the former head of the Department of Human Services who oversaw the robo-debt rollout,had been suspended without pay just three days after the royal commission this month made personally damning findings against her.
Former Department of Human Services secretary Kathryn Campbell.
A former commanding officer of the University of Sydney Regiment and brigadier in the Army Reserve who rose to the highest ranks of the Australian Public Service,Campbell’s series of car crash public performances at robo-debt hearings before Senate committees and the royal commission became emblematic of an unfeeling bureaucracy that willingly did the former Coalition government’s bidding. Robo-debt reversed the onus of proof for people who received letters punched out by computer,without even providing basic follow-up information about how to seek advice or challenge the supposed debt. This was big data meeting big government at its most heartless and impersonal.
At her first Senate committee in 2017 when the controversial scheme was at its height,Campbell shifted the blame to victims of robo-debt saying “they had not engaged” with Centrelink and this was the reason for false calculations and the ongoing debt-chasing of over 500,000 people. At a second Senate hearing in 2020,she denied that people had died by suicide as a result of receiving the unlawful automated debt recovery notices.
Then,testifying at the royal commission in late 2022,Campbell admitted to having a “lack of curiosity” over advice related to the legality of the scheme and acknowledged it was her department’s “significant oversight” that led to cabinet being misled,though she denied it was deliberate. Others gave testimony that her staff was fearful of her and her department had deliberately misled an Ombudsman’s investigations by withholding key documents that flagged issues with the scheme’s legality.
The royal commission subsequently concluded Campbell had intentionally misled cabinet because she knew the then-social services minister Scott Morrison wanted to pursue the program,had deliberately instructed her own legal team to discontinue a request for legal advice on the scheme,and she had shelved a damning just as it was about to finish because she feared its contents would be damaging.
In 2021,then prime minister Morrison appointed her secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade,but a year later Albanese put her on hold in a Department of Defence “AUKUS-related role” on a package of up to $900,000 a year where she languished until the royal commission findings.
Regrettably,bureaucrats in the Australian Public Service are subjected to increasing pressure by politicians to yield to political needs,but experience shows as soon as things go wrong the MPs step back and leave bureaucrats to carry the blame and cop it in the neck.
Of the five frontbenchers who appeared before the royal commission to explain their role in the robo-debt scheme,only two,Morrison and Senator Marise Payne,remain in parliament. The others,Malcolm Turnbull,Alan Tudge,Christian Porter and Stuart Robert have resigned and walked away.
As the first to publicly suffer some penalty for the robo-debt scandal,Campbell is the sacrificial lamb. While theHerald is deeply concerned about the roles played by several senior public servants in this tawdry matter,it is important that politicians,too,are held to account. The Westminster system means ultimate responsibility lies with the executive government.
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