Speaker 1: Book length journalism is a tricky thing. After the day
Speaker 1: to day reporting is done and the up to the
Speaker 1: moment coverage and steady stream of revelations, what comes next
Speaker 1: Finding a way to make sense the whole story and
Speaker 1: providing context and inside deriving meaning from what happened. That's
Speaker 1: a whole new set of pressures, and the journalist to
Speaker 1: undertake such a task has to deal with the twin
Speaker 1: challenges of familiarity and fatigue. At some point, we think
Speaker 1: we know about a story, or at the very least,
Speaker 1: we know as much as we want to know. So
Speaker 1: where does the book lie? Is it best understood as
Speaker 1: an introduction or a conclusion to the news story. For
Speaker 1: a journalist to be able to pull off her feet
Speaker 1: like this when the subject matter is both technical on
Speaker 1: the one hand and full of gut wrenching effects on
Speaker 1: the other, For it to be at once damning and funny,
Speaker 1: clever and still pack an emotional punch, well, that kind
Speaker 1: of cleverness requires a Rick Morton level of talent. It's
Speaker 1: hard to think of many crises in Australia's history that
Speaker 1: have matched Robodet for exposing the country's political failings. The
Speaker 1: tenor of the whole thing is suffused with menace and contempt.
Speaker 1: Just listen to then Human Services Minister Alan Tudge on
Speaker 1: Channel Nine's a current affair back in December of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: We will find you, we will track you down and
Speaker 2: you will have to repay those debts and you may
Speaker 2: end up in prison.
Speaker 3: What a turd.
Speaker 1: In case you're not familiar with the case strap in,
Speaker 1: here's a brief potted overview. Back in twenty sixteen, the
Speaker 1: Coalition government used an automated system nicknamed robodebt to ostensibly
Speaker 1: recover overpaid welfare payments from people. The program relied on
Speaker 1: an algorithm to match data from the Australian Tax Office
Speaker 1: with income reporting from the welfare recipients themselves. But here's
Speaker 1: the crucial bit. The calculation relied on income averaging, a
Speaker 1: process that layers had flagged concerns with and one that
Speaker 1: was neither fair nor accurate. And despite this, in the
Speaker 1: event that discrepancies were found between the two sets of data,
Speaker 1: recipients were sent automated letters demanding repayment of alleged over payments.
Speaker 1: I'm going to spell that out again. Recipients were sent
Speaker 1: letters demanding money they didn't owe, and the onus was
Speaker 1: on them as individuals to prove that they didn't owe
Speaker 1: a debt. It put this huge burden on vulnerable people.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, following an investigation by the Royal Commission,
Speaker 1: the Federal Court ruled that the scheme was illegal and
Speaker 1: that the debts calculated using income averaging were invalid. The
Speaker 1: government was ordered to refund over one point seven billion
Speaker 1: dollars to more than four hundred thousand affected individuals. Seeing
Speaker 1: A reporter for The Saturday Paper and Walkley Award winning
Speaker 1: journalist Rick Morton followed the case closely, and he documents
Speaker 1: the scandal and its devastating effects in his new book Meanstreak,
Speaker 1: which has just been released. The key players, from department
Speaker 1: head Katherine Campbell, to some of the welfare recipients and
Speaker 1: their loved ones whose lives were destroyed by the scheme,
Speaker 1: to the lawyers and commissioners who investigated what went wrong,
Speaker 1: are all brilliantly vividly drawn in this remarkable book. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the story of Robert ed is a story about public
Speaker 1: policy that failed from conception to execution. It's the story
Speaker 1: of a system that, in its search for cost cutting
Speaker 1: and revenue raising, lost track of its responsibility to its
Speaker 1: most vulnerable constituents. It's a story about bureaucrats and apparachis
Speaker 1: who chose pleasing their political masters over upholding the principles
Speaker 1: of their service. It's the story of a government scheme
Speaker 1: that was legally, ethically and even mathematic wrong. I'm Michael
Speaker 1: Williams and this is read this to show about the
Speaker 1: books we love and the journalism behind them. I sat
Speaker 1: downe with Rick at Canberra Writers Festival last month to
Speaker 1: discuss meanstreak. I suspect I'm not alone in this room
Speaker 1: in that many times over the past few years, in
Speaker 1: any given week, I find myself uttering the words thank
Speaker 1: God for Rick Morton. That's yeah. Let's face it, there
Speaker 1: are so few people in public life and the cultural
Speaker 1: and intellectual life of this country about whom we feel
Speaker 1: that kind of trust. And the conversation today is going
Speaker 1: to be no small part about trust, about failure of it,
Speaker 1: about failures of people in public life and their idea
Speaker 1: of what they owe to one another, what we all
Speaker 1: owe to one another. Mainstreak is the culmination of years
Speaker 1: of work. It's the culmination of at times, I'm sure
Speaker 1: painful work. But I wanted to kick off by asking
Speaker 1: you to reflect on our attitude towards welfare recipients in
Speaker 1: this country more generally, not just in the context of
Speaker 1: this as a society, as a culture, how do we
Speaker 1: regard those who require assistance?
