Raising Hell: Issue 63: The Arena Of Truth

You can go back through the old speech and see for yourself — the spectacle of Kathryn Campbell AO, cracking jokes about the “lessons learned” in the rollout of Robodebt to a packed audience in September 2018.

“This happened in early January of 2017,” the then secretary of the Department of Social Services (DSS) said about the public outrage at the start of the Robodebt rollout before delivering the punchline:

That’s another lesson, try not to roll anything out in January. Because there is not much other media going on, and you find yourself intent on that’s the only headline in town. I kept thinking where are those cricketeers when they’re doing something naughty. But they were well-behaved that year, so we ran the media."

It was a curious speech on the “lessons learned” from the rollout of the Robodebt scheme. At that time Campbell and her staff within the bureaucracy responsible for the creation and delivery of the program had seemed untouchable. Whenever they appeared in public they were as serene as the Buddha. In every engagement they insisted that everything was totally on the up-and-up, that Robodebt was totally legal and they had been going strictly by the book.

Turns out, that wasn’t true. It took less than 48 hours during the first public hearings into the Robodebt scheme to make that clear If the federal courts decision in Amato ruled the debts raised under the Robodebt scheme had no legal basis, it is only now that the breadth of the wrongdoing is been revealed. Last week the first hearings began in the Royal Commission with officials from within the Department of Social Services as it was then setting the scene for the evidence to be given this week.

Who knew what and when were the primary questions being asked at the Royal Commission and it was during the first week the nation learned that the bureaucracy understood it had no legal basis as early as 2014. During their appearance, in-house lawyers within DSS responded to a proposal from what was then the Department of Human Services (DHS) with caution. DHS had a fantasy of building a futuristic, techie Big Data system that would map out where people on Centrelink lived and then compare this to a wealth of other data such as ATO information and unemployment numbers, to determine the risk — that is the likelihood — someone would try to defraud the government.

To DHS what became Robodebt was a crude first step to towards a magical solution to the mountain of files they kept on people suspected of owing them money. As I wrote in my book, Just Money: it was the perfect employee, the most unyielding police officer and the least imaginative civil servant who never complained, never took a holiday and wasn’t burdened by a morality.

DSS, on the other hand, took one look at this vision and contacted their lawyers. The advice that came back pointed out, accurately, the whole system would be illegal and cause irreparable harm if the department teamed up with DHS on the program. DHS ignored the warning and before anyone at DSS knew, it had been taken to then Social Services Minister Scott Morrison who included in that budget. Decision made, from that point on everyone set to work helping the government carrying out an illegal scheme to balance the budget on the backs of Australia’s poorest citizens.

What has been most revealing from week one was the confirmation of a long-held suspicion about the internal operation of DHS and DSS (DHS became Services Australia, though DSS remained its own agency*). Questions that might find them out were narrowly interpreted or read in such a way as to exclude information that might reveal the true nature of the program. Even more shockingly was the way the 2014 legal advice was written out of the administrative history so as not to embarrass the government. And the strategy bureaucrats employed to ensure that legal advice they didn’t like was kept out of the public eye: request external legal advice, obtained a preliminary draft to get a sense of what it will say, negotiate if the outcome was unfavourable to the government and if that didn’t work, pay the bill without “finalising” the advice so it never became official and actionable. Job done.

This is exactly what happened when Clayton Utz was asked to provide external advice on the legality of the robodebt scheme in August 2018. A month later, Campbell would be giving her speech on the “learnings” from Robodebt, as if the whole thing was a silly goof — no harm, no foul.

Yet there was harm. Real harm. On the Friday of the first week of hearings, debt collectors who picked up government contracts to service the debts raised under the Robodebt scheme were read transcripts of recordings from people their employees dealt with. At the start of the call, the person believes it involves an $180 debt but the debt collector says the debt is actually $1400:

I refuse to pay that. I want to know more about why that's there. I'm literally homeless at this point. I'm couch surfing. I barely have to eat and all that. I've explained this multiple times.

