The Shot
All quiet on the Corruption Commission front…

Buried deep inside the 1052 pages of the Robodebt Scheme Royal Commission report sits a section labelled Dramatis Personae, a quaint legal term used as if the people involved were performers with little connection to real life.
On page 724 of our cast listing, we find one of the chief implementers of the Robodebt scheme heading up the page; Ms Kathryn Campbell, AO, CSC and Bar, Department of Human Services, Secretary. As expected from one of Robodebt’s leading stars, Ms Campbell’s name and impressive credentials fill a lot of page space. Yet further down below Ms Kathryn Campbell of the illustrious titles, sits another much more humble listing:
Rhys Cauzzo, income support recipient (deceased).
A talented florist, creative musician and much loved brother, boyfriend and son, Mr Cauzzo probably wasn’t significant enough in the report to be given a title other than ‘deceased’, but it’s arguable his death was one of the more compelling reasons the Robodebt Royal Commission was instigated in the first place. Haunted by Ms Campbell’s Human Service’s authorised debt collectors, Mr Cauzzo took his own life in January 2017. His mother, Jennifer Miller’s testimony was one of the Robodebt Commission’s most tragic and harrowing testimonies to witness. Not that Ms Miller was alone.
Hundreds more witnesses came forward to confess how their finances, their health and every aspect of their lives were permanently fractured after being pursued for non-existent debts in an unlawful federal government approved scheme. The former chief justice of Queensland, Commissioner Catherine Holmes and her highly experienced team of lawyers, royal commission staff and senior legal counsel were involved in analysing over 303 hours of hearings with 115 witnesses, 5050 pages of transcript recordings and 958,000 pages of documentation.
After having done the rigorous legwork, Holmes concluded that the Robodebt scheme was, “a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals. In essence, people were traumatised on the off-chance they might owe money. It was a costly failure of public administration, in both human and economic terms.”
For the sake of the 12 month old National Anti-Corruption Commission, let’s take a look at that conclusion again – because it seems very much like the NACC did not.
Then add in the fact that the class action brought against the federal government over Robodebt resulted in Justice Bernard Murphy of the Federal Court of Australia determining the scheme had unlawfully raised $1.73 billion in debts against 433,000 people. That figure again – 433,000 Australians were wrongly accused under the Robodebt scheme our star, Ms Kathryn Campbell, helped administer. Justice Murphy went on to call the scheme, “a shameful chapter in the administration of the Commonwealth social security system and a massive failure of public administration.”
If you’d just read all of that for the first time, you’d be forgiven for thinking a massive fiasco, a cover-up, an extortion racket of epic proportions had been inflicted on our own citizens over many years by the Australian government. The kind of monumental stuff-up that belongs in the annals of Australian political history. And you’d also be wondering what avenues of redress and remedies and open justice existed – especially for the forgotten cast members of the scheme’s Dramatis Personae.
Enter the National Anti-Corruption Commission, stage left. A body touted by Anthony Albanese in his pre-Albanese Version 2.0 days as an authority “with teeth”, the NACC was intended to meet exactly the type of shameful failure of public administration and unlawfulness the entire Robodebt catastrophe turned out to be. And yet last month, on a quiet Thursday afternoon, after 11 months of, well nobody knows really, but after 11 months of possessing the full 1052 page Robodebt Report delivered to them by Commissioner Catherine Holmes, the NACC decided to do… nothing.
The Attorney General’s own website spruiks that one of the most important versions of corruption the NACC will cover is the loss of public trust. “A public official can breach public trust even if they do not gain any advantage for themselves or someone else. The key element of a breach of public trust is the exercise of an official power for an improper purpose.”
How do the results of the Robodebt scandal point to anything else other than a loss of public trust? And what fatuous reasons were the Australian public supplied with to excuse the NACC’s gobsmacking decision not to pursue one of the greatest failures of public administration in our history? Apparently the NACC (yes the anti-corruption one) has decided instead to focus on “lessons learnt”.
