Show threadDroppieMar 13
@sister_ratched

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The Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Oliver Cromwell, is not one of my favourite figures of history, but once gave one of my favourite pieces of advice to men convinced they had no alternative but to do something of which he did not approve. Writing to the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, he said "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

I use this as my text as I prepare to admit that I must walk back on some of the unkind words I have said about people whose conduct in the robodebt disaster was said to be corrupt, disgraceful and blameworthy. The behaviour of six was said by a royal commission to possibly amount to corruption under the national anti-corruption legislation.

Four of these initially unnamed people - including Scott Morrison, one-time social security minister and later prime minister, and Kathryn Campbell, former secretary of human services and later social security - were found after an inquiry by a Deputy NACC Commissioner, Kiley Kilgour, to deserve exoneration from this allegation. Two others were found to have acted corruptly, but they will not be charged because the commissioner does not believe that criminal charges could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. They are thus as free as the other four, apart from the stain on their reputations.

I was gobsmacked by the result because I had expected that there was ample material capable of supporting the allegations. Indeed, I was angry that the anti-corruption commissioners, minus the one who conducted the hearings, had initially shied from holding hearings at all, on the quite false grounds that all matters had been dealt with already by the royal commission. That decision was overturned, and the Chief Commissioner Paul Brereton was found to have committed a NACC corruption offence after he recused himself on the ground of acquaintanceship with Ms Campbell but subsequently sought to involve himself in deliberations about how cases were to be investigated.

At the time the NACC decision not to hold an inquiry was reversed, I urged that the NACC not be allowed to pick up on its mistake and visit again their initial predispositions on the matter. I said a new person should be chosen to do it, away from a commission which had already lost the confidence of the public. Kiley Kilgour, up to a point, fits that bill, and was assisted by former High Court justice Geoff Nettle. Kilgour comes from the Victorian broad-based commission against corruption, which operates secretively on NACC lines, and has a public profile and record like the NACC.
Fact finder extraordinarily naive in understanding of how govt works

We now have a 400-plus page "judgement" - the first from the NACC. Albeit after closed hearings so that no one could establish the zeal, if any, with which inquiries were pursued. Judging by the quotes in the judgment I doubt many witnesses were stretched.

I repent my rush to judgment, the more so because I now tend to agree with some of the commissioner's conclusions. At least based on the evidence that I now know. In general Ms Kilgour is more inclined to think the behaviour of the six (and another few dozen who appear equally blameworthy) was not dishonest and corrupt. Rather it was the product of a giant stuff-up in which the minds of various of the actors were not properly on their jobs. A complete stuff-up, not a provable conspiracy, in short.

So, should we treat the accused folk somewhat in the manner of folk acquitted of felony? Champagne all round after a horrible ordeal? Profuse apologies from people such as myself, and an entitlement by them to walk henceforth with heads held up high?

Not quite, because the source of doubts entertained by Ms Kilgour came mostly from the fact she was less than completely satisfied of corrupt purposes, even though there was evidence pointing to it. Her bar was very high.

But against such evidence were signs of incompetence, lack of attention to detail, a chain of correspondence and decision-making, stretching over years, that made following the evidence a bit confusing. And the stout denial of most of the parties that they ever had in mind the deception of the cabinet, the government, or the broader public. (Some of the denials were, by themselves, quite unconvincing, but that's a matter of impression.)

It was not straightforward. Sometimes (I suspect) deliberate ambiguity in thousands of emails and different motives on the part of some of the players complicated things. There was also a good deal of deliberate shorthand adverting, elliptically, to fears of senior officer retaliation. Some of the more junior public servants involved would go to almost any lengths to avoid conflict with them.

It is a judgment on even more senior public servants, including former secretaries of the prime minister's department and the Public Service Commission that such people were put up for leadership roles, and never brought to account, quite separately from the management of robodebt, for some of their tantrums, abuse and shocking misbehaviour.
Alleged bullying, tantrums, vindictive behaviour

Kathryn Campbell's unfortunate manner may have derived from her military "command and control" training and manner at the expense of the more woke inclusive style of most public service managers. (She was a major-general in the Army Reserve, like Paul Brereton.) I perfectly understand that running an army is about efficiently organising killing other people, not cuddling up to them. But I venture that no modern military leader as imperious, remote and unempathetic as Ms Campbell was alleged to be should ever be put in charge of soldiers. Anywhere.

