RoboDebt Royal Commission: Kathryn Campbell must be first to go

The royal commission into Robodebt, one of the nation’s most shameful episodes of public administration, will be handed down today. No matter what it says, one of the key bureaucrats involved must lose her job, if nothing else, writes Rex Patrick

Even for someone enjoying a $890K a year advisory role inside the Federal government, Kathryn Campbell is unlikely to have been sleeping easy of late. With the findings of the RoboDebt Royal Commission out today, we’ll shortly find out what’s been causing all the tossing and turning for the former bureaucrat in charge of the scheme. There is virtually no chance she will escape unscathed. 

But first, a recap.

Ruined lives

On 18 August 2022, the Governor-General sent former Queensland Supreme Court Chief Justice, Catherine Ena Holmes AC SC, letters patent establishing a Royal Commission into RoboDebt — one of the most shameful episodes in public administration in recent decades.

The scheme, which ran from late 2015 to 2019, involved the unlawful debt recovery of Centrelink benefits from hundreds of thousands of the nation’s most in-need.

Numerous victims of RoboDebt and their families told the commission their stories, bringing home the terrible human cost of an ill-conceived, poorly administered and immoral program.

Commissioner Holmes took evidence over nine weeks from October 2022 to March 2023, hearing from over 100 witnesses, including two former prime ministers, Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull.  

Robodebt was very much a Morrison idea. The then social services minister announced the need for a “strong welfare cop” in 2015. He said the scheme would target  “would-be dole bludgers, disability support pension rorters and terrorists who want to wage war while on government benefits”.

Tens of thousands of thousands of documents have been pried from the hands of reluctant bureaucrats.  As the truth was laid bare, many of those involved claimed it was someone else’s doing. “Not me, them!” One of the tasks of the commission will be to properly attribute responsibility. 

 It is anticipated that the report will be promptly be made public.

Some already know they’re in the gun

Some key players already know what’s coming. That includes a select few senior leaders inside the Federal government.

Under its own practice guidelines, the royal commission will have already issued those in the firing line with a ‘notice of potential adverse finding’ or a “notice of potential referral” (in circumstances where the civil or criminal laws may have been breached) so that they were given the opportunity to make submissions-in-response.

Where the person issued with a notice is a current or former public servant or statutory appointee, the Commonwealth will also have been informed. 

 The Burden of Command

 “In each ship there is one man who, in the hour of emergency or peril at sea, can turn to no other man. There is one who alone is ultimately responsible for the safe navigation, engineering performance, accurate gunfire and morale of the ship. He is the Commanding Officer. He is the ship.” 

 – Joseph Conrad (1857 – 1924).

Morrison may have conceived the politics of “stopping the rorts”.  But as secretary of the Department of Human Services from 2011 to 2017 and then the Department of Social Services until 2021, Kathryn Campbell was the captain of the RoboDebt ship. She was ultimately responsible for its conduct and performance. And the ship ran aground.

She must surely be in possession of a notice from the commission. Given the evidence that was presented to it, it’s impossible that she will be unscathed.  One imagines that her new office in the Australian Submarine Agency, which formally came into operation on 1 July, is packed ready for a quick departure, at a salary saving to the taxpayer of $17,000 per week.

 It Started with A Secret Brief

It’s also wrong that she was given the near $900k a year role as the government’s advisor on AUKUS. Under Section 59 of the Public Service Act Prime Minister Anthony Albanese could have retired Campbell, who by then was secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, without recourse. He had the power to do so, but that didn’t happen.

The story of how Campbell ended up in an exceptionally well-paid and cushy berth in the defence department has been partly uncovered through FOIs and questions asked at estimates by Senators Barbara Pocock and Jacqui Lambie, but getting the unabridged version has been frustrated by Freedom of Information (FOI) obstruction inside government.

Kathryn Campbell – from RoboDebt ignominy to plum Defence job with the PM’s help

 

A recent FOI return shows that, shortly after Albanese was sworn in as our new PM on 23 May 2022, a secret brief was sent from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) to the PM relating to “the functions of agencies and the arrangements for agency secretaries”. 

In refusing to release it under FOI, PM&C advised that “its intended audience was limited due to the sensitive and confidential nature of its contents with respect to considering secretary appointments.”

Given what followed, it is clear that it proposed that a new secretary of foreign affairs was needed. Campbell was not needed at DFAT.

