Robodebt Scheme: Government To Grant APSC Power To Investigate Former Agency Heads

The Australian government will introduce legislations that will grant the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) "express power" to investigate former agency heads for alleged breaches of the APS Code of Conduct, with retrospective effect.

To ensure accountability of former senior public service leaders following the Royal Commission inquiry into the Robodebt Scheme, the federal government introduced the changes with retrospective effect.

The APSC is due to reveal the final report on the 15 former and current public servants, who were accused of breaching the conduct code during the Robodebt Scheme. The probe was stalled after some former public servants argued against investigating them under the current laws.

Set up by the Liberal-National Coalition governments in 2016, the Robodebt Scheme was an illegal method used for assessment and recovery of debts. The system intended to replace the manual checking of overpayments and issuing debt notices with an automated data-matching system to compare Centrelink records with the average income data from the Australian Taxation Office.

It was launched during the tenure of Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison under the Services Australia, as part of its Centrelink payment compliance program. The scheme came under scrutiny for inaccurate calculation of debts, criticized for the trauma of the notice recipients and questions were raised regarding its legality.

Several investigations, including a Royal Commission, were launched to probe the scheme. The final inquiry report was submitted in July 2023.

"This legislation will ensure that senior public servants are clearly accountable for their actions as public service leaders, even after leaving their roles," Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said. "The Robodebt Scheme was a shameful chapter of public administration. It pursued debt recovery against Australians who in many cases had no debt to pay. Where appropriate, those involved from the public service must be held to account. We want to make sure a scheme like this can never happen again."

Meanwhile, Federal Minister for Government Services Bill Shorten Tuesday said he would use the "powers of persuasion" to unseal the confidential content of the Robodebt report, The Guardian reported.

In July 2023, APSC commissioner Catherine Holmes wrote to the governor general about the sealed chapter that recommended civil action or criminal prosecution of referred individuals. She stressed that the chapter should not be tabled with the rest of the report "so as not to prejudice the conduct of any future civil action or criminal prosecution."

It meant that the criticisms of Coalition ministers and bureaucrats were discussed in public, but the legal consequences remained uncertain.

Shorten stated that Holmes' letter did not suggest that the chapter remain secret forever. Keeping the chapter sealed was not a "sustainable position," he added. However, 13 months after the report was submitted, Shorten said his hands were tied, but would use the "powers of persuasion."