Speaker 1: This week, Rick Morton won the Prime Minister's Literary Awards
Speaker 1: for his book Mainstreak. It's a huge achievement and we're
Speaker 1: thrilled for him. This book was the combination of years
Speaker 1: of reporting on Robodet, a government scheme that destroyed lives
Speaker 1: at seven Am. We were lucky enough to work with
Speaker 1: the Rick on a series which we published in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three about how Robodet was allowed to happen. And
Speaker 1: there's one episode from that series that we still think
Speaker 1: about all the time about a woman who saw what
Speaker 1: was happening and called it out. We hope you read
Speaker 1: Rix's important book, Mainstreak, and we hope you enjoy this
Speaker 1: episode from our series Inside Robodet.
Speaker 2: The Robodet Raw Commission has exposed an insidious scheme that
Speaker 2: turned the machinery of an entire government against its own people.
Speaker 2: The plan was to raise billions of dollars from welfare
Speaker 2: recipients by convincing in them they had fake debts. Those
Speaker 2: who imagined, designed and delivered it with their personal ambition
Speaker 2: about the wellbeing of the people that were meant to serve.
Speaker 2: But there were some on the front line who from
Speaker 2: the very beginning knew this government shakedown was wrong. One
Speaker 2: of those people was Colleen Taylor, who spoke up then
Speaker 2: and came forward at the Royal Commission. She was the
Speaker 2: one who told the truth and helped crack one of
Speaker 2: the greatest scandals in Australian government history.
Speaker 3: Wide open.
Speaker 2: Today we speak to the sending worker turned whistleblower, Colin Taylor,
Speaker 2: about what really happened when Robodette was first rolled out
Speaker 2: and just as the heads up, this episode does contain
Speaker 2: some pretty serious language around suicide.
Speaker 4: Hello, come in, very strange moment for me. Have you
Speaker 4: seen you on the Royal Commission? Welcome? Have a seat.
Speaker 5: That's all right now, would you like something to coffee?
Speaker 2: If I've just walked into Colin's house and it is small,
Speaker 2: it's really small. She lives here on her own, and
Speaker 2: she's wearing this little polka dot top and has already
Speaker 2: offered me coffee I think about three times. And she'll
Speaker 2: go on to offer all of our guests coffee and
Speaker 2: tea and biscuits, probably between twelve and twenty times for
Speaker 2: for the end of this recording.
Speaker 4: Now who we are I'm teaching myself as I get older.
Speaker 4: That would be really much to have the food that
Speaker 4: come up. Just help yourself.
Speaker 2: She reminds me a little bit of my mother. I
Speaker 2: must say. She's got statues and automents all around the
Speaker 2: house and behind her as we start talking, there's these
Speaker 2: statues of three meerkats who'll pop their heads up above
Speaker 2: the dan. I guess, and are on the lookout, And
Speaker 2: I don't know, it seems perfect. That's Colin Taylor to me.
Speaker 2: She is this small force of nature, methodical, wanting to
Speaker 2: do the right thing, and always on guard.
Speaker 5: So I'm Colleen Taylor, and I guess. Really I was
Speaker 5: a career public servant because although I did work in
Speaker 5: private industry, really from age eighteen onwards, I joined the
Speaker 5: public service in nineteen eighty four and worked in.
Speaker 2: So Colleen has spent almost her entire career in the
Speaker 2: Australian public service. She joined in nineteen eighty four, first
Speaker 2: with the Commonwealth Employment Service and then for Settling Proper,
Speaker 2: where she moved into roles in compliance and quality review.
Speaker 2: She became essentially a fact checker, always on the lookout
Speaker 2: for what was real and true, checking her colleagues and
Speaker 2: making sure that the welfare system was running as it should.
Speaker 5: You know, it was very much the culture then of
Speaker 5: we called it getting it right, and so getting it
Speaker 5: right related to the customer because you have to be correct,
Speaker 5: but you had to be consistent as well. So we
Speaker 5: also knew that so many people were trying desperately shoe
Speaker 5: the right thing, but often it was the Center Link
Speaker 5: procedures that prevented them from doing the right thing. And
Speaker 5: that's where it was so important that when we were
Speaker 5: investigating cases and looking at it, we're talking to people
Speaker 5: about why this happened and looking at what letters they
Speaker 5: were sent and what they were told. And you know,
Speaker 5: we used to waive debts, so we basically wrote debts
Speaker 5: off because we could see quite clearly that this person
Speaker 5: had not intentionally tried to defraud the government.