One of the other management monsters was Malisa Golightly, a deputy secretary in Human Services, who had overall charge of the implementation of the robodebt project and was not much inclined to allow obstacles, including naysayers, to stand in the way of it. Nor to much respect the idea that public servants deserved some time off from time to time. Alas she died before the whole illegal and monstrous scheme fell apart. While she deserved her reputation as a bully, I have a cynical feeling that some of the blame has been foisted upon her.

The big problem standing in the way of the cock-up theory rather than conspiracy account is that there were guilty secrets influencing some players. The first was the consciousness that using taxation data to "average out" welfare income data was explicitly not authorised by the Social Security Act. This was pointed out firmly even before the robodebt scheme was put up before ministers for consideration by Kathryn Campbell. There was no way of getting around this: if the scheme was to work at all, such a system, which often produced unfair and false results, would have to be approved by legislation. Many thought they could deal with the problem by euphemism, lying about what occurred, or ignoring the nagging voices.

Ms Kilgour has accepted the assurances of Scott Morrison that he never indicated that he wanted the scheme to proceed without legislative changes, which, implicitly, might have (would have/should have) struck problems in the Senate. Be that as it may, no one in either of the departments ever put up legislation to their minister. Later, a false claim that legislation was not needed went before the cabinet expenditure review committee. Some of those who saw the documentation and should have noticed claim not to have done so. The royal commissioner said that Morrison, who had been told initially that the scheme contravened the law, was possibly corrupt for failing to notice this. It was certainly politically convenient for him.

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#AusPol #WhyTheFuckIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #VoteGreens #VoteProgIndies
#CircumlocutionOffice #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit #Robodebt
DroppieMar 13
@sister_ratched has already posted of this article, https://blahaj.zone/notes/ajsw2xq0c24v008v, & fwiw i'm about to post all da wordz, but first i felt an urge to mention that as i read thru Jack's essay i had an overwhelming sense of robodebt's abject absence of comeuppance as being entirely of a kind with Dickens' Little Dorrit's Circumlocution Office.

https://www.panarchy.org/dickens/circumlocution.html

😱😠

#auspol #CircumlocutionOffice #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit #Robodebt
Jude🇵🇸 (@[email protected])

Jack nails it again: Freedom at last for the Robodebt Six, thanks to the NACC (paywalled). #AusPol https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9197389/jack-waterford-freedom-at-last-for-the-robodebt-six/

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Our Mutual FriendAug 3, 2024

Little Dorrit
Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.

#CharlesDickens / #LittleDorrit / #satire / #debt / #class / #wealth / #poverty <https://www.dickenslit.com/Little_Dorrit/>

Little Dorrit Summary

DickensYouSayNov 18, 2023
Mr Pancks, in whom these impersonal compliments produced an irresistible sheepishness, never rallied after such a charge. He could only bite his nails and puff away to the next Defaulter. The responsive Bleeding Hearts would then gather round the Defaulter whom he had just abandoned, and the most extravagant rumours would circulate among them, to their great comfort, touching the amount of Mr Merdle’s ready money.
#LittleDorrit
#CharlesDickens
DickensYouSayNov 18, 2023
Better for our sakes, and better for yours, too. You wouldn’t have to worry no one, then, sir. You wouldn’t have to worry us, and you wouldn’t have to worry yourself. You’d be easier in your own mind, sir, and you’d leave others easier, too, you would, if you were Mr Merdle.’
#LittleDorrit
#CharlesDickens
DickensYouSayNov 18, 2023
‘No, sir,’ the Defaulter would reply. ‘I only wish you were him, sir.’
#LittleDorrit
#CharlesDickens
DickensYouSayNov 18, 2023
Mr Pancks would be now reduced to saying as he booked the case, ‘Well! You’ll have the broker in, and be turned out; that’s what’ll happen to you. It’s no use talking to me about Mr Merdle. You are not Mr Merdle, any more than I am.’
#LittleDorrit
#CharlesDickens
DickensYouSayNov 18, 2023
The response would be heard again here, implying that it was impossible to say anything fairer, and that this was the next thing to paying the money down.
#LittleDorrit
#CharlesDickens