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| Image courtesy The Mandarin |
The consequences of the botched Robodebt scheme are beginning to rattle through the ranks of senior public servants and ex-ministers in the previous Coalition administration.
The debacle was driven by a toxic combination of populist virtue-signalling, public service cowardice, and the raw application of coercive power.
The fact that there was never any legal basis for the process was completely ignored by those who knew that it was on shaky ground because they were afraid of telling the ministers and their staff something they didn't want to hear.
It killed people, but those people were unemployed, so there wasn't much attention paid.
The most disgraceful aspect of the whole deal was the populist dismissal of people on welfare as having little or no worth, and an attempt to appeal to voters through demonising them. The Coalition apparently believed that there was a vote or two in it.
It has, for me, a familiar ring.
Back in 2014 I was phoned by someone from DVA at 8:30 one night. She opened the conversation with the words "How does it feel to be defrauding the taxpayer?". I probably should have hung up then and there, but was so flabbergasted that I simply listened as she went on about what a nasty individual I was. Back then I was receiving a part pension through DVA predicated on the amount I was earning as an itinerant consultant. The amount varied, as some weeks I worked two days, some three, and others not at all.
Because of the varying nature of my employment I was diligent when it came to reporting my earnings. The issue arose because they were using averaging to determine income, and when it was far from average, as mine was, the system fell in a heap.
The scheme that developed into Robodebt was being rolled out, and it was not dealing with reality.
To cut a long story short, I requested my file under the Freedom of Information statute, and began a process with the Commonwealth Ombudsman. It turned out that my reports of my income had been filed, but nobody had read them, and I had indeed been overpaid the part service pension.
Problem was, I was not responsible for the error, but was threatened with debt recovery straight away without any consideration of how the overpayment came about.
The Ombudsman found that I did have an obligation to return the funds (although one legal friend advised me that I should take the agency to court because the evidence of their oversight was on file) and that I should pay the money back at the same rate at which the debt was incurred. Spread out like that, it was not an issue, so that was what I did, but at no time was there any acknowledgement of the error, or anything resembling an apology.
The timing of this incident was interesting. It happened immediately following the 2014 Coalition budget, which was also the springboard for the development of Robodebt.
The political culture of a party that has always treated voters as collateral was evident between 1965 and 1972 when it conscripted one in twelve young men to fight overseas in a civil war in peacetime to hold on to DLP preferences. That little frolic killed about two hundred. That same culture was evident between 2014 and 2018 when welfare recipients were demonised in an appeal to redneck voters. That killed a number which is unclear, but many were classified as "vulnerable".
It has come back to bite the Liberals and Nationals on the bum, but I doubt that it will make any difference to their political value system.
Power for power's sake is a common and consistent thread right through from 1965 until 2022. Appealing to fear and loathing has also been completely consistent during this period.
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