Speaker 3: Not well? Is breaking news? Not well at all? You know.
Speaker 2: I grew up in Queensland and my mum was on
Speaker 2: the single parent pension and I noticed, particularly even within
Speaker 2: welfare groups, there is a lot of that kind of
Speaker 2: they've imbibed the cultural narrative, which is that there are
Speaker 2: dull bludges and lazy people on welfare out there, and
Speaker 2: if you're on welfare and it's not you, it must
Speaker 2: be someone else, and so there's a lot of that
Speaker 2: kind of cross finger pointing. And of course the further
Speaker 2: up you go, particularly into the middle classes, it's all
Speaker 2: people talk about because they're paying tax. I did a
Speaker 2: session on Robott this week and a guy came up
Speaker 2: to me at the end and he said how many
Speaker 2: people still owed money? And then he started talking to
Speaker 2: me about how he paid a lot of tax as
Speaker 2: a small business owner. Even when he bought his Mercedes,
Speaker 2: he had to pay a lot of tax. On it,
Speaker 2: and I felt very sorry for him and all that
Speaker 2: he's been through. But then I woke up from my
Speaker 2: coma and I realized what an idiot he kind of
Speaker 2: embodied and embodies that kind of theory that these people
Speaker 2: can't be getting something for nothing, and we still do
Speaker 2: it with mutual obligations. You know, they must be forced
Speaker 2: to dance for their money, to look for jobs that
Speaker 2: don't always exist, to stay in jobs that might be
Speaker 2: harassing and bullying them. And it's all because we can't
Speaker 2: handle the idea. And it's not a new idea. Bertie
Speaker 2: Russell was writing about this a long time ago, that
Speaker 2: the poor can't have leisure, they can't do nothing because
Speaker 2: that's what rich people do and they spend it fighting, fucking,
Speaker 2: and feasting.
Speaker 3: So this idea that people must.
Speaker 2: Be forced to perform their poverty be judged for it
Speaker 2: is not new and it is the reason we have.
Speaker 1: Robot at really, so rather than have compassion for other
Speaker 1: people who are struggling, rather than recognizing their own struggle
Speaker 1: and looking to government to have a role in it. Instead,
Speaker 1: there is this kind of embedded attitude that says there's
Speaker 1: something shameful about needing help the shame is the kind
Speaker 1: of beating heart of the way we regard welfare recipients.
Speaker 2: Shame is an important evolutionary function in the human psyche.
Speaker 2: It's just that most of the people who should feel
Speaker 2: shame don't, and it's always just everyone else.
Speaker 3: That feels it.
Speaker 2: It's like I look at a lot of people at
Speaker 2: the top and I'm like, you could do with a
Speaker 2: little bit more shame. And you see that kind of that.
Speaker 2: You know, this idea that we vote against our own interests.
Speaker 2: It goes all the way up to the top when
Speaker 2: you eventually see the people making decisions, and they still
Speaker 2: vote against what is right or in all of our
Speaker 2: interests because they think that you know, for example, just
Speaker 2: to use the National Anti Coruption Commission or you know,
Speaker 2: an accountability body where they will legislate something that doesn't
Speaker 2: actually do anything because they might be the ones that
Speaker 2: are in power one day, or might be the ones
Speaker 2: doing something that is found to be corup. So we
Speaker 2: don't want all these checks and balances, and so you know,
Speaker 2: the whole system is rife with it, I think, and
Speaker 2: we're poorer for it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember you wrote a piece for me
Speaker 1: in the monthly during the period of the Royal Commission,
Speaker 1: and when we're going back and forth talking about it,
Speaker 1: part of your kind of summation of the point you
Speaker 1: wanted to make is this is the utterly shameless weaponizing
Speaker 1: shame against others, that that's the dynamic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was happy with that piece because it had
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this idea for a long time anyway,
Speaker 2: because you know, we saw some of the very most
Speaker 2: senior people who came up with this idea and who
Speaker 2: perpetuated this idea, which is just a reminder for those
Speaker 2: who don't know, I'm sure you do an algorithm that
Speaker 2: falsely attributed debts to people, or falsely inflated the value
Speaker 2: of debts to people that weren't there, or told them
Speaker 2: they more than they actually did, based on a mathematical
Speaker 2: fiction that.
