Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Ruby Jones and I'm back to introduce
Speaker 1: another episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's books podcast, hosted
Speaker 1: by Editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features conversations
Speaker 1: with some of our most talented writers. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to hear from our very own Rick Morton,
Speaker 1: the Saturday Paper seenior reporter, won a Walkley Award for
Speaker 1: his seven AM special series about Robodet. He covers the
Speaker 1: scandal and its effects in his new book Meanstreak. As always,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by host Michael Williams to tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the episodes.
Speaker 2: Hi Michael, Hi Ruby.
Speaker 1: So Michael, we've covered the robodette scheme and it's devastating
Speaker 1: consequences on seven Am extensively, including in that special series
Speaker 1: with Rick. But for anyone who might need a bit
Speaker 1: of a reminder about what happened, can you tell me
Speaker 1: about the scandal?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Roby, it does feel a bit like explaining Rick
Speaker 3: Morton Robotette to a seven AM audience is like explaining.
Speaker 4: Water to a fish.
Speaker 3: But for those who missed it entirely, I'm going to
Speaker 3: give the briefest of summaries. It was back in twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen and the coalition government used an automated system that
Speaker 3: was nicknamed robodad to ostensibly recover overpaid welfare payments from people.
Speaker 3: And the program relied on this algorithm that would match
Speaker 3: data from the ATO with income reporting from welfare recipients.
Speaker 3: But the crucial bit is that it relied on income averaging.
Speaker 3: It was a process that lawyers had already flagged concerns
Speaker 3: with and it was neither fair nor accurate. The maths
Speaker 3: was bogus, the morality behind it was bogus. The legal
Speaker 3: advice said it wouldn't work, and despite this, it became
Speaker 3: the basis of the ways in which they tried to
Speaker 3: get money back from deeply vulnerable people. It was a
Speaker 3: shit show, not to put too fine a point on it,
Speaker 3: and Rick has captured that beautifully in his book Mainstream.
Speaker 1: And writing a book is notoriously challenging for journalists who
Speaker 1: tend to be used to daily or weekly deadlines. So
Speaker 1: what is it about mainStreet that you think really sets
Speaker 1: it apart from other books like this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's a really interesting question. Is are
Speaker 3: you writing a book for people who have been covering
Speaker 3: the journalism as it goes along, So the book ends
Speaker 3: up being a kind of summary and a long view
Speaker 3: reaching conclusions, or are you writing it for the people who,
Speaker 3: when it was coming in a kind of day to
Speaker 3: day newsy basis couldn't quite absorb it. Need the kind
Speaker 3: of refresher in the back to basics. And what Rick
Speaker 3: does so well is navigate those two things. You know,
Speaker 3: this is a story that, on the one hand, is
Speaker 3: incredibly technical. It requires understanding of maths and the minutia
Speaker 3: of welfare policy. But it's also a deeply human story.
Speaker 3: It's about understanding the consequences when vulnerable people have taken
Speaker 3: advantage of when they're demonized, and when shame is weaponized
Speaker 3: against the Australian public by its own government. And Rick
Speaker 3: manages to do all those things at once while at
Speaker 3: the same time being funny, engaging, entertaining. It's a terrific
Speaker 3: read and I was really excited to talk to.
Speaker 2: Him about it.
Speaker 1: Sounds like Rick Morton at his finest coming up in
Speaker 1: just a moment. Thank god for Rick Morton.
Speaker 3: I sat down with Rick at Canberra Writers' Festival last
Speaker 3: month to discuss meanstrec I suspect I'm not alone in
Speaker 3: this room in that many times over the past few years,
Speaker 3: in any given week, I find myself uttering the words
Speaker 3: thank God for Rick Morton.
Speaker 2: That's yeah. Let's face it.