This is weasel-wording, vacuous buck-passing of the highest order. “Lessons learnt?” What lessons exactly? Why wasn’t the public told what these grandiose lessons are? What measures are now in place to monitor if the “lessons” are heeded? Who is doing the teaching? And who are the people who’ve learnt the alleged lessons?
Another outrage from the NACC’s statement from on high was that Commissioner Paul Brereton had recused himself from proceedings due to a conflict of interest. At what stage exactly of proceedings did the Commissioner withdraw? Immediately? After someone told him to? When? How? And what exactly was this “conflict of interest”? Why wasn’t the public told what it was – that the Commissioner is a close friend of over thirty years with Ms Kathryn Campbell, and her husband?
The NACC’s imperious decree also states that the Robodebt decision was allegedly handled by one of the Deputy Commissioners, presumably with the assistance of NACC staff. But what subconscious prejudice existed when members of the NACC were making decisions about whether to investigate an issue involving serious allegations against a close personal friend of their boss? A conflict of interest is not just actual, it is also very much perceived.
This gobsmacking decision shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone monitoring the NACC, because appearing to do nothing has pretty much been its hallmark – but not quite nothing.
During the 2023-24 financial year, the NACC claims to have delivered 124 speaking presentations to “stakeholders” across Australia. Commissioner Paul Brereton himself has travelled to Atlanta, USA, to Hong Kong and even downtown Wagga Wagga to let the locals in on what does and does not constitute Corruption™️, and how these stakeholders might spot it.
From Atlanta to Hong Kong, to Melbourne to Adelaide, even to Wagga Wagga, the NACC has been widely travelling Australia and the world, spreading the gospel on Corruption™️ and how to investigate Corruption™️ and how to handle Corruption™️, and even, what to do about Corruption™️. Unfortunately, they appear to have forgotten to sit through the lessons themselves.
With a budget of $262.6 million over four years and over 260 staff, the NACC has vast resources and powers at its disposal. And yet all the Australian public have seen so far is the referral of a dodgy airport employee for an alleged bribery solicitation. But fear not, in the meantime most of the senior staff of the NACC, including the Commissioner, have been gifted exclusive access to the invitation only Qantas Chairman’s Lounge (all listed as having no value apparently) so at least Australians don’t have to worry about the commissioner’s comfort levels or any undue influence on them.
Last month, after Tourism Australia had referred a matter of three employees misappropriating $137,000 of TA travel funds to the NACC, the CEO of Tourism Australia was questioned in Senate Estimates on the issue. Luckily she was able to claim she couldn’t possibly answer the question because the matter was, “under investigation by the NACC”. The following day free from the heat of Estimates, the NACC announced it had decided not to proceed with the Tourism Australia referral after all. To everyone’s complete surprise, the NACC had decided to do nothing.
It’s hard not to see the Albanese government deliberately designing it this way. The mysterious secrecy, the extraordinarily high bar to investigate an allegation, the silence beyond their peculiar weekly media releases trumpeting large amounts of public referrals (most of which are dismissed as being ineligible), the failure to act upon one of the largest acts of public service malfeasance, nonfeasance, misfeasance – take your pick – all of this is by design. If the Albanese government had wanted an anti-corruption commission with power, they had the numbers. Like all their other legislation, they could have designed it, negotiated it and passed it.
Instead, Australians are left with a great black hole of bureaucracy where contentious issues go to die until the heat has worn off, where justice may or may not be done because nobody can see it, because only “exceptional circumstances” will ever bring information out into the light and so far no legal or political mind has managed to define what exactly an “exceptional circumstance” is.
The more secretive the NACC is, the more it will struggle for public acceptance and trust. That of course is of little consequence to the family of Rhys Cauzzo, and the families of the other forgotten victims of Robodebt. The bureaucratic decisions that destroyed their lives were made in secret and so too were the decisions by the NACC to ignore them. All they, and we, the Australian public, have been given is nothing. No justice. No remedies. There’s nothing to see here, please move along. Just as the system designed it, this month and every month, it’s all quiet on the NACC front.
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Dave Milner