For all of that, the NACC hit for six any idea that DHS top brass contrived to deceive on the legality of robodebt.

“The idea that DHS would put up to cabinet for approval an unformulated, uncosted plan to recover more than $1 billion of suspected overpayments of social security benefits, and intentionally misrepresent the proposal to cabinet as a fully developed, fully costed plan of recovery that had been examined and approved by all interested Commonwealth agencies (but which in truth consisted of nothing more than a vague hope that someday, somehow a way might be discovered to achieve the desired recoveries without averaging and yet within cost parameters developed on the basis of the application of automatic default averaging) is so fanciful as to be ridiculous.”

There will be a few chiefs of staff and seasoned budget types wiping up spattered coffee over that one.

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“None of Ms Golightly, Mr Withnell, Mr [Scott] Britton, or Mr [Jason] Ryman had sufficient understanding about the provisions of the Social Security Act that required income from employment to be assessed on a fortnightly basis according to each fortnight in which it was first earned, derived, or paid. In place of an informed understanding of the law, they operated sometimes by reference to the Social Security Guide and, more often, according to their perceptions of what had always been
done.”

In other words — and very blunt ones — the NACC has reckoned that a bunch of over-motivated administrative gronks got put in charge of crash-through-or-crash delivery for robodebt… and utterly crashed.

The ScoMo imperative (even if it is really former PM Tony Abbott’s) was really down to those in the public service willing to take up tools without direct instructions.

“Golightly invoked the proposition that minister Morrison wanted the proposal implemented in a way that did not require legislation when she sought to persuade Ms Wilson to find ways to enable that to be done,” the NACC found.

“Then, when Ms Wilson responded with DSS’ ‘bottom line’ that without legislation there could be no change to the way in which income was calculated, it is probable that Ms Golightly turned to Mr Withnell and demanded in customary fashion that he find a way for that to be done.”

And then there is the force of habit, plus not revving up bullies.

“It may be inferred that he [Withnell] customarily did what he considered to be right. Why he descended to deceit on this occasion instead of standing up to Ms Golightly is problematic. But ultimately, I think the most likely answer is that he was so worn down by her demands
that he gave up insisting on integrity in favour of a quieter life,” Kilgour found.

Withnell said in evidence to the NACC: “We were moved to work with Ms Golightly, which led to her effectively disrupting everything I’d done the previous six years, and making it extremely difficult to work and led to a lot of anger and frustration by people in the division who’d been a part of the cultural and organisational change that we’d made.

“Suddenly out of the blue, we get asked to come up with this budget measure, which is, in the scheme of things, extraordinarily huge. As we move into 2015 and we end up back with Ms Golightly and the madness that ensued during January, February, and beyond, things just got worse.

“On a personal level, in terms of my exhaustion, tiredness, just the relentless pressure from her [Golightly’s] micro management, effectively constant interference, having to change all the structures and organisation we had to fit in with her, people becoming frustrated and
angry with all of that.”

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“Other believable evidence was that Ms Golightly was an irascible and frightening senior public servant who zealously ‘delivered’ regardless of the toll it imposed on her subordinates. Her management style was described by many witnesses as controlling and febrile and unconstrained by those above her in the hierarchy who were prepared to turn a blind eye to her behaviour because of the results she achieved.”

Or, in corporate parlance, Golightly was put in charge of the organisational wet work to get things done.

“She routinely harangued and bullied subordinates for what she unfairly judged to be their failure to do a job in the way she would have done it or produce results in the time she required. One senior and most believable witness characterised the lived experience of Ms Golightly’s modus operandi as a ‘shit show’. Others agreed,” the NACC observed.

And there was more. If Golightly’s detractors, arguably her targets and victims, held back during the robodebt royal commission, they have not before the NACC.

“Thus, in [fear] of reprisal, few if any of her subordinates were prepared to express a contrary opinion or deliver news they sensed she did not wish to hear. Instead, they either did whatever seemed necessary to provide her with the outcomes she required or kept their heads down and hoped it would pass,” the NACC found.

“As Mr Withnell put it in his evidence in this investigation: ‘Look, to put it succinctly, she was extremely difficult to work with and more difficult to work for.’ In such an environment, mistakes were bound to occur and, when they occurred, to often go unchecked.

“In substance, that seems to be what led to Mr Withnell’s misleading DSS.”

That very statement goes to the root of how robodebt jumped the fence into illegality, harm, and tragedy. A sidelined, institutionalised, and bullied administrative cohort turning a blind eye to cling to their jobs.

And then there’s the delegation of the insidious to those too scared to ask questions and unqualified to answer them.

“One of the manifestations of the relative incompetence of the (DHS) customer compliance branch at the time was its apparent, widespread ignorance of relevant law. As the documentary evidence establishes, there was little familiarity with relevant statutory provisions or accurate comprehension of their significance, even among the upper echelons of the branch,” the NACC found.

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There are no charges and no referrals to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The NACC found that nothing the robodebt royal commission dredged up, or its own second inquisition, could sustain a criminal prosecution.

But it’s the litany of smaller actions that so adroitly skirted, ducked, and weaved black-letter legislation and established respected norms to make robodebt a reality that have finally been brought into the open through NACC evidence.

“One of the important questions in this investigation…has been what was it that motivated Mr Withnell intentionally to mislead,” NACC deputy commissioner Kylie Kilgour observed.

The name that keeps cropping up is erstwhile former public servant Malisa Lourdes Golightly, a former deputy secretary of DHS who died in December 2021 and thus cannot give evidence.

While the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme unearthed certain elements of Golightly’s management style in evidence, the NACC went far further into what propelled DHS culture at the time of robodebt.

“Mr Withnell did not say that Ms Golightly or any other officer of DHS instructed him to mislead DSS. Nor is there any documentary evidence that he was instructed to do so. But at some points in this investigation, I was inclined to suspect that Ms Golightly may have instructed him to go that far,” the NACC found.

“It is a remarkable coincidence that Mr Withnell’s misrepresentations of February 27, 2015, and the production of the ‘revised proposal’ followed so shortly after Ms Wilson articulated DSS’ ‘bottom line’ to Ms Golightly on February 26, 2015.”

And then it gets worse. Much worse.

“There is, too, evidence that Ms Golightly was extraordinarily driven to succeed in all that she did, and hence it is possible she was so driven to achieve the implementation of OCI that she was prepared to deceive DSS. But at best, that is speculation,” the NACC found. Although Withnell wore the albatross.

“Given the inherent improbability of a public servant as senior as Ms Golightly conniving in the deliberate deceit of DSS, and having regard to the evidence of several credible witnesses that, whatever Ms Golightly’s shortcomings may have been, she was honest, it is more likely that Mr Withnell relevantly acted alone,” the NACC observed.

And then it really goes south because while deceased senior public servants can’t speak, staff reporting to them can.

“Evidence was given by Mr Withnell and several other witnesses that the business integrity division, including the customer compliance branch of DHS, was in effect a career-ending ‘grave yard’ populated by a significant cohort of incompetent, burnt-out, or broken public servants, suffused with a smaller number who, although competent, had been sent there after falling out of favour with those above them in the hierarchy,” the NACC documented.

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