How did public service leaders talk to staff about Robodebt? What they said – or didn’t – is revealing
- Written by Daniel Casey, Lecturer, School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University
In July 2023, after the release of the damning Robodebt Royal Commission report, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared:
it was wrong, it was illegal, it should never have happened and it should never happen again.
A major finding was some senior public servants were overly responsive to the wishes of ministers, to the detriment of the general public. The report describes an environment that was:
fraught […] characterised by a powerful drive for savings, strongly expressed ministerial policy positions […] and intense pressure experienced by public servants.
Investigating the scheme, which ran under the Morrison government, Commissioner Catherine Holmes was disturbed by “the lengths to which public servants were prepared to go to oblige ministers”, undermining the concept of impartiality and frank and fearless advice.
The release of Rick Morton’s new book Mean Streak brings a renewed focus on the lessons from Robodebt. To learn from such a serious crisis, organisations need to openly confront what happened, discuss and understand what the failure means. What were the systemic causes? What cultural failings did it expose? How can we ensure a similar disaster does not happen again?
Our research found little evidence these questions were being asked by many public service leaders immediately after the royal commission.
In the six months after the royal commission report’s release, almost half of the heads of Australian Public Service (APS) agencies apparently decided they didn’t need to communicate with their staff about Robodebt and explain what it meant for them.
What did department leaders do?
Learning from the failure of Robodebt will take time. In 2024, the public service is investigating and punishing some of those involved and implementing a new integrity plan.
Our research focuses on the six months after the release of the royal commission report: July to December 2023. Research shows the immediate post-crisis period is crucial to effective learning.
But before organisations can respond, they have to interpret and understand the meaning of the failure.
Just as the public turns to political leaders in a crisis, employees look to management. Leaders’ communication, whether by email, an all staff video, or a town hall meeting, is crucial.
These messages set the organisational narrative that explains what happened and why, what the repercussions are, how it can be resolved, and what lessons (if any) should be drawn from the crisis.
Three days after the royal commission report was released, the secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Glyn Davis, and Australian Public Service Commissioner Gordon de Brouwer, emailed all public service employees saying:
we are committed to working through the findings in an open and constructive way with you — the APS — and with the Australian public.
Our focus, however, is on how leaders of individual departments and agencies responded. Using Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, we asked how leaders communicated with staff in the crucial period straight after the commission reported.
Departments are where policy development occurs and they often work closely with ministers.
But only half of all public servants work for departments. The rest work across the 100 or so agencies.
While most department heads communicated with their staff about Robodebt, only 54% of agencies’ leaders did.
The 50 agencies that did not communicate with their staff about the meaning of Robodebt in the months following the report employ more than 45,000 people, more than 25% of the public service.
Not my problem mentality
Three large departments told us that “no documents were identified” or “the Department does not hold documents […] that meet the terms of the request”. This indicates they did not communicate with staff in the first six months after the Robodebt report was handed down. The departments were:
It is not clear why those secretaries decided not to write to their staff directly about Robodebt, but the absence of communication sends a message.
This was explicit in some responses. For example, in declining our request, we were told that the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority:
[…] is not an outwardly facing organisation and as such does not provide payments to individual recipients. Consequently, it is not required to respond to the Royal Commission and there are no documents that are relevant to your request.
Even when there was some communication, agencies were not necessarily addressing the cultural issues. For example, the Clean Energy Regulator was focused on public perception:
there is a heightened sense of scrutiny on regulators […] please be vigilant if you are approached by anybody working for a media outlet.
In such circumstances, it is unlikely cultural change will occur.
Some positive signs
On the positive side, there were examples of agencies that addressed the serious implications of Robodebt for their work, which is likely to improve their organisational culture.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) identified a number of recommendations “albeit directed at other agencies […] that ASIC should act on”. They noted that “given most of our people come from the private sector”, there was a need to improve training on “our obligations as public servants”.
Read more: Two former federal departmental heads breached public service code 25 times in Robodebt scandal
Similarly, Australian statistician David Gruen emphasised creating a culture where “people feel supported if and when they seek to raise difficult issues with their colleagues or superiors”. Similar discussions were had at AUSTRAC.
The report detailed a culture where public servants were overly responsive to the wishes of ministers.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Departments are closest to ministers, so we hoped their communications would address problems in the relationships between senior public servants and ministers, a key issue exposed in the Robodebt case.
Unfortunately, only four departments discussed over-responsiveness with their staff or in executive meetings, in the period studied.
The department of industry and science was the most comprehensive. Secretary Meghan Quinn wrote to staff several times, reflecting that the “findings go to the heart of leadership and culture and this should be our focus going forward”. The department’s integrity branch wrote to staff:
public servants [must] […] provide the government with advice that is frank and honest. If you ever feel pressured to do or sign something you are not comfortable with, it’s important you speak with your supervisors […] you have the Executive’s backing not to put your name to anything that is not true or not in the public interest.
However, this was one of the few departments where senior staff confronted these core issues directly in the early months after the royal commission reported. Most departments did not name or discuss the underlying cause of the failures: over-responsiveness to ministers at the expense of protecting the public.
While many of the errors of Robodebt can be solved through new procedures and rules, changing public service culture is a bigger learning project.
It requires a shift in norms and reweighting the competing duties of public servants. They must serve elected ministers, but equally, they must serve the public by ensuring probity, fairness and legality.
Robodebt illustrated the harm that occurs when the balance tips too far towards ministers and away from the public interest.
That this was rarely part of the communication from public service leaders to their staff in the immediate aftermath of the royal commission does not bode well for lessons being learnt from the crisis.
Authors: Daniel Casey, Lecturer, School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University
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