The government is introducing legislation which will empower the Australian Public Service Commissioner to investigate former agency heads.
The Albanese government is scrambling to change the law so that someone is held accountable for the Robodebt scheme ran between 2015 and 2019.
The scheme saw the government unlawfully raise $1.76 billion (US$1.17 billion) in debts against 443,000 people. Several suicides were attributed to the stress caused by the receipt of demands to pay.
When Robodebt Royal Commission handed down its report in July last year, it made adverse findings against several senior public servants, including former Department of Human Services secretaries Kathryn Campbell and Renée Leon.
It also referred six unnamed individuals to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC). Five of those people had also been referred to the Australian Public Service (APS) Commission.
At the time, the APS Commission—which had established a taskforce to deal with code of conduct referrals—said it had written to a total of 16 people to notify them that they were under investigation.
Some of those people reportedly included current public servants named in the report’s sealed section, along with former employees referred by their agency head as well as former agency heads referred by the minister responsible for their department.
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Stephen Sedgwick was appointed as an independent reviewer, assisted by Department of Health deputy secretary, Penny Shakespeare.
The APS Commissioner was close to finalising investigations into former agency heads regarding their conduct during the Robodebt period.
No Action by Anti-Corruption Commission
The NACC announced in June this year that it would take no action against the people referred to it by the Royal Commission, leaving open the prospect of no one being held accountable for what Commissioner Catherine Holmes described as a “crude and cruel” scheme, a massive failure of public administration, and an “extraordinary saga” of “venality, incompetence, and cowardice.”
And so, one year and one month after the release of the Royal Commission’s report, the government has announced that it will be taking “decisive action to ensure accountability of former senior public service leaders” by introducing legislation to provide “an express power for the Australian Public Service Commissioner to investigate former agency heads for alleged breaches of the APS Code of Conduct and make determinations.”
Minister for the Public Service Katy Gallagher said the changes had been “expedited to clarify that former agency heads can be held to account for breaches of the Code of Conduct while they were an agency head, in the same manner as current and former APS employees.”
“Agency heads are bound by the Code of Conduct and should be accountable for their behaviour [and] it is critical that these investigations into individuals referred by the Robodebt Royal Commission can be concluded as soon as possible,” Gallagher said.
“This legislation will ensure that senior public servants are clearly accountable for their actions as public service leaders, even after leaving their roles.”
Gallagher called the Robodebt scheme a “shameful chapter” of public administration that the government never wants to see repeated.
In November 2023, the government agreed, or agreed in principle, to all 56 recommendations of the Royal Commission.