Speaker 3: Many people knew was illegal from the very beginning.
Speaker 2: And so you know, in propagating this, you look at
Speaker 2: them and you see them trying to explain their behavior
Speaker 2: on the stand. It's very hard to explain human foibles
Speaker 2: when they're yours, but also when you're not willing to
Speaker 2: be self reflective about it. And there was no one
Speaker 2: apart from maybe Serena Wilson, who got close as the
Speaker 2: Deputy Secretary of DSS, close not fully there, who actually
Speaker 2: seemed to be overly perturbed about what they did as
Speaker 2: opposed to the fact that they were now being called
Speaker 2: to account for it. That's what injured a lot of people,
Speaker 2: not so much they felt bad. Well, in fact, some
Speaker 2: of them wrote in after the raw commission as their
Speaker 2: final statement saying, you know, we still think ROBA was
Speaker 2: a good idea, which I think was implemented badly, which
Speaker 2: is just insane to me.
Speaker 1: Whereas the truth of it is, it's a monstrous idea
Speaker 1: implemented badly.
Speaker 3: They were wrong twice.
Speaker 2: It was the idea was faulty in every conceivable way,
Speaker 2: and they implemented it in possibly the worst possible way
Speaker 2: by not testing the computer properly, by ramping up to
Speaker 2: targets and literally by the time they turned the computer you.
Speaker 3: Know, automated part of robot. It's a bit of a misnomer.
Speaker 2: Well, by the time they turn that on in September
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, because they wanted to get to these targets faster,
Speaker 2: you know, half a billion dollars and then a billion dollars.
Speaker 3: This computer was all.
Speaker 2: You could almost see it just spinning out of control
Speaker 2: and flinging off bits of fucking metal and code into
Speaker 2: the ceiling fan. And they're all going, O, don't know
Speaker 2: what happened. What happened was you didn't do your homework
Speaker 2: because people were just whipping you and telling you to
Speaker 2: produce this thing. And it's like it was implemented badly,
Speaker 2: but the idea was horrendous. And when you get those
Speaker 2: two things in concert, and people still look back and.
Speaker 3: Go, I don't know where it all went so wrong.
Speaker 3: I do just have to read some of the evidence.
Speaker 1: I mean, the question with forever asked when things are
Speaker 1: monstrous or fraught in public life is do we assume
Speaker 1: conspiracy or do we assuming competence? And I have to
Speaker 1: confess that I would habitually assuming competence over conspiracy. That
Speaker 1: my impulse is someone's bad at their job, sums asleep
Speaker 1: at the wheel. But part of what's so horrifying reading
Speaker 1: your reporting laid out in book form, this whole story
Speaker 1: from Go to Woe, is that it's better understood as
Speaker 1: conspiracy than it is as in competence. It's better understood
Speaker 1: at least as not necessarily an individual failure, but a
Speaker 1: broader failure of compassion, of empathy, of focus rather than execution.
Speaker 3: I think you're right.
Speaker 2: I mean I always assuming competence based on personal experience
Speaker 2: if nothing else. You know, we are incredibly flawed individuals.
Speaker 2: Robino was a conspiracy, certainly according to the Royal Commission.
Speaker 2: At the beginning, it was born in conspiratorial kind of
Speaker 2: you know, it.
Speaker 3: Was covered up.
Speaker 2: The new policy proposal was changed to remove any reference
Speaker 2: to this new legal advice they had that said you
Speaker 2: can't do this, and DSS saying you can't do this,
Speaker 2: it needs legislation, and so they just decided to take
Speaker 2: out the words, which is like taking off the dietary
Speaker 2: intake information on a meat pie and pretending you can
Speaker 2: still lose weight like it.
Speaker 3: Just they didn't change the policy. It was still a
Speaker 3: meat pie. So there's that.