Speaker 2: See, Colleen was working in a system that used to
Speaker 2: help people, that gave them the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 2: But that changed in twenty fifteen when something very strange
Speaker 2: started to happen at Centerlink.
Speaker 5: It was a departmental head and he came and it
Speaker 5: was an all staff information session. He was going around
Speaker 5: to all the various teams and he came to us
Speaker 5: Risbon and he was basically.
Speaker 2: Frontline workers get a visit from one of the big
Speaker 2: managers and they're told, hey, we're going to do things
Speaker 2: a little differently around here. That different thing was what
Speaker 2: we now know.
Speaker 5: As robodet and he said, what's going to happen is
Speaker 5: we're going to be able to raise debts from using
Speaker 5: the PAYG data from the Tax Office and just averaging
Speaker 5: it out over that PAYG period. And we all went, what,
Speaker 5: how's that going to work?
Speaker 2: At the very least in twenty fifteen, frontline staff who
Speaker 2: were briefed on this change knew it was morally and
Speaker 2: mathematically wrong.
Speaker 5: We knew that this was something that we would avoid,
Speaker 5: and here he was saying, no, we're going to go
Speaker 5: full steam ahead and we're going to be able to
Speaker 5: average across the PAYG period, when everything we did was
Speaker 5: to avoid that as much as possible.
Speaker 2: What management came and told Colleen and her colleagues was
Speaker 2: this compliance officers were to no longer look the files
Speaker 2: of people on welfare that they already had access to
Speaker 2: in their system. Further, they told them, don't go out
Speaker 2: and find out information. Some had the power to go
Speaker 2: to employers and get paylips, to go to banks and
Speaker 2: get statements, and none of that happened. That was the change. Instead,
Speaker 2: all they were going to do was take an annual
Speaker 2: figure already declared to the Australian Taxation Office and average
Speaker 2: it out into equal discrete amounts over twenty six fortnights
Speaker 2: in the year. They were going to use that to
Speaker 2: tell a customer, you've got a debt, even if they
Speaker 2: knew that they didn't.
Speaker 5: Even if you think, well, forget about you know, you
Speaker 5: obviously have no concern about the customer, or maybe talk
Speaker 5: about yourself, then wouldn't you find it easier to check
Speaker 5: the record Thirty seconds sometimes is enough, then send the
Speaker 5: debt notice out, have the customer, then have to try
Speaker 5: and contact, then have asked for a review, then have
Speaker 5: to go and review the dead and then there's a
Speaker 5: whole process that has to be gone through, which could
Speaker 5: have been stopped in thirty seconds from going out. But
Speaker 5: there was this gung ho. It became like it's almost
Speaker 5: like an accounting machine that you know, was devoid of
Speaker 5: all humanity.
Speaker 2: They could never have known then that the powerful people
Speaker 2: who cooked up the idea had legal advice that should
Speaker 2: have unequivocally killed the idea before it ever began. Instead,
Speaker 2: they found themselves in a maddening battle for the truth
Speaker 2: as people started dying. Perhaps more than anyone in the
Speaker 2: then Department of Human Services, it was Colleen Taylor who
Speaker 2: fought that fight. It almost ruined her.
Speaker 6: And welcome back to Richard in our camera scidio. Is
Speaker 6: Scott Morrison, the man who's stopped the boats and is
Speaker 6: now going to stop Who knows what we'll find out?
Speaker 6: Can I Scott?
Speaker 2: How are you good? Graham?
Speaker 6: Who are you going to crack down on because of Blakeloke?
Speaker 6: He's not going to sit there and do nothing.
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 6: Has that mean that anyone on the doll has got
Speaker 6: to look.
Speaker 7: Out, well, anyone who's who's trying to rip it Offter
Speaker 7: is anyone who's trying to rip off the welfare system
Speaker 7: because every welfare benefit paid every benefit.
Speaker 2: So even deep within the Department of Human Services, Colleen
Speaker 2: realized that this change was part of something much bigger.
Speaker 2: In fact, hating on people on welfare had become almost
Speaker 2: a national sport, and she realized that this was a
Speaker 2: part of that.
