The Federal government has agreed to pay an additional $475 million in compensation to the victims of the Coalition government's Robodebt scandal, more than 450,000 Australians will benefit. The overall payout in compensation will exceed $548 million and with money owed to Coalition victims more than $2.4 billion in payouts. Robodebt was the result of the nasty vindictive mentality of Coalition politicians, including many in the governments of Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison. The Royal Commission into the scheme described Robodebt as a ‘crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal’. It found that ‘people were traumatised (some committing suicide) on the off chance they might owe money’ and that Robodebt was ‘a costly failure of public administration, in both human and economic terms’. This kind of despicable action by politicians must never be allowed to occur again.

Even Franz Kafka could not have imagined the Robodebt fiasco.
The cruel smirk on Morrison's face says it all.

The robodebt royal commissioner, Catherine Holmes said Morrison had allowed cabinet to be “misled” into thinking no legislative change was required to enact robodebt. She rejected “as untrue” Morrison’s evidence he was told income averaging was an established practice.

Over $3.5 million was spent on legal expenses for eight former Coalition ministers to be represented at the royal commission.
Morrison's expenses were $461,445.

These Noalition fools were well known for wasting taxpayer money, $830 million paid to the French for their inept management of a submarine deal. Can we call paying off 70 million Frenchmen another Morrison inspired class action. It was classy, for the French that is. Australians have to be very careful, and not vote this Noalition mob back into power anytime soon! Like in the next 100 years.

Its all getting a bit crazy, this democracy thing.

In America Biden went after far right extremists
Trump pardons them and goes after the far left radicals
Rinse and repeat.

The Coalition did the robograb for cash, blew up in their face
But Also has gone the other way, wiping some $16 bln from student loans.

From one extreme to the other.
Will this system ever get us anywhere?

Why am I thinking of those rare people with one body and 2 heads
Which brain decides what the body does, or do they take turns?

Of course, any thorough reading of the Robodebt Royal Commission findings will show that the primary culprits for the failings of the scheme were the relevant public servants and the departments they oversaw. The politicians were completely misled by the various public servants involved and were culpable in that they failed to ask the right questions and meekly accepted what turned out to be hopelessly biased and inaccurate advice.

The whole saga is a signal as to how bad the Australian Public Service has become. I've been involved with various projects over the years where previously manual processes were computerised or digitalised. It requires a high degree of scepticism as to the outputs by the new processes until such times as its proven to be highly accurate.

To my way of thinking and certainly in regards to my previous experiences with all this, the very first step in checking this would be to pre-check the letters being sent out to the alleged debtors. The first 100 letters should have been thoroughly manually checked to ensure all the data was both accurate and verifiable. Its beyond belief and understanding that that wasn't done. Instead, the letters were held up as true because they came out of a computer without the slightest understanding of GIGO (Garbage in- Garbage out). It was only after the debtors disputed the numbers that it was checked and found to be unverifiable. A monumental failure by the public service.

The second failure was that no one was held accountable for the spectacular failure. Sure some careers were truncated and jobs lost. But if all this had happened in a private organisation or (gasp!!) a multinational, law suits and charges would have certainly flowed. Prison time would have been very much on the cards. But not so with the public service and that's one of the reasons it is so very ineffective at its job - there are no consequences for being ineffective.

mhaze,

This is a perfect example of something I once said when you tried to portray yourself as the neutral obeserver:

“If you want to critique both parties, don’t load one side [Labor] with venom and the other [the coalition] with tragic regret.”
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=10633#371184

Because that’s exactly what’s happening here.

You say both the public service and the Coalition were at fault - but let’s look at the tone and weight.

The public service is described as monumentally incompetent, hopelessly biased, and corrupt to the point of deserving prison. Your tone is seething, contemptuous, and absolute.

The Coalition ministers, on the other hand, were simply misled. Their failure was to “meekly accept” advice. They’re portrayed as hapless, passive, perhaps a little too trusting - but not dishonest, reckless, or cruel.

You’re offering tragedy on one side and venom on the other.

But here’s the problem: the Royal Commission explicitly rejected the idea that ministers were unaware or blameless. It found that warnings were ignored, legal doubts were buried, and the scheme was pursued despite knowing it was likely unlawful. That’s not meekness. That’s wilful disregard.

Robodebt wasn’t a bureaucratic fumble. It was political determination, backed by bureaucratic complicity.

If you're genuinely critiquing both, the weight of your criticism should reflect the power hierarchy - not reverse it.