The former head of the Department of Social Services (DSS) has told a royal commission he refuses to believe there was a “conspiracy” among his staff to “dupe” him.
Also on Thursday, the contents of a crucial minute sent to then-social services minister Scott Morrison in February 2015 confirming his request for welfare “compliance” measures, and DSS warnings about the need for legislative change to enact robodebt, were revealed for the first time.
Asked about his knowledge of robodebt, Finn Pratt, who was the secretary of the DSS from 2013 until mid-2017, told the inquiry he had no knowledge of the use of the unlawful “income averaging” method central to the scheme.
Pratt said what became the robodebt proposal never reached him in the early months of 2015 when it was being developed.
The proposal was being developed by the Department of Human Services (DHS) and the evidence suggests the DSS was essentially sidelined despite being responsible for social security policy.
Pratt agreed with the view of federal court judge Bernard Murphy, who presided over a class action against the scheme.
In noting a mammoth settlement between the government and hundreds of thousands of victims, Murphy described it as a “shameful chapter” but said it was more likely to be a “stuff up”.
“Commissioner in my experience in the public service it is almost always a stuff up,” Pratt said. “I cannot think of any examples where a conspiracy has been concocted by people to do something deliberately.”
But he was pressed by the commissioner, Catherine Holmes, who asked: “What about conspiracy to conceal a stuff up?”
Pratt replied: “Sometimes bureaucracies can be pretty good at trying to minimise the damage from adverse reports in the media or in Senate estimates.”
The inquiry has previously heard Serena Wilson, the former deputy secretary in Pratt’s department, concedes she was aware the robodebt scheme was unlawful but took no action to stop it.
“I trusted Ms Wilson and implicitly the advice that she gave me,” Pratt said, describing her as one of the finest public servants he had worked with.
Asked by senior counsel assisting Justin Greggery if he had been “duped” by Wilson, Pratt replied: “If you are suggesting to me that there was a conspiracy among my people to dupe me, I refuse to believe that.
“I worked with these people for many, many years. And that is not the nature of these people.”
He said if people acted in good faith, “I take responsibility as secretary.”
On Thursday the commission was also shown a February 2015 minute, signed by Morrison, showing he wanted the DHS to work with the DSS to progress “consideration of additional policy and legislative changes in relation to payment integrity”.
That followed a meeting with Kathryn Campbell, the then-secretary of the DHS.
An attached document outlined several policy options, including using Australian Tax Office data as the “primary evidence rather than just a trigger”, but notes that the DSS “advised that legislative change would … be needed to implement this initiative”.
The methods described were implemented from May 2015 as the robodebt scheme, but the law was not changed.
Asked by how a policy could have been implemented without legislative change given DSS’s warning, Pratt said he did not know.
Given DSS was responsible for social security legislation, Pratt said he would have expected DHS to redesign the policy and work with DSS on it.
Pratt, the most senior public servant to appear before the royal commission so far, said he didn’t necessarily expect his minister, Morrison, to raise the details with him. He said he never saw the minute and was not made aware of the plan.
“It’s possible Mr Morrison may have thought, well Ms Campbell knows what she’s on about, or at least Ms [Malisa] Golightly as the author of this”. Golightly, who has since died, was a deputy secretary at DHS.
‘Welfare cop’ in notes on 2015 meeting
The inquiry also heard about the time pressure for the proposal to be included in the budget and that legislating was not attractive because the government was facing a hostile Senate. It also heard of Morrison’s personal interest in welfare compliance.
Pratt’s handwritten notes of a 22 January 2015 meeting, shown to the commission, mentioned the phrase “welfare cop”.
Morrison had flagged in media at the time his desire for a “strong welfare cop on the beat”, though Pratt said what became the robodebt scheme was not specifically mentioned in the meeting.
Pratt also recalled receiving a phone call from the former social services minister, Christian Porter, at the initial height of the robodebt scheme.
Pratt said: “Mr Porter might have said something in the order of, ‘What the hell is all this about?’ I think my response was, you are reading the same media I am. This is clearly something which DHS is doing.”
Pratt said he had connected Porter with the acting secretary of the DHS, because that department was running the debt recovery scheme.
Asked why had not tried to satisfy himself that the robodebt scheme was legal, and instead just relied on the assertions of staff, Pratt insisted he accepted responsibility for what happened in his department, but also said the program was DHS’s program.
He said he wasn’t trying to minimise the importance of what occurred but had other priorities at the time, such as the national disability insurance scheme.
“This was one headache, which wasn’t my headache,” he said.
The royal commission continues.