Speaker 5: And everyone brought into this Okay, we've got ninety five
Speaker 5: percent of people or more are ripping us off, so
Speaker 5: let's get stuck into them, and I'm really ashamed of
Speaker 5: the whole you know, from politicians to shock jocks, media, newspapers,
Speaker 5: the public public writing in. You know, everyone brought into this.
Speaker 5: You know, oh, let's get stuck into them. They're all
Speaker 5: ripping us off, you know, and how much must that
Speaker 5: have made people feel? But it was also from us
Speaker 5: as well, because you know, you have felt a shame
Speaker 5: to be a public servant. That we knew this was wrong,
Speaker 5: but oh here we were. We were just going a
Speaker 5: lot to do about it, you know, and it's like,
Speaker 5: where was our moral fiber?
Speaker 2: So this approach of averaging income, it was raw greed roverdebt.
Speaker 2: Could never have made the billions of dollars forecast for
Speaker 2: the government without the assumption that every last one of
Speaker 2: those so called discrepancies was going to result in a debt.
Speaker 2: And to do that, everything had to be averaged. And
Speaker 2: so this became a policy and it was rolled out
Speaker 2: to staff like Colleen.
Speaker 5: It never occurred to us that this was illegal. Why
Speaker 5: would we we think, Okay, this is this is something
Speaker 5: that's been formulated and it's come down and this is
Speaker 5: what you've got to work with. So we thought, okay,
Speaker 5: well this is what we've got to deal with. Let's
Speaker 5: make it as fair as we possibly can.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing. Colleen had evidence that the system
Speaker 2: wasn't being wrought it. She was being asked to hunt
Speaker 2: down people she knew from experience. We're not trying to
Speaker 2: do the wrong thing. In other words, she was being
Speaker 2: asked to be complicit.
Speaker 5: That was when I said, you're asking us to commit
Speaker 5: a fraudulent act. And we have a fraud plan which
Speaker 5: is supposed to be about identifying fraud within the employees,
Speaker 5: and I said this should stand for our customers as well.
Speaker 5: You are asking us to commit a fraudulent act by
Speaker 5: allowing a debt to go through by saying, Okay, I
Speaker 5: know there's something on the customer record that PU ows
Speaker 5: there's no debt, but sorry, that was provided two years
Speaker 5: ago and we can't use that.
Speaker 2: Here's what I find so compelling about Colleen Taylor as
Speaker 2: a person. She's methodical, and she applies this rigor to
Speaker 2: her own morality. You know, here watching this new system
Speaker 2: unfold against a backdrop of demonization, she is so disturbed
Speaker 2: by what she sees that, you know, the ordinary procedures
Speaker 2: are not enough. She told her direct manager. Nothing happened.
Speaker 2: She told the assistant director and was rebuked. And what's
Speaker 2: a good, hard working employee to do. She reminds me
Speaker 2: so much of these Metcats in this moment, because the
Speaker 2: meercats aren't on the lookout for danger just for themselves.
Speaker 2: They're doing it for the group, and Colleen is doing
Speaker 2: all of this for other people. And so she goes
Speaker 2: right to the top, and in doing so, Colin Taylor
Speaker 2: transforms her own role in Robodette from disgusted onlooker to
Speaker 2: administrative action hero. She wrote to the most senior person
Speaker 2: in her entire department, secretary Catherine Campbell.
Speaker 5: And my feeling was that she's obviously being misled, because
Speaker 5: I understood that at a secretary level, you wouldn't understand
Speaker 5: the minutia of everything. And I thought, wow, who better
Speaker 5: to tell her than me, who's been in the old
Speaker 5: way and the new way, who was across at all,
Speaker 5: who had the customer experience you have you. So I
Speaker 5: started typing up my email and I would do this
Speaker 5: at home and I'd be formulating and what have you.
Speaker 5: And I certainly ran it past my team leader to
Speaker 5: be sat in there office and he said to me, oh, Colleen,
Speaker 5: you really got to cut it down. They're just not
Speaker 5: going to read that much. I think that was when
Speaker 5: I burst into tears for one hundred and fiftieth time
Speaker 5: and said, no, I'm not changing a thing. And so anyway,
Speaker 5: then I sent it off.