I've had two declines. This is information I have already given them. So I'm going through again trying to get the claim reassessed. And I just don't get where this further figure has been added.

Tuesday marks the second day in the second week of hearings. On Thursday senior officials within the former DHS and DSS, including Campbell, are expected to appear. Historically these institutions have relied on a strategy of delay, arcane procedural wizardry and technocratic language policing to dissemble, deny and deflect criticism.

As we go into the second week of hearings, officials of the former Department of Human Services are expected to appear from Thursday. Whether the Department will deploy their usual tactics of delay, obfuscation and arcane procedural wizardry remains to be seen. As Latrobe University lecturer Darren O’Donovan said, unlike every other avenue where these figures have attempted to delay, dissemble and deny, “it’s different in this Arena of Truth where a barrister has all your paper.”

Hearings continue today and can be watched live here.

*Correction: the original text described DHS and DSS as being merged together. This was not correct and text has been updated to reflect the situation.

For the Fortnight: October 26 to November 8

Reporting In

Where I recap what I’ve been doing this last fortnight so you know I’m not just using your money to stimulate the local economy …

***LIVE SHOW!*** ***UPDATED*** Due to the untimely demise of the monarch this the talk organised by Unley City Library had to be postponed. Do not worry, however, as this just means more time to buy tickets. Details below!

• “Strict anti-protest laws may have encouraged mining conference to move from Melbourne to Sydney” (Guardian Australia, 29 October 2022).
• “Parks director should be accountable for ‘offence’ to Kakadu sacred site, protection authority says” (Guardian Australia, 28 October 2022).
• “The Oil and Gas Industry Refuses To Die” (Rolling Stone AU, 3 November 2022).
• “Royce Kurmelovs' Canberra, what will COP27 achieve and the case for longtermism” (Late Night Live, ABC, 7 November 2022).

You Hate To See It

A dyspeptic, snark-ridden and highly ironic round-up of the news from our shared hellscape…

• Trapped In The Happiest Place On Earth

  Pity the hapless visitors a Disneyland theme park in Pudong, China who ended up trapped inside the Happiest Place on Earth when people inside the resort tested positive for Covid-19. Under the Chinese government’s pandemic controls, visitors were stopped from leaving until they could show a negative test result. The good news? All the rides were still running — an appropriate vision for our present apocalypse that is only marginally more funny than the scenes that incurred inside a Shanghai Ikea as shopper fled the cattle run in order to avoid being locked inside the monument to poorly-constructed, affordable Swedish minimalism. Perhaps, though, this is appropriate for two global megachains whose founders flirted with fascism.

• Go UnWoke, Go… Broke?

  Speaking of fascism, billionaire spaceman and Technoking of Tesla Elon Musk has officially bought Twitter and set about fulfilling his $44b mandate to make everything terrible. Musk, who promised to open the doors once more to white nationalists and create a safe space for cannibals in the name of free speech. Within hours of the takeover, Musk 86’d most of the executive leadership before taking the axe to the company’s workforce. Some people were in the middle of meetings regarding the creation of Twitter Blue — Musk’s vision for a subscription-based social media site — when they found out they had been sacked. The billionaire is reportedly driving the company dev’s to work “day and night” on the change which everyone — including Musk’s financial backers — know will fail, particularly as Musk appears to be setting pricing based on whether Stephen King is willing to pay $20 a month to maintain his status. The good news? To break even, Twitter — a company that has not earned a profit in eight of the last ten years — needs to pay $1b a year in interest to stay solvent. But don’t worry! Musk staked $15.5b in Tesla shares to get the money for this shitshow which leaves the electric vehicle and battery manufacturer vulnerable if everything goes south. Perhaps humanity would be better off if the man with an estimated net-worth of $220b was more like Paris Hilton who bought herself a dog mansion.

