Robodebt was a stuff-up not a conspiracy, former secretary tells Royal Commission

When ever it hits the fan in the APS there never seems to be any one to take responsibility, and yet whenever their is a pay review or an opportunity for further career progression these individuals will gladly boast that they are in charge of it all.
No surprise to see Kath Campbell throwing everyone under the bus, she was in charge but it was nothing to do with her?!

The buck-passing between the “policy” department and the “operational” department was particularly depressing, unlike this entertaining effort on the very same issue from Sir Humphrey – which, happily, involved no loss of life and the relatively paltry sum of £75,000 –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIto5mwDLxo

I’d suggest that those who apparently thought themselves not responsible might want to give back the salaries they were paid for being responsible for everything their departments did.

There is little difference between incompetence and corruption. Each has a cost.

Very simply, none of the public servants in charge took responsibility for ensuring that this program was legal, appropriate, moral and safe. Nor did the politicians. Teflon shoulders for all of them as the blame slid downward or to an amorphous culture or system. Rubbish.

All of them had the responsibility to ensure what they were doing was right and they were all extremely well paid to do that. They failed. All of them. Many innocent people were harmed as a result. None of those paid to be responsible did their job of managing their areas of operations properly, yet they lost nothing and were paid for not doing their jobs well.

Couple of points:
1) is the Minister at the time going to take any responsibility for this? I think they have a term for this under the Westminster system.
2) is the bar for public services entities – either policy agencies or those administering outlays – set at “well, we didn’t specifically know with 100% certainty it was illegal, so on that basis we went ahead”.
3) regardless of whether it was the policy agency or the agency delivering the administered payments, would they not seek some positive assurance that what they were doing was above board?

Robodebt should have been targeted at pollies

Stuff up or conspiracy, who cares. We’re talking about a conga line of the most senior public servants, blasé about the legality or otherwise of a scheme that caused huge distress to thousands.

In Home Insulation, the “penalty” suffered by certain wrongdoing officials was a promotion. Let’s see how we go, this time around.

I’ve met Finn Pratt a few times and he always struck me as a decent and competent manager. Reading this, I need to review that opinion. I think BarryB below sums it up pretty well.

Central to the issue is how to calculate welfare entitlement. That is set out in law. It is set out in masses of instructions and guidance issued by the departments. It is implemented by thousands of staff every day. Yet, those in charge didn’t seem to know how entitlements were calculated nor to think it was relevant to their work or the advice they gave to government. Now they seek to blame those they “relied” on within the departments. Now they seek to blame the “circumstances” and/or the “culture”. No. They are made heads of organisations supposedly because they are expert in what those organisations do, can manage that work and can advise government properly and accurately on that work. Their performance does not match that responsibility. They also seem to have lost sight of the moral dimension – that their work affects people and sometimes at great cost.