Speaker 2: But then you get that conspiracy relied on weaponizing laziness
Speaker 2: and incompetence elsewhere, and so they worked in concert. And
Speaker 2: then again you get a second kind of round of
Speaker 2: this in twenty seventeen, when the DSS people who realized
Speaker 2: they might have made a few errors in allowing this
Speaker 2: thing to get as far as it did. They didn't
Speaker 2: come up with the idea, but they probably didn't fight
Speaker 2: it hard enough or do their own checks and balances.
Speaker 2: There's another conspiracy where they then seek to actively mislead
Speaker 2: they came we with Ombardsmen by disappearing legal advice.
Speaker 3: First they try to hide the twenty fourteen advice.
Speaker 2: Then when they realized that DHS was given the executive
Speaker 2: minute over that says there was probably advice kicking around,
Speaker 2: and the ombudsman comes back and says, I think you've
Speaker 2: been withholding stuff DSS. Then Concox twenty seventeen advice that
Speaker 2: says something slightly different but also defensible, and gives that
Speaker 2: to the ombardsman, but without the contextual information that was
Speaker 2: asked to the lawyers, which would have given the ombardsmen
Speaker 2: the exact information that they were asking the same question
Speaker 2: both times and suddenly got to different answers.
Speaker 3: How is that possible?
Speaker 2: So you know, this thing was so bad that not
Speaker 2: even the class action judge they didn't get all the
Speaker 2: documents they needed, And even in his judgment he said,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm inclined when there's a toss up between
Speaker 2: conspiracy or fuck up, you go with stuff up, and
Speaker 2: we would never have got these answers were it not
Speaker 2: for the Royal Commission.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned the twenty fourteen statements because I
Speaker 1: think maybe for our discussion today it's worth going back
Speaker 1: to that period and back to in particular the budget
Speaker 1: that year and what it tells us about the political
Speaker 1: environment at that time.
Speaker 2: It feels like a fever dream to remember back to
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen it and in many respects, I will take
Speaker 2: Tony Abit over Scott Morrison any day of the week
Speaker 2: if I had to choose, I would choose Tony Abbot.
Speaker 2: What about it in a bike race, Well, definitely Scott Morrisen.
Speaker 2: I brought that up because Tony Abbott, you knew what
Speaker 2: you were getting with Tony Abbit, except for the part
Speaker 2: where he lied explicitly throughout his election campaign where he
Speaker 2: said no cuts to this, no cuts to that, and
Speaker 2: then once he got into government, cut everything. And that
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen budget was horrendous, and I write about it
Speaker 2: in the book. I was in that budget lock up
Speaker 2: and I remember one of my colleagues turned to my
Speaker 2: editor and said, having looked at the policy where they
Speaker 2: want to kick young people off the doll for six months,
Speaker 2: every year, and she turned to the editor she said, Clive,
Speaker 2: this is horrendous. People are going to die. And she
Speaker 2: was right, but just not about that policy, because that
Speaker 2: policy was so bad that it couldn't even get through
Speaker 2: the Senate. That was the nice option. They had actually
Speaker 2: privately been trying to come up with ideas to kick
Speaker 2: people off the dole permanently until they turned thirty, so
Speaker 2: like no income support at all. And it was so
Speaker 2: bad that Ericabets and Kevin Andrews killed it. Like they
Speaker 2: were the ones who were like, they're like, Tony Abbott,
Speaker 2: have a heart.
Speaker 1: Let's take a moment to pay our respects to those
Speaker 1: great humanitarians.
Speaker 2: It will never cease to amaze me that they were
Speaker 2: the ones who were like, you've gone too far, mister rabbit.
Speaker 2: And so they killed it off behind the scenes, and
Speaker 2: of course the Abbot government was embarrassed. It got stuck
Speaker 2: in the Senate and then he also, you'll remember, ran
Speaker 2: on a regulatory agenda and they had those stupid stupid
Speaker 2: red tape repeal reduction days, just like, oh, everyone burn
Speaker 2: a rule, everyone burn a rule. It's like a pagan
Speaker 2: equinox festival. The least Catholic thing about him was this
Speaker 2: idea that you could have a spiritual experience around cutting
Speaker 2: rules and regulations. And because of those two things, there
Speaker 2: was a new budget process rules that said you can't
Speaker 2: have new spending without a saving, and a saving doesn't
Speaker 2: count if it's likely to get stuck in the Senate
Speaker 2: or if it needs legislation. So that is a reason
Speaker 2: why when it does become obvious that roboet needs legislation,
Speaker 2: and there is legal advice in December twenty fourteen that
Speaker 2: says that the new budgets underway already, if someone had
Speaker 2: briefed that to Scott Morrison and didn't realize that at
Speaker 2: the time and then had to turn around and go
Speaker 2: back to Scott Morrison and say, actually, that thing I
Speaker 2: said that was going to save one point two billion
Speaker 2: dollars needs legislation, I don't want to be that person.