Speaker 2: And secretaries of departments have strict and unwavering obligations under
Speaker 2: the law. Colleen Taylor thought Campbell was being misled. It
Speaker 2: was in Campbell's best interest. She thought to read her
Speaker 2: email very carefully and to treat it even more seriously.
Speaker 5: That morning, a phone call from Catherine Campbell saying we've
Speaker 5: received this and we're onto it, and she was organizing.
Speaker 5: She said, there'll be two of my staff we'll be
Speaker 5: doing a phone hook up, which was being organized for
Speaker 5: the next day. Very short conversation to say, Okay, I'm
Speaker 5: passing it on to these people to look at. And
Speaker 5: so I went out and said my goodness, you know,
Speaker 5: and was like, wow, they're listening. Is all great, and
Speaker 5: you know, So then we had the phone hook up
Speaker 5: the next day and I base went through everything that
Speaker 5: I'd gone through, and really I was pushing that, yes,
Speaker 5: we're stuck with this averaging, because at that stage we
Speaker 5: didn't realize that it was illegal. We thought were stuck
Speaker 5: with it. I was impressing, Okay, if you're going to
Speaker 5: do this averaging, this is all the bad results of it.
Speaker 5: This is and then this is how the process is working,
Speaker 5: and it's not working, and it's causing all sorts of
Speaker 5: dreadful things. I mean, I was there, I think several hours.
Speaker 5: Then in the end, I took the deep breath and
Speaker 5: I just remember, as clear as day. Okay, so what
Speaker 5: you're saying is the old process was very time consuming
Speaker 5: and laborious, and this is going to be much quicker
Speaker 5: and whatever. And I thought, I've just wasted two hours
Speaker 5: of my life. And I remember going out to the
Speaker 5: team leader and he went, I said, how to go?
Speaker 5: And I said, I don't think she listened to a
Speaker 5: word I said.
Speaker 2: The question, of course, is whether they intended to listen
Speaker 2: at all. Neither Catherine Campbell nor any of her lieutenant's
Speaker 2: dispatch to deal with the Erks and Colleen Taylor gave
Speaker 2: any indication they knew the importance of what she was
Speaker 2: desperately trying to tell them, Whether that was a studied
Speaker 2: or a genuine ignorance. Colleen does not know what she
Speaker 2: does know is that she understood exactly what the new
Speaker 2: income averaging policy meant. She knew what Robodet would do.
Speaker 5: So you felt as if there was nothing to be
Speaker 5: cheapd But the very awful thing was I said to
Speaker 5: them when I came up back upstairs after doing those
Speaker 5: reviews and it was quite clear these debts were going
Speaker 5: out with duplications of employers. I came up and I
Speaker 5: remember saying to them, you cannot do this to people.
Speaker 5: People will commit suicide. You cannot do this to people.
Speaker 5: And I remember one of the other team leaders said
Speaker 5: to me, you're right, Colleen, but it's just gone too far.
Speaker 2: Just weeks later, Colleen Taylor read about the death of
Speaker 2: Reese Corso in the Saturday Paper. He was a twenty
Speaker 2: eight year old florist, musician and beloved son and brother.
Speaker 5: And then when sorry, when it came out in the
Speaker 5: paper about Reyes, I remember that his beautiful face committing suicide.
Speaker 5: I stormed into the manager and I said, look, it's
Speaker 5: starting to happen, and it was just so awful.
Speaker 2: He was being hounded by private debt collectors on behalf
Speaker 2: of Centerlink. The Royal Commission proved years later that his
Speaker 2: debt belonged to the very first iteration of rubbodebt. He
Speaker 2: was being hunted via statutory fiction. He killed himself for
Speaker 2: a debt he did not owe.
Speaker 5: And anyway, so that was I left. I went on
Speaker 5: to leave in I think May of twenty seventeen, and
Speaker 5: took age retirement in July twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: But what really After Colleen Taylor retired, she received a
Speaker 2: letter from the department. Now, remember she's been working there
Speaker 2: since nineteen eighty four, She's been promoted, she's diligent, she
Speaker 2: trains other people. But the letter wasn't to thank her
Speaker 2: for her service. It was to remind her that she
Speaker 2: faced two years in prison as she ever spoke about
Speaker 2: anything she learned throughout her career as a public servant.