Speaker 3: There are so few people in public life, in the
Speaker 3: cultural and intellectual life of this country about whom we
Speaker 3: feel that kind of trust, And the conversation today is
Speaker 3: going to be no small part about trust, about failures
Speaker 3: of it, about failures of people in public life and
Speaker 3: their idea of what they owe to one another, what
Speaker 3: we all owe to one another. Mainstreak is the culmination
Speaker 3: of years of work. It's the culmination of at times
Speaker 3: I'm sure painful work. But I wanted to kick off
Speaker 3: by asking you to reflect on our attitude towards welfare
Speaker 3: recipients in this country more generally, not just in the
Speaker 3: context of this as a society, as a culture, how
Speaker 3: do we regard those who require assistance?
Speaker 4: Not well? Is breaking news? Not well at all?
Speaker 5: You know. I grew up in Queensland and my mum
Speaker 5: was on the single parent pension and I noticed, particularly
Speaker 5: even within welfare groups, there is a lot of that
Speaker 5: kind of They've imbibed the cultural narrative, which is that
Speaker 5: there are dull bludges and lazy people on welfare out there,
Speaker 5: and if you're on welfare and it's not you, it
Speaker 5: must be someone else. And so there's a lot of
Speaker 5: that kind of cross finger pointing. And of course the
Speaker 5: further up you go, particularly into the middle classes, it's
Speaker 5: all people talk about because they're paying tax. Session on
Speaker 5: robodet this week, and a guy came up to me
Speaker 5: at the end and he said how many people still
Speaker 5: owed money? And then he started talking to me about
Speaker 5: how he paid a lot of taxes as a small
Speaker 5: business owner. Even when he bought his Mercedes, he had
Speaker 5: to pay a lot of tax on it. And I
Speaker 5: felt very sorry for him and all that he's been through.
Speaker 5: But then I woke up from my comra and I
Speaker 5: realized what an idiot he kind of embodied and embodies
Speaker 5: that kind of theory that these people can't be getting
Speaker 5: something for nothing, and we still do it with mutual obligations.
Speaker 5: You know, they must be forced to dance for their money,
Speaker 5: to look for jobs that don't always exist, to stay
Speaker 5: in jobs that might be harassing and bullying them. And
Speaker 5: it's all because we can't handle the idea, and it's
Speaker 5: not a new idea. Bertwind Russell was writing about this
Speaker 5: a long time ago, that the poor can't have leisure,
Speaker 5: they can't do nothing, because that's what rich people do,
Speaker 5: and they spend it fighting, fucking, and feasting. So this
Speaker 5: idea that people must be forced to perform their poverty
Speaker 5: and be judged for it is not new, and it
Speaker 5: is the reason.
Speaker 3: We have robot at really, so rather than have compassion
Speaker 3: for other people who are struggling, rather than recognizing their
Speaker 3: own struggle and looking to government to have a role
Speaker 3: in it. Instead, there is this kind of embedded attitude
Speaker 3: that says there's something shameful about needing help. The shame
Speaker 3: is the kind of beating heart of the way we
Speaker 3: regard welfare recipients.
Speaker 5: Shame is an important evolutionary function in the human psyche.
Speaker 5: It's just that most of the people who should feel
Speaker 5: shame don't, and it's always just everyone.
Speaker 4: Else that feels it.
Speaker 5: It's like I look at a lot of people at
Speaker 5: the top and I'm like, you could do with a
Speaker 5: little bit more shame. And you see that kind of that,
Speaker 5: you know, this idea that we vote against our own interests.
Speaker 4: It goes all the way up to the top.
Speaker 5: When you eventually see the people making decisions and they
Speaker 5: still vote against what is right or in all of
Speaker 5: our interests because they think that, you know, for example,
Speaker 5: just to use the National Anti Coruption Commission or you know,
Speaker 5: an accountability body where they will legislate something that doesn't
Speaker 5: actually do anything because they might be the ones that
Speaker 5: are in power one day, or might be the ones
Speaker 5: doing something that is found to be corup. So we
Speaker 5: don't want all these checks and balances, and so you know,
Speaker 5: the whole system is rife with it, I think, and
Speaker 5: we're poorer for it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I remember you wrote a piece for me
Speaker 3: in the Monthly during the period of the Royal Commission,
Speaker 3: and when we're going back and forth talking about it,
Speaker 3: part of your kind of summation of the point you
Speaker 3: wanted to make is this is the utterly shameless weaponizing
Speaker 3: shame against others, that that's the dynamic.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I was happy with that piece because it had I
Speaker 5: was thinking about this idea for a long time anyway,
Speaker 5: because you know, we saw some of the very most
Speaker 5: senior people who came up with this idea and who
Speaker 5: perpetuated this idea, which is just.
