(Image: Gorkie/Private Media)

Here’s a short, non-exclusive list of people who should be witnesses at the robodebt royal commission:

  • Former social services ministers Scott Morrison, Christian Porter, Dan Tehan, Paul Fletcher and Anne Ruston
  • Former human services ministers Stuart Robert, Alan Tudge and Michael Keenan
  • Tudge’s chief of staff Andrew Asten, along with every chief of staff of every former minister in the two portfolios
  • Former Human Services secretary Kathryn Campbell. And an extensive list of the bureaucrats who worked under her in the implementation of the robodebt scheme and the Coalition’s attempts to defend it: Jonathan Hutson, Annette Musolino, Hank Jongen, Anthony Seebach, Jason McNamara — and that’s just the beginning.

They’ll find giving evidence at a royal commission a little different from ducking and weaving at an estimates hearing or Senate committee inquiry. They’ll find “I’ll take that on notice” won’t fly. They’ll find counsel assisting will keep at them without a minister or government senators being able to run interference. They’ll find the royal commission has a mountain of documents to scrutinise everything they say.

As for the former ministers, they’ll find it’s very different from question time or a media conference. And their former staffers will be forced to face something they’ve never experienced: public accountability.

It’s particularly crucial that the royal commission goes deep into the bureaucracy, down to the Band 1 and EL2 level, to trace how robodebt was devised and implemented by bureaucrats — despite clear evidence that automated debt raising was legally problematic at best and something that Human Services officially believed should be used “selectively“.

Many of these bureaucrats have moved on to other roles in the public service. But that’s the beauty of a royal commission over another Senate inquiry: for the latter, only the bureaucrats occupying the relevant roles can be required to give evidence. A royal commission can get those who did it, no matter where they now are.

The hundreds of thousands of victims of this illegal scheme, and particularly the families who lost loved ones as a result of its pitiless application, deserve nothing less than seeing the bureaucrats who from the comfort of their Canberra offices directed this process explain themselves. They deserve to see the ministers who crowed about the scheme, used private information to attack critics through the media, and who were indifferent to the massive suffering they caused, face aggressive questioning.

But the royal commission won’t be anything more than a cathartic exercise unless it properly explores how a major government department, and the ministers in charge of it, delivered such a shocking outcome — a failed scheme costing at least $1.2 billion, found to be illegal for exactly the reasons that critics claimed it was illegal for. That’s why a deep dive into the bureaucracy is crucial to understand how a departmental system delivered such a bad outcome. What systemic failures led to such an outrage? Why did no one speak up, or if they did, why were they not listened to?

The royal commission has to look not just at the immediate circumstances of robodebt and the actions of ministers, staffers and bureaucrats; it must also explore the politicisation of the public service, the overly close and overly responsive relationship between senior executives and political staffers, the extent of groupthink within the bureaucracy and its detachment from the human consequences of its actions.

Without that kind of examination of how a bureaucratic system delivered this horror, the foundations remain in place for a similar scandal in the future — under this or a future government.

Do you think the royal commission will be effective in getting the dirt on robodebt? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.