Speaker 2: There was no other correspondence. In short, it was a
Speaker 2: so long and shut up, we'll be back after this.
Speaker 2: Years passed for Colleen, sitting in retirement, scared that if
Speaker 2: she ever spoke up about what she'd seen and heard,
Speaker 2: she would be punished. Australia does not have a comfortable
Speaker 2: relationship with whistleblowers. After all, she feared losing her own
Speaker 2: pension or worse. But five years after leaving the department,
Speaker 2: she saw an opportunity to tell part of her story.
Speaker 2: The Royal Commission into Robodet was launched.
Speaker 8: The Royal Commission will examine the establishment of the scheme,
Speaker 8: who was responsible for it, and why it was necessary,
Speaker 8: how concerns were handled, how the scheme affected individuals, and
Speaker 8: the financial cost to government, and measures to prevent this
Speaker 8: ever happening again.
Speaker 2: So Colleen worked up the courage to make an anonymous submission.
Speaker 5: Well what happened was I knew that it was important
Speaker 5: because of the detail, and I thought they're not going
Speaker 5: to understand how this worked in practice.
Speaker 2: And soon after the Guardian Australia reporter Luke henriy Gerns
Speaker 2: tracked her.
Speaker 5: Down and so I rang him and he said, your
Speaker 5: name is already out there. It's your emails are part
Speaker 5: of the exhibits and it's in there on their website.
Speaker 5: And I went.
Speaker 2: Wholy, And she thought she was going to jail.
Speaker 5: The next thing Royal commissioners wanting to get in contact
Speaker 5: with you. So we went through the whole song and
Speaker 5: Dad's again. So we went in there and talked to
Speaker 5: them and stupid me, I'm thinking, there's this lady there
Speaker 5: who was excellent. They were all wonderful. She's typing away
Speaker 5: furiously on a laptop and no, no, I can't. I'll
Speaker 5: mention so you've got a bit of background, but I really,
Speaker 5: you know anyway, so the next thing, well, if we'd
Speaker 5: like you to appears No, no, no, no, no no,
Speaker 5: I couldn't do that. And then well okay, and so
Speaker 5: they did a few sample questions and I said, come,
Speaker 5: I'm much better at writing things down. Could I just
Speaker 5: write something down? And then it's like, well we will
Speaker 5: do a statement. Oh okay, I'll do a statement. And
Speaker 5: of course that's what I haven't realized. This person who's
Speaker 5: been tapping away furiously is basically is the statement writing
Speaker 5: my statement. But I mean we went through it. We
Speaker 5: spent a whole day. It's always going through and changing
Speaker 5: it so that you know, I was happy with the
Speaker 5: statement and what have you. And then it was okay,
Speaker 5: well then you're going to be as a witness, and
Speaker 5: so oh no, And I really thought that I would
Speaker 5: either freeze or I'd burst into tears.
Speaker 3: A commissioner. I call Colleen Taylor.
Speaker 9: Miss Taylor, before you sit down, can I ask would
Speaker 9: you prefer to take an oath or an affirmation.
Speaker 5: So I was there sitting in the anti chamber or
Speaker 5: what it was. I waited so long that I'd just
Speaker 5: lost all my nerves what have you? And the other
Speaker 5: thing I did is I took off my glasses so
Speaker 5: I couldn't actually see people in the distance, and that helped.
Speaker 5: And I said to mister Scott, I'm just going to
Speaker 5: focus on you.
Speaker 9: You were formerly an employee of the Australian Public Service,
Speaker 9: and would this be right? You started your employment in
Speaker 9: the Australian Public Service on her about the year nineteen
Speaker 9: eighty four.
Speaker 2: And this is a big deal for Colleen because she's
Speaker 2: not like the senior public servants who are called to
Speaker 2: give evidence that Senate estimates or other parliamentary inquiries, or
Speaker 2: god forbid a robot at Royal Commission, where they're compelled
Speaker 2: to give testimony. Colin is a normal person and what
Speaker 2: makes her evidence so critical is that she never suffered
Speaker 2: the curious lapses of memory that seemed to affect her superiors.
Speaker 2: She remembered the details that other people just apparently didn't.
Speaker 2: She remembered how the system used to work, all its
Speaker 2: parts and procedures, and protocols and critically she knew what
Speaker 2: had changed and could explain how those changes happened.