  

• Money For Beer

  It’s that time of year when data on what large multinational companies paid in tax gets published and the public gets to play the game: Guess which multinational oil giant you paid more tax than? (hint: most of them). If you guessed multinational oil giant Chevron, you’d be right! Last financial year Chevron paid just $30 in tax to the Australian government — and that makes them one of the good guys. Here are a few others that paid no tax at all: Brunei Australia Holdings, Inpex, various Glencore entities, Chevron's, ConocoPhilips, BHP Mitsui Coal, Chevron's products arm and refiners, HWR Petroleum, Idemitsu, Ichythus LNG, Woodside Petroleum, Santos Ltd, Yancoal, BP, Ampol, Viva Energy, Exxon Mobil, AGL Energy, Downer EDI… —really makes you wonder why we keep these guys around.

• Speaking of Vampires…
  A tenant in Brisbane has gone to the media after their landlord informed them they would be upping the rent on his $470 a week, two-bedroom apartment in South Brisbane by 60%. The tenant was kindly asked to give the landlord notice about whether he would be willing to pay the $750 a week rate or move out. Meanwhile, the South Australia government has taken a novel approach to rising rents around Adelaide by asking landlords to please be nice.

• Ruh-Ro

  A “structural failure” has forced the 57-year-old Callide coal fired power station offline on Friday. Meanwhile, in South Australia solar and wind provided nearly 90% of the state’s energy needs in the week leading up to 2 November. With Australia to be paying $39.3b for climate-related extreme weather events by 2050, it really makes you think.

• They Made It Cleverer, And Worse

  Ever wanted to stomp on a koala? Maybe box an emu? Well thanks to the new biodiversity securities exchange that’s been set up in New South Wales, shorting koalas and then drowning a bunch in a hessian sack will cost you $600 in one. Keep this in mind as the federal government considers rolling out the program nationally so Martin Place Guys can bet on the extinction of Australia’s native fauna.

  

Failing Upward

Where we recognise and celebrate the true stupidity of the rich, powerful and influential…

• That’s it. We’re doomed. Now that former Liberal MP Dave Sharma has started a Substack, we here at Raising Hell’s elite satire unit are considering laying down our arms and surrendering to authorities. There is no way we could compete with Sharma’s weekly bulletin on “global politics, and what lies behind them” from one of the finest minds to exit politics. Remember to like and subscribe.

  

Good Reads, Good Times

To share the love, here are some of the best or more interesting reads from the last fortnight…

• Bull Wyman writing in Vulture has an incredible obituary for Jerry Lee Lewis titled “Jerry Lee Lewis was an SOB right to the end” which sums up his life thus:

  He was a thief, a bigamist, an adulterer, a sexual predator, a family abandoner, and a liar, and felt — knew — society’s rules didn’t apply to him to such an extent that he acknowledged the fact flatly.

• AP News partnered with Frontline for this investigation into the massacre carried out by Russian forces at Bucha using CCTV and intercepted phone calls.

• AP News also had this really good feature looking at how the internal information sharing systems that had been set up within the Chinese Communist Party — and how they’re under threat.

• Writing in The Saturday Paper Rick Morton has this great breakdown of all the events from Week 1 of the Robodebt Royal Commission.

• Luke Henriques-Gomes also has a fantastic write up in The Guardian.

Before You Go (Go)…

• Are you a public sector bureaucrat whose tyrannical boss is behaving badly? Have you recently come into possession of documents showing some rich guy is trying to move their ill-gotten-gains to Curacao? Did you take a low-paying job with an evil corporation registered in Delaware that is burying toxic waste under playgrounds? If your conscience is keeping you up at night, or you’d just plain like to see some wrong-doers cast into the sea, we here at Raising Hell can suggest a course of action: leak! You can securely make contact through Signal or through encrypted message Wickr Me on my account: rorok1990. Alternatively you can send us your hard copies to: PO Box 134, Welland SA 5007
• And if you’ve come this far, consider supporting me further by picking up one of my books, leaving a review or by just telling a friend about Raising Hell!