The former public servant Kathryn Campbell says she feels unfairly blamed for the robodebt scandal and defended her decisions around the scheme.
Campbell, who was secretary of the Department of Human Services from 2011 to 2017, was found culpable by the Australian Public Service Commission’s robodebt taskforce for 12 breaches. The APSC report was released on Friday.
The findings included a failure to “sufficiently respond to public criticism” and having “created and allowed a culture” that prevented issues from being considered.
The inquiry said other allegations against Campbell, including that she misled cabinet, were not substantiated.
Speaking to the Australian, Campbell appeared to indicate she felt she was unfairly blamed for her role in the controversy. She criticised Bill Shorten, the government services minister, for saying she and the former prime minister Scott Morrison had “dreamed [robodebt] up”.
“There had been ministerial comments from minister Shorten about me and no one else. Just me. He drew parallels about problems with Morrison and I. He did try and connect me to Mr Morrison. So I thought there was a bit of an angle there.”
She also defended her role in the administration of the unlawful robodebt scheme, saying another government department had had responsibility for advising on the legality of robodebt. “The other department had told the government it was lawful. We were told we were fixing it, and so there was no reason to stop,” she said.
“The [APSC] found I did respond to whistleblowers, but didn’t stop the system. And it wasn’t my decision to stop the system,” she told the paper.
Campbell also criticised the decision not to release the full findings of the inquiry to the public.
“I’ve respected the process. I respected the royal commission. I reject all the things that the royal commission said,” she told the Australian. “I respected the public service, particularly the staff who worked on this review, to give them the opportunity to do the review thoroughly. It’s only in the last week … that I realised that not all the details would be released to the public.”
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The royal commission’s report in July 2023 labelled the scheme “crude and cruel”, “neither fair nor legal” and a “costly failure of public administration”.
The APSC report, which comes after a 13-month inquiry, marks the formal end of the investigation into what the public servants who were responsible for devising and running the scheme knew, and how they acted.
In a sealed section, the royal commissioner Catherine Holmes made a series of referrals of those involved to other bodies for civil action or criminal prosecution.
In response to the Australian’s report, Shorten said: “You are not the scapegoat, Ms Campbell. The real scapegoats for robodebt were the 430,000 Australians who were wrongly blamed and had unlawful debt notices raised against by the most powerful institution in Australian society – the commonwealth government.”