Speaker 4: A reminder for those who don't know.
Speaker 5: I'm sure you do an algorithm that falsely attributed debts
Speaker 5: to people, or falsely inflated the value of debts to
Speaker 5: people that weren't there, or told them they owed more
Speaker 5: than they actually did, based on a mathematical fiction that
Speaker 5: many people knew was illegal from the very beginning. And
Speaker 5: so you know, in propagating this, you look at them
Speaker 5: and you see them trying to explain their behavior on
Speaker 5: the stand. It's very hard to explain human foibles when
Speaker 5: they're yours, but also when you're not willing to be
Speaker 5: self reflective about it. And there was no one apart
Speaker 5: from maybe Serena Wilson who got close as the Deputy
Speaker 5: Secretary of DSS, close not fully there, who actually seemed
Speaker 5: to be overly perturbed about what they did, as opposed
Speaker 5: to the fact that they were now being called to
Speaker 5: account for it. That's what injured a lot of people,
Speaker 5: not so much they felt bad.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 5: In fact, some of them wrote in after the Royal
Speaker 5: Commission as their final statement saying, you know, we still
Speaker 5: think Roba was a good idea which I think was
Speaker 5: implemented badly, which is just insane to me.
Speaker 3: Whereas the truth of it is it's a monstrous idea
Speaker 3: implemented badly.
Speaker 4: They were wrong twice.
Speaker 5: The idea was faulty in every concept givable way, and
Speaker 5: they implemented it in possibly the worst possible way by
Speaker 5: not testing the computer properly, by ramping up to targets,
Speaker 5: and literally by the time they turn the computer, you know,
Speaker 5: automated part of Robodet's a bit of a misnomer by
Speaker 5: the time they turn that on in September twenty sixteen,
Speaker 5: because they wanted to get to these targets faster, you know,
Speaker 5: half a billion dollars and then a billion dollars. This
Speaker 5: computer was all you could almost see it just spinning
Speaker 5: out of control and flinging off bits of fucking metal
Speaker 5: and code into the ceiling fan. And they're all going, oh,
Speaker 5: don't know what happened. What happened was you didn't do
Speaker 5: your homework because people were just whipping you and telling
Speaker 5: you to produce this thing. And it's like it was
Speaker 5: implemented badly. But the idea was horrendous. And when you
Speaker 5: get those two things in concert, and people still look
Speaker 5: back and go, I don't know where it all went
Speaker 5: so wrong. I do just have to read some.
Speaker 4: Of the evidence.
Speaker 3: I mean, the question with forever asked when things are
Speaker 3: monstrous or fraught in public life is do we assume
Speaker 3: conspiracy or do we assume incompetence? And I have to
Speaker 3: confess that I would habitually assuming competence over conspiracy. That
Speaker 3: my impulse is someone's bad at their job, Sun's asleep
Speaker 3: at the wheel. But part of what's so horrifying reading
Speaker 3: your reporting laid out in book form, this whole story
Speaker 3: from Go to Woe, is that it's better understood as
Speaker 3: conspiracy than it is as incompetence. It's better understood at
Speaker 3: least as not necessarily an individual failure, but a broader
Speaker 3: failure of compassion, of the empathy, of focus rather than execution.
Speaker 4: I think you're right.
Speaker 5: I mean I always assuming competence based on personal experience,
Speaker 5: if nothing else. You know, we are incredibly flawed individuals.