Speaker 2: And secondly, the people, the boffins that came up with
Speaker 2: it in the Compliance unit literally piggybacked on the back
Speaker 2: of the deregulatory agenda and they said, here is a
Speaker 2: way that we can do something cool for us in compliance,
Speaker 2: which is we've got to need to spend some money
Speaker 2: to update our computer systems. But here's all this amazing
Speaker 2: whiz bang stuff we can do as long as we
Speaker 2: tell Tony Abbott that we're reducing rent tape and to
Speaker 2: do that, they were basically saying, we're going to stop
Speaker 2: relying on small businesses to provide payslips when we coercively
Speaker 2: ask them, using our vast powers of government. And we're
Speaker 2: just going to tell people to tell us instead to
Speaker 2: go back and get their pay slips, and if the
Speaker 2: business doesn't want to give it to them, it's not
Speaker 2: our problem. And so you've got these twin kind of
Speaker 2: horrors merging to create the perfect storm for Robodette, and
Speaker 2: Robotette is born.
Speaker 1: When we return, Rick explains how bureaucratic ineptitude revealed Robotette
Speaker 1: to be the scandal the government was trying to hide.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. The book opens with two particularly
Speaker 1: acute epigrams. The first is from Australian saist writer Robert
Speaker 1: Skinner and says, imagine having to prove for insurance purposes
Speaker 1: that your wife is not a dolphin. And no matter
Speaker 1: how many photos of her doing chin ups and playing
Speaker 1: video games with their thumbs you provide, the insurance company
Speaker 1: keeps saying yes, but why then did she visit SeaWorld.
Speaker 1: I'm keen to mention that at this point because I
Speaker 1: don't know about any of you, but the collective trauma
Speaker 1: of having to think about these kind of failures in
Speaker 1: our name of our political system is pretty acute, and
Speaker 1: I know that for Rick at this point it's profound.
Speaker 1: And the book is against the odds funny, it has
Speaker 1: to be said, because the book does have an eye
Speaker 1: on the kind of absurdity of self justification that is
Speaker 1: required to keep this engine turning over at absolutely heartbreaking,
Speaker 1: gut wrenching cost. But the thing at the center of it,
Speaker 1: the bureaucratic self justification. You almost have to laugh because
Speaker 1: there's no other possible response. It's a very literary book
Speaker 1: at sites Borjes and Hella and Kafka and Elma Fad,
Speaker 1: you know, all these kind of great figures of ineptitude.
Speaker 1: Are there single moments for you when you were kind
Speaker 1: of putting it together as a book where you just
Speaker 1: stopped in your tracks at the sheer audacity of the stupidity.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are so many, but the things that
Speaker 2: ended robot At is the funniest example of bureaucratic inaptitude,
Speaker 2: I think, because they've got federal court cases and I
Speaker 2: don't want to skip ahead, but I'll do it. It's been
Speaker 2: going for four and a half years, and the lawyers
Speaker 2: finally find a perfect victim in Madeline Masterton, who's a
Speaker 2: young woman who had a debt raised against her.
Speaker 3: She didn't owe a single cent.
Speaker 2: Of it, and they needed a perfect victim who didn't
Speaker 2: have some like you know, rough.
Speaker 3: Edges or you know, owed a little bit of money.
Speaker 2: So she was perfect and they took it to the
Speaker 2: Federal court and the Department of Human Services is like, ah, fuck,
Speaker 2: what are we.
Speaker 3: Going to do?
Speaker 2: The thing that's been running for four and a half years,
Speaker 2: we're pretty sure is suspect. What we'll do is we'll
Speaker 2: get some For the first time ever in the history
Speaker 2: of robotat in in March twenty nineteen. It started in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen. For the first time ever, they get actual
Speaker 2: external legal advice that they don't leave in draft form
Speaker 2: from the Australian Government solicitor that says Melin Masterton's case
Speaker 2: and they've only had a brief look at it is
Speaker 2: not hopeless. So we need to find a way to
Speaker 2: get rid of the case from court, and the way
Speaker 2: they go about doing that is the funniest thing ever.
