DragonFlame
skua
quackademicReview of ‘Mean Streak’, #RickMorton’s unmissable book on the bureaucratic incompetence, willfull cruelty & self serving politics that was #RoboDebt
Debts were raised using different criteria from those used to calculate benefits. Benefits are calculated with relation to income per fortnight, to recognise the hardships arising from irregular hours & from intermittent employment. Debts were calculated by averaging income across a full year.
It was obvious to anyone with experience in public administration that this was indefensible. In the explicitly politicised culture of the APS, those to whom this fundamental error was obvious were not permitted to say so. (This is the criterion that distinguishes those who are on a career path from those who are not - those vilified as ‘dead wood’. Being on a career path requires a person to pretend that the lies & the bs being spoken make sense.)
Without the investigative skills & persistence of advocate #AsherWolf & the journalists who took up her story, these abuses would not have been exposed. A shameful episode. #AusPol