 Secretaries club saves one of their own

Australia’s top public servants are an elite that looks after their own.  Many of the top bureaucrats know each other well, having encountered, befriended and helped each other as their climbed the greasy bureaucratic pole. 

Enjoying six and seven figure salaries and exercising power over tens of thousands of public servants, they form a tight knit group with a keen sense of their privileges and prerogatives.  They sit next to each other at interdepartmental committees and task forces.  They lunch at the exclusive Commonwealth Club, discreetly located a stone’s throw from Parliament House. 

On reaching retirement they often nominate each other to sit on various company boards and advisory bodies, continuing to benefit from their long involvement in government.  When the Morrison lost office, it was already clear that Labor’s incoming foreign minister Penny Wong had no desire to retain the services of Campbell as DFAT secretary.  

The ‘secretaries club’ immediately kicked into ‘jobs-for-mates’ mode.  In early June 2022, the $1.2m per annum secretary of PM&C, Professor Glyn Davis, raised the prospect with the $942K per annum secretary of defence, Greg Moriarty, that Ms ‘$890K per annum’ Campbell might need to be redeployed.

In Mr Moriarty’s own words at Senate estimates, “He confided in me that she was likely to be removed from the position of secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.”

Mr Moriarty went on: “He (Davis) subsequently contacted me on 14 June to establish whether there might be a role for Ms Campbell, given that she was likely to be moving or transferred from her position as the secretary of the department of foreign affairs and trade. He asked me to think about whether there was an appropriate role”.

“I then responded to Professor Davis that I believed there was a role for her in the defence portfolio in the nuclear-powered submarine task force.”

On 22 June the Prime Minister announced Campbell would shift to the AUKUS project.

Over the next eight days the paperwork to create the job was filled in and rubber stamped by the then $794K Australian Public Service Commissioner Peter Woolcott (another member of the secretaries club) and Campbell’s contract was in place.

Despite her losing responsibility for management of Australia’s foreign affairs and 6,000 employees to become a sole advisor, she was to retain her $890K salary; receiving even more that her own new boss, Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead.

Writing is already on the Wall

It matters not whether Campbell received any notices from the commission. If she was watching Senate estimates, she knows the writing is on the wall. She’s lost the support of those above her.

In responding to questions about Campbell’s conduct and redeployment asked by Senator Barbara Pocock during the PM&C estimates hearings, Senator Wong looked distinctly uncomfortable.  It was not a subject she wanted to talk about, but her attitude towards Campbell was clear. 

Senator Wong observed, “… I think the point was that the royal commission was intended to elicit that information, and I think we would all agree that some of the evidence has been beyond what we – certainly I – might have envisaged.”

Senator Jenny McCallister, representing defence minister Richard Marles at estimates, responded to a Senator Lambie’s question in a manner that would knock any confidence of tenure from Campbell.

“Senator Lambie, you are quite right that the circumstances surrounding the Robodebt scandal are very serious indeed and you are also right that we spoke publicly about the need for a proper investigation into that and we supported the establishment of a royal commission to investigate RoboDebt.”

“I think, from the timetable that’s been set out for you by Mr Moriarty, what you can see is that whilst it was clear at that time that the RoboDebt scheme was an illegal scheme, the issue of culpability had not been examined at that time and, in fact, Ms Campbell was engaged by defence prior to the establishment of the royal commission. 

“Even at this point in time the findings of that royal commission have not been finalised. I am confident, and the government is confident, that the recommendations of the royal commission will be considered very carefully and appropriately, when they are made.”

After Senator McCallister’s comment, even Moriarty, the man who’s blindly and obediently signed off on Campbell’s appointment, backed away, “At the time that I made the appointment, there was no royal commission,” he told estimates. 

That’s true, but there was already abundant information on the public record that showed RoboDebt was disastrous and illegal and that it had been persisted with on Campbell’s watch.  She had already been identified as a captain whose ship ended up on the rocks. 

The then Labor opposition had committed itself to a royal commission months earlier.  Establishing it to unpack the details of the disaster was a high priority for the incoming Albanese government. 

The secretaries club knew what was coming, but they still acted to protect one of their own.  

 Going, Going, Gone

There can be no plausible scenario flowing from today’s commission report that has Campbell remaining in her overpaid role. The only question hanging in the air is, will she be the subject of a referral?

Senator Lambie summed it up best, as she is often so good at: “If she were half the decent person she thinks she is then she would have got up and left. She would never have taken a job back [at Defence] – not ever!”