Speaker 2: They go to Madeline Masterton and they say, pretty please,
Speaker 2: can you give us your pacelets? And her lawyer says,
Speaker 2: are you for real? You have raised four and a
Speaker 2: half thousand dollars against my client and you are now
Speaker 2: saye through court? Could we please have the evidence for it?
Speaker 2: You are insane? And the department says, ah, damn, all right,
Speaker 2: we'll get rid of that. So they move on to
Speaker 2: option two. Option two is to devise a new policy
Speaker 2: for the first time ever, the very first time this
Speaker 2: policy has ever been used, is to go back through
Speaker 2: the lawyer's affidavit for Madeline Masterton, and where the lawyer says,
Speaker 2: not Madaline Masterson. The lawyer says, I have seen Madeline
Speaker 2: Masterton has been updating sendalink about her income over the years,
Speaker 2: and this is what Madeline Masterton tells me she earned.
Speaker 2: And the department says, they're fair enough, We'll accept it.
Speaker 2: We believe that now they had this information, but now
Speaker 2: we believe it zero. The debt got rid of it. Hilarious.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't be funny if it succeeded.
Speaker 3: Forever. But it's hilarious because.
Speaker 2: A few months later, Deanna Romato comes along and she's
Speaker 2: exactly the same as Madeline Marterton. They try and get
Speaker 2: rid of her debt, and they do. They zero it
Speaker 2: by using pretty much the same circumstances, except that Marto's
Speaker 2: debt was raised after twenty eighteen, when the government, in
Speaker 2: its infinite wisdom decided to expand the general interest charge
Speaker 2: to social security debts. And according to comwealth law or
Speaker 2: prison I'm not entirely sure how to describe it, a
Speaker 2: government can get rid of the debt if they want to.
Speaker 2: They can waive a debt, but they can't waive an
Speaker 2: interest charge. And they still required Jana Ramato to pay
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars in interest, and they couldn't get that
Speaker 2: out of the federal court. And that is the case
Speaker 2: that ended robodet their own greed. It wasn't enough to
Speaker 2: raise a debt. They had to get the money back.
Speaker 1: I love that story and I wanted that in there
Speaker 1: because I think part of what has characterized your reporting
Speaker 1: on this right through has been an awareness of the
Speaker 1: human costs. You started by talking about being raised by
Speaker 1: a single mum, knowing what it is to be in
Speaker 1: a CENTRALNK office. And it struck me right through your
Speaker 1: reporting that that understanding of the reality of being a
Speaker 1: welfare recipient is missing largely from our journalists classes.
Speaker 2: Is that a fair well, I mean, yeah, I think
Speaker 2: it's missing. It used to probably be more prevalent because
Speaker 2: journalism used to be a trade like anything else, but
Speaker 2: it's now just if you've got money, you do journalism
Speaker 2: because you can afford to fail. No, I mean has
Speaker 2: a problem ful stop, because you know, we like to
Speaker 2: tell people how it is. And I'm sure there are
Speaker 2: many things that I talk about vociferously that I'm wrong on,
Speaker 2: or you know, people disagree with me on. The one
Speaker 2: thing I hope that I'm consistent on is my values
Speaker 2: and principles and so the one thing I know and
Speaker 2: I know I know.
Speaker 3: And there's been a little bit.
Speaker 2: Of a closing of the ranks post Royal Commission report
Speaker 2: about from very senior people going well, you just don't
Speaker 2: understand how hard it is to be a public servant,
Speaker 2: and it's like, I don't and I know that it
Speaker 2: is in the same way that it's hard to be
Speaker 2: a good journalist in a system where our editors want
Speaker 2: certain types of stories, and you know, I used to
Speaker 2: work with the Australian I trust me.
Speaker 3: I know, so I get that.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, you know, some things ought
Speaker 2: to be inalienable, and one of them is that you
Speaker 2: treat people, I think, with basic human dignity and respect.
Speaker 2: And I think we saw it through the Royal Commission.
Speaker 2: The hardest thing for some people seems to have been
Speaker 2: to understand that it actually did hurt physically and psychologically
Speaker 2: people to be told that they might own money.
