Former Figure in Illegal Robodebt Scheme Parachuted to $900,000 Job

It has been revealed that key documents that would have helped end the robodebt scheme were withheld from an internal investigation. (The Epoch Times)

The Australian government’s senior bureaucrats have parachuted a former top public servant who was a key figure in the illegal debt recovery scheme Robodebt into a new job that comes with a $ 900,000-a-year salary.

Top politicians managed to appoint Kathryn Campbell, former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trades (DFAT), as an advisor for the AUKUS program before she was dumped from her previous role.

She played a key role in the Robodebt scheme, an unlawful method of automated debt assessment and recovery introduced in January 2017 and employed by the Australian government agency Services Australia.

Campbell received heavy criticism when she controversially denied that people had died as a result of the unlawful scheme during a senate hearing in 2020.

According to an FOI by Michael West media, the centre-left Albanese government found a job with a three-year contract that secures the same amount of salary for Campbell.

The documents revealed that the paperwork for Campbell’s new job was created the same day as the Prime Minister’s announcement that Campbell would be moved out from her DFAT role.

Role Created Same Day as Removal

Senior staff, including Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary Glyn Davis and former Public Service Commissioner Peter Woolcott, exchanged correspondence about Ms. Campbell’s salary expectations six days before her termination was made public.

Independent MP Sophie Scamps said during a webinar hosted by The Australia Institute that there “wasn’t any transparency” around the whole appointment process of Campbell.

Scamps warned that the job for mates culture would continue under the current regulation around ministerial discretion.

“There is an element of ministerial discretion, but really, it’s at arm’s length from the minister,” Scamps said, reported The Mandarin.

“It’s a way of ensuring that we are actually getting people with the correct expertise and skill for the role. And we need to know that because these are incredibly important roles.”

Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who was responsible for parachuting Campbell, was previously questioned why the appointment was made even when robodebt had been found unlawful.

She responded that it would not “be fair to say there had been an interrogation of how that illegality came about.”

“The royal commission was intended to elicit that information,” she said at a Senate estimates hearing in May.

“Some of the evidence has been beyond what we might have envisaged … It’s been quite substantial. But we would say – I don’t want to, obviously, speculate on potential findings of the commission.”

Greens Senator Barbara Pocock questioned why the government hadn’t terminated Campbell’s employment, who she described as the “captain of the ship” during the illegal scheme.

But Wong insisted that Pocock should not “assume the knowledge of what has subsequently occurred in the commission.”

“I think the illegality was found, but how that came about… was precisely why the royal commission was established,” she said.

Australia Institute’s director of the democracy and accountability program Bill Browne, who was on the webinar, commented Campbell’s AUKUS appointment came to light through FOI requests.

Mentioning the backlog of FOI requests, Browne said transparency issues “operate in tandem.”

“We need cultural changes as well—a public service that realises that it’s responsible to Parliament and the public, not just to the minister of the day, and responds to an FOI request accordingly,” Browne said.