Speaker 3: And then these are your words.
Speaker 9: Please allow me, as a loyal employee of many years
Speaker 9: standing who has only ever raised concerns in house, to
Speaker 9: respond to you directly, as your statement tells me that
Speaker 9: you are being misled, and I want to ensure my
Speaker 9: words reach you. We cannot find a solution if the
Speaker 9: problem is not correctly identified. It is possible we are
Speaker 9: not even looking in the right direction for a solution.
Speaker 9: And then the words in bold, there has been a
Speaker 9: very dramatic change within the last eighteen months to the
Speaker 9: way in which compliance successes income and calculates and recovers debt.
Speaker 9: See that, yes, And was that your belief that there
Speaker 9: had in fact been a dramatic change.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and this wasn't an iteration in debt recovery. This
Speaker 2: was a brand new money grab. Colleen remembered all of this,
Speaker 2: and when the Royal Commission came knocking, she told them.
Speaker 5: I feel really blessed so that I had the opportunity
Speaker 5: to be at the Royal Commission, because I think people
Speaker 5: must have had days and days and days and weeks
Speaker 5: of people going I don't remember, I don't recall. I
Speaker 5: wasn't there. I didn't get that email or.
Speaker 1: What have you.
Speaker 5: And it must have been a breath of fresh air
Speaker 5: someone to come along and say it was wrong and
Speaker 5: be specific about why it was wrong and that they knew.
Speaker 3: When did you finish your employment?
Speaker 5: I retired age retired in July twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: Can you tell us what the reason was for retiring.
Speaker 5: I I just was spent. I think I just it
Speaker 5: was just the I guess, callous indifference that you just thought,
Speaker 5: it's just what people do to each other, and it
Speaker 5: was just so sad and it was and you just
Speaker 5: thought nothing's going to change. And it seemed to that
Speaker 5: it was for me hard to believe. I am a
Speaker 5: shy personal I am. I just didn't want to be
Speaker 5: front and center. I just thought, oh, this is I
Speaker 5: hope I can just fade away, because I didn't want
Speaker 5: it to be about me because so many other people
Speaker 5: had suffered and what have you. And I know that
Speaker 5: lots of friends and relatives were saying to me after
Speaker 5: I appeared, oh, you know, you're trending on Twitter and
Speaker 5: all this sort of stuff, and I'm going, oh, okay,
Speaker 5: and people were saying just all these wonderful things, and
Speaker 5: I thought it could really turn your head. And then
Speaker 5: there was an email from Jenny Miller saying, I wish
Speaker 5: my son had been able to speak to Colleen Taylor, sorry,
Speaker 5: it would still be with me. And I thought that
Speaker 5: puts everything into perspective. That's what I find intolerable about
Speaker 5: this whole thing is they lied about Oh, people commit
Speaker 5: suicide for all sorts of reasons and really had nothing
Speaker 5: to do with Robert. There was definitely a.
Speaker 1: Connection for Colleen.
Speaker 2: Getting a letter from the mother of the young man
Speaker 2: she had read about in the paper meant the world
Speaker 2: and she wasn't being imprecise when she was talking about
Speaker 2: Singe bureaucrat, saying you couldn't link Roberdette to people who
Speaker 2: killed themselves and that it would be unfair to do
Speaker 2: so because we just don't know what goes on inside
Speaker 2: people's lives. But what Colleen knows is that there are
Speaker 2: cases like Reese's, like another case mentioned in the same
Speaker 2: breath at the Royal Commission of a woman who killed
Speaker 2: herself after receiving debt reminder notices. In May twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: there are cases that are inexplicably linked to ROPODEBT.
Speaker 5: And to then go on about you know, oh, well
Speaker 5: you don't know what's happening in people's lives, you know, Well, yes,
Speaker 5: you do know that people are vulnerable, people are on benefits,
Speaker 5: so generally there's lots of things happening in their life.
Speaker 5: These are not the people to treat as criminals. These
Speaker 5: are not the people to send out debt collectors to.
Speaker 5: These are not the people to make it as difficult
Speaker 5: as possible for them to navigate this system.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: And if you don't know that, you shouldn't be in
Speaker 2: charge of them.
Speaker 3: No, you shouldn't be making policies.