Speaker 1: Tell us about some of the heroes who made it
Speaker 1: better understood, better known, who kind of broke the back
Speaker 1: of the collective willingness to go along with us.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are so many, like you know, we're
Speaker 2: talking about digital activists like Asha Wolf, who actually spotted
Speaker 2: this thing in the wild, which is very hard to do,
Speaker 2: I don't. She got to tip off about a government
Speaker 2: gazette notice with some data matching stuff, which you know
Speaker 2: always grabs her attention, and then she saw Reddit forums
Speaker 2: talking about these debts, and you know, you have to
Speaker 2: see a pattern there when you know so many people
Speaker 2: didn't and Asher did, and then she starts whipping up
Speaker 2: this online campaign and The thing is there was a
Speaker 2: woman involved. She took over as a national general manager
Speaker 2: of the robodette program after it had begun, Karen Harfield.
Speaker 2: She's a former London cop and you know, didn't cover
Speaker 2: herself in glory. But the one funny thing she said
Speaker 2: at the Royal Commission was that because we had refused
Speaker 2: to put a phone number on these letters and so
Speaker 2: that people would go online to contact us, they also
Speaker 2: went online to complain and again they shot themselves in
Speaker 2: the foot.
Speaker 3: And so there was this.
Speaker 2: Twitter storm and Twitter was actually good then because it
Speaker 2: wasn't owned by a fucking moron, and Ashall was whipping
Speaker 2: up the storm. Good journalists, not me. Good journalists got involved.
Speaker 2: A Christopher Norse at the guard in Australia managed to
Speaker 2: get a whistleblower to write the first real details of
Speaker 2: the fact that they were using this weird mismatch and
Speaker 2: the debts were wrong twenty percent of the time, which
Speaker 2: is a number that the department was furious at because
Speaker 2: in their mind they were saying, no, the debts weren't
Speaker 2: wrong twenty percent of the time. In twenty percent of
Speaker 2: the cases when we heard back from people, they were
Speaker 2: able to tell us they didn't owe anything, so that's perfect,
Speaker 2: and it's like, what is wrong with you? But that
Speaker 2: was so they hated that figure because it wasn't a
Speaker 2: debt outcome and it's like, none of this stuff matters.
Speaker 3: You were splitting hairs.
Speaker 2: And this is where I think it matters to you
Speaker 2: have a practical understanding of how potlesy works in the street.
Speaker 3: Not that I think they didn't. That just didn't really care.
Speaker 2: And then of course you've got people like Colleen Taylor,
Speaker 2: who's my favorite person in the world, a public servant
Speaker 2: and the very best public servant.
Speaker 1: The run of applause for Collin Taylor, who.
Speaker 2: I personally think should be not just given a Public
Speaker 2: Service Medal, but should be given Catherine Campbell's Public Service
Speaker 2: Medal directly. And oh yeah, and then at least nine
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars. You know, Collein is such a stickler
Speaker 2: that even after she read the book and she's like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this incredible. And then she gets towards
Speaker 2: the end and I used the line where I said
Speaker 2: she was sneaking into send link files and she's like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, no, I wasn't sneaking. I was in
Speaker 2: there for legitimate purposes, and I would never break a rule.
Speaker 2: I'm like, of course, I am like, was legitimately very
Speaker 2: sorry because the last thing she's like, I'm not a hero.
Speaker 2: She's like, all I was doing was asking my department
Speaker 2: to follow its own procedures and listen to its own advice.
Speaker 2: And she was the one that wrote to CA from Campbell.
Speaker 2: That's seventeen pages of incredibly detailed technical information. When Campbell
Speaker 2: wrote to the employees in an all staff email and said,
Speaker 2: nothing has changed in the way that we raised assessing
Speaker 2: come and raised debts. Nothing has changed, and Colleen Taylor
Speaker 2: blessed her thought that someone was misleading Campbell and wrote
Speaker 2: to her to help her.
Speaker 3: The first thing Campbell.
Speaker 2: Did was for the email to some other senior colleagues
Speaker 2: and said this is probably already with the union, like.
Speaker 3: Just so dismissive.
