we can find a solution. I know freedom of information has few champions in Canberra. Why else would the information commissioner resign? It was so hard to sit for years and point at documents we knew we’d never see. We knew the executive minutes would tell the tale. I guessed in 2017, as soon as I saw footnote 8 of the ombudsman report, that the pilot document would show our government literally banked on people giving up. Our laws operated to provide a safe space for the terrible wrong that was perpetrated.
Holmes also called for all algorithms to be published and audited by a new regulator. Right now that is actively resisted all across Canberra. My prediction is there’ll be an attempt to read that recommendation to involve a confidential “expert review” of the algorithms. We are going to need the help of every Australian to get that recommendation over the line.
Luke Henriques-Gomes has had the same reaction to the report as I have. Things will only change if the public changes the way we talk about social security. That’s why people like me, Tom Studans and others spent days on social media during this commission. Writing academic articles felt too useless. People have to care.
My heart leapt when Commissioner Holmes called out the stigma and the shame in her preface. But her words rest on one giant assumption.
“Politicians must lead … ”
I can only say that was not the robodebt experience.
We watched victims take their enormous debt files into politicians’ offices for years. The truth is the politicians had no idea what they contained. I watched victims pour their trauma out right from the start. All politicians waited for the courts to supply an ethical lifeboat.
No matter who you vote for the government always gets in. Each and every one of us will spend half our lives being governed by those we profoundly disagree with. Some will spend all of it in that state. The failure of the conservative leaders to roundly condemn robodebt on Friday and in the past is devastating for recipients. I understand party politics. But when a conservative government returns, what will happen then?
We must empower now, and not tell soothing tales. We must be clear it was those on social security themselves, with their very suffering, who stopped robodebt.
The original budget measure was the subject of one estimates question in our parliament. More than 100,000 of these debts had been issued before the first media story, until Asher Wolf, #notmydebt campaigners and others stood for people and said: what is this nightmare? Even then robodebt was designated as a “welfare” or “summer” story by editors. Secretary Campbell could confidently joke that cricketers misbehaving would have taken people’s pain off the front page in 2018. Robodebt was always something our journalists “hadn’t been following”, being covered by “some guy in the Guardian”.
While the powerful engaged in accountability theatre, people went on suffering and suffering.
• Darren O’Donovan is a senior lecturer in administrative law at La Trobe law school