Speaker 5: And that's what I hope from the Commission, that they
Speaker 5: identify the people who should never again be in a
Speaker 5: managerial position where they're looking after things that involve the public.
Speaker 5: You know, because there was just it was like a
Speaker 5: that all had a botomies. There was the empathy gene
Speaker 5: had just gone completely.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: Whether that was a prerequisite to get into management, I
Speaker 5: don't know, but it's just, you know, it just I
Speaker 5: don't know, it hurts.
Speaker 2: It's easy now to look back and ask these types
Speaker 2: of questions, why wasn't it stopped? Why didn't anyone seem
Speaker 2: to care? And because of this Royal commission we know
Speaker 2: at least some of the answers.
Speaker 5: It pained me that the only thing that stopped it
Speaker 5: in the end was that it was illegal. And you think,
Speaker 5: and thank god those people doggedly pursued it all those years,
Speaker 5: But why wasn't it stopped? Because it was unjust, it
Speaker 5: was unfair, it was cruel, all these things, none of
Speaker 5: it seemed to make any difference. Just who was looking
Speaker 5: at that?
Speaker 2: And while Colleen continues to struggle with whether she did enough,
Speaker 2: whether she could have sent emails to more people or
Speaker 2: yelled more loudly, we know Robodet continued because there were
Speaker 2: many more people who didn't even try. They saw and
Speaker 2: they chose silence.
Speaker 5: The big thing was that disappoints me is they didn't
Speaker 5: deserve my loyalty. Still upsets me to this day. But
Speaker 5: there was that overwhelming thing of there's nothing you can do.
Speaker 5: You can just be a part of this horrible thing,
Speaker 5: of what you're doing to people, knowing that, yes, you
Speaker 5: would think stay there, fight, you know, and I still
Speaker 5: do this day think what could I have done differently?
Speaker 2: Well, you leave there with your head held much higher
Speaker 2: than almost everyone else.
Speaker 5: Yes, I am. I'm happy for what I did, and
Speaker 5: I'm so glad that it's on the historical record and
Speaker 5: that it's come up in the Royal Commission. And I
Speaker 5: stand every single word I said. And I'm very, very
Speaker 5: grateful to yourself, Luke and the Commission giving me this opportunity.
Speaker 5: But please let me go back into the woodwork.
Speaker 2: I think you can go back in the woodwork and
Speaker 2: hopefully a generation of public servants will be asking themselves,
Speaker 2: what would Colleen Taylor do? Yes, exactly, because that would
Speaker 2: be the right frame of mine.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thank you, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: The Royal Commission found that Katherine Campbell had ignored warnings
Speaker 2: about Robertett repeatedly. You'll remember that's the Catherine Campbell, the
Speaker 2: one who Colleen explicitly emailed about her concerns. She was
Speaker 2: involved intimately in the preparation of the new policy proposal,
Speaker 2: which removed all references to income averaging and had the
Speaker 2: effect of misleading cabinet. She was also found to have
Speaker 2: personally ordered her own officials to call off the request
Speaker 2: for legal advice from the Australian Government solicitor because to
Speaker 2: do so would likely prove embarrassing to her. Captain Campbell
Speaker 2: is currently on leave from her nine hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: a year job as a supervisor for the ucust Nuclear
Speaker 2: Submarine Project and as Colleen Taylor.
Speaker 7: Colleen Taylor and she'll probably kill me for it, saying
Speaker 7: her evidence was exemplary and Commissioner Holmes, as I said,
Speaker 7: did focus in that she restored faith. So I'd love
Speaker 7: to see Colleen Taylor, one of the frontline people in
Speaker 7: the public service, get a PSM. That's just a personal opinion.
Speaker 2: Bill Shorten said Colleen should receive a Public Service Medal
Speaker 2: for being one of the few public servants to step
Speaker 2: forward and try and expose what happened.
Speaker 7: Because some of the real heroes here weren't the people
Speaker 7: who should have been. The real leadership came from the
Speaker 7: rank and file of the organization who spoke up, even
Speaker 7: at risk of their own job security and promotion.
Speaker 2: Colleen'll be making a cup of tea and a cup
Speaker 2: of coffee, and I think there's a certain calm that
Speaker 2: comes with the knowledge that you did the right thing.