Speaker 2: And of course Colleen Taylor then to say, I've got
Speaker 2: your email, and Colin Taylor thinks things are going to change,
Speaker 2: And of course the lackeys are dispatched to talk to
Speaker 2: Colin for two hours and after Colin tells them everything,
Speaker 2: and she in her letter to Campbell and she's right
Speaker 2: about this and has been right at every detail down
Speaker 2: to the last comma. She worked in the old system
Speaker 2: and she worked on the new one checking, so she
Speaker 2: knew exactly what had changed. And she told them all
Speaker 2: this in a two hour meeting, and at the end
Speaker 2: of it they said, say, what you're saying is that
Speaker 2: the old system was very slow, and I was just like, oh,
Speaker 2: my fucking god. They had to dispatch someone to talk
Speaker 2: to Colleen Taylor, and they had to pretend that they'd listened,
Speaker 2: and they had to send her a letter on letterhead
Speaker 2: saying thank you for raising these concerns, but they didn't
Speaker 2: do anything with it. And yeah, so Colleen is an absolute,
Speaker 2: absolute hero and I just adore her.
Speaker 1: If justice is anywhere between elusive and impossible, do you
Speaker 1: have an idea of what repair might look like? At least.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think, you know, I'm obsessed with this
Speaker 2: idea that you know, robot. It's a mosaic of failure,
Speaker 2: and then success is also a mosaic, and so little
Speaker 2: bits of things that are happening, like I think there's
Speaker 2: a new requirement to keep records, there's some new code
Speaker 2: of conducty type things about you know, maybe don't mislead
Speaker 2: the ombudsman again. Nice, nice to codify it a bit
Speaker 2: more possibly, and so all of those little things, you know,
Speaker 2: they will add up eventually. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: we've got a government that just doesn't seem to.
Speaker 3: Have a wom.
Speaker 2: About their stated terms for accountability or transparency. Not only
Speaker 2: is they know, but there's a certain love of the
Speaker 2: opacity of it all, because that's the thing that protects power,
Speaker 2: and everyone who has some.
Speaker 3: Access to power knows that the first rule.
Speaker 2: Of keeping that is to not let other people in
Speaker 2: on the secret.
Speaker 1: Presumably the first counterpoint of that in the mosaic that
Speaker 1: is repair is a tile very like Meanstreak. Please join
Speaker 1: me in saying thank God for Rick more.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Michael, You're very nice.
Speaker 1: Rick Morton's incredibly powerful account of the robot ed scandal
Speaker 1: is called Meanstreak, and it's available at all good bookstores now.
Speaker 1: And can I just say, as a fan of puns
Speaker 1: in all their form, it took me embarrassingly long to
Speaker 1: say the pun in the title Meanstreak. But if you're
Speaker 1: talking averages, what better way to describe it? Before we go,
Speaker 1: I wanted to tell you what I've been reading this week,
Speaker 1: and a gorgeous new anthology from University of Queensland Press
Speaker 1: called Words to Sing the World Alive. I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention it's edited by Jasmine mcgaughey and the Poet's Voice,
Speaker 1: and it's a celebration of First Nations language. It gets
Speaker 1: together a whole lot of this country's finest indigenous writers
Speaker 1: and gets them to celebrate language from across the country. Words, phrases,
Speaker 1: things that resonate with them. Tarajan Winch Kim Scott, Daniel Browning,
Speaker 1: Nadi Simpson, Evelyn arral Lewin. It's an incredible lineup and
Speaker 1: a really gorgeous book. It's also a beautiful little heartbag,
Speaker 1: so perfect for Christmas. You can find it and all
Speaker 1: the others we mentioned at your favorite independent bookstore. That's
Speaker 1: it for this week's show. If you enjoyed it, please
Speaker 1: tell your friends about it and rate and review us.
Speaker 1: It helps a lot. Next week and read this. I'm
Speaker 1: joined by historian Claire Wright to discuss her new book,
Speaker 1: Naku Dharuk The Bark Petitions.
Speaker 4: I've always been very respectful of the archive, you know.
Speaker 4: I've always said I write narrative nonfiction. They're written to
Speaker 4: be read. I want people to race through them. I
Speaker 4: want people to get to the end of the chapter
Speaker 4: and want to know what happens next, and the archive
Speaker 4: is what gives you that. As novelistic as I am,
Speaker 4: I have never made anything up. You know, doctors make
Speaker 4: a pact to do no harm. Historians, I think, make
Speaker 4: a pact with their reader to not make shit up.
Speaker 4: And yet this book is the one in which I
Speaker 4: felt going into it the most amount of responsibility to
Speaker 4: get things right.
Speaker 1: Read this as a Schwartz Media production, made possible by
Speaker 1: the general support of ar Group. The show is produced
Speaker 1: and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing by Travis Evans
Speaker 1: and original compositions by Zolton Fetcher. Thanks for listening, See
Speaker 1: you next week.