Speaker 5: Robinet was a conspiracy, certainly according to the Royal Commission
Speaker 5: at the beginning, it was born in conspiratorial kind of
Speaker 5: you know, it was covered up. The new policy proposal
Speaker 5: was changed to remove any reference to this new legal
Speaker 5: advice they had you can't do this and DSS saying
Speaker 5: you can't do this. It needs legislation, and so they
Speaker 5: just decided to take out the words, which is like
Speaker 5: taking off the dietary in takeing information on a meat
Speaker 5: pie and pretending you can still lose weight like it
Speaker 5: just they didn't change the policy or still a meat pie.
Speaker 4: So there's that.
Speaker 5: But then you get that conspiracy relied on weaponizing laziness
Speaker 5: and incompetence elsewhere, and so they worked in concert. And
Speaker 5: then again you get a second kind of round of
Speaker 5: this in twenty seventeen when the DSS people who realize
Speaker 5: they might have made a few errors in allowing this
Speaker 5: thing to get as far as it did. They didn't
Speaker 5: come up with the idea, but they probably didn't fly
Speaker 5: it hard enough or do their own checks and balances.
Speaker 5: There's another conspiracy where they then seek to actively mislead
Speaker 5: they come with with ombudsman by disappearing legal advice.
Speaker 4: First they try to hide the twenty fourteen advice.
Speaker 5: Then when they realized that DHS is given the executive
Speaker 5: minute over that says there was probably advice kicking around,
Speaker 5: and the ombudsman comes back and says, I think you've
Speaker 5: been withholding stuff DSS. Then concox twenty seventeen advice that
Speaker 5: says something slightly different but also defensible, and gives that
Speaker 5: to the ombardsman, but without the contextual information that was
Speaker 5: asked to the lawyers, which would have given the ombardsmen
Speaker 5: the exact information that they were asking the same question
Speaker 5: both times and suddenly got to different answers.
Speaker 4: How is that possible?
Speaker 5: So you know, this thing was so bad that not
Speaker 5: even the class action judge they didn't get all the
Speaker 5: documents they needed, And even in his judgment he said,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm inclined. When there's a toss up between
Speaker 5: conspiracy or fuck up, you go with stuff up.
Speaker 4: And we would never have got.
Speaker 5: These answers were it not for the Royal Commission.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you mentioned the twenty fourteen statements because I
Speaker 3: think maybe for our discussion today, it's worth going back
Speaker 3: to that period and back to in particular the budget
Speaker 3: that year and what it tells us about the political
Speaker 3: environment at that time.
Speaker 5: It feels like a fever dream to remember back to
Speaker 5: twenty fourteen, doesn't it. And in many respects I will
Speaker 5: take Tony Abbit over Scott Morrison any day of the week.
Speaker 4: If I had to choose, I would choose Tony Abbot.
Speaker 2: What about it in a bike race.
Speaker 4: Well, definitely, Scott Morrison.
Speaker 5: I brought that up because Tony Abbott, you knew what
Speaker 5: you were getting with Tony Abbit, except for the part
Speaker 5: where he lied explicitly throughout his election campaign where he
Speaker 5: said no cuts to this, no cuts to that, and
Speaker 5: then once he got into government cut everything. And that
Speaker 5: twenty fourteen budget was horrendous, and I write about it
Speaker 5: in the book. I was in that budget lock up
Speaker 5: and I remember one of my colleagues turned to my
Speaker 5: editor and said, having looked at the policy where they
Speaker 5: want to kick young people off the doll for six
Speaker 5: months every year, and she turned to the editor she said, Clive,
Speaker 5: this is horrendous.
Speaker 4: People are going to die.
Speaker 5: And she was right, but just not about that policy,
Speaker 5: because that policy was so bad that it couldn't even
Speaker 5: get through the Senate.
Speaker 4: That was the nice option. They had actually privately.
Speaker 5: Been trying to come up with ideas to kick people
Speaker 5: off the dole permanently until they turned thirty, so like
Speaker 5: no income support at all, and it was so bad
Speaker 5: that Ericabets and Kevin Andrews killed it. Like they were
Speaker 5: the ones who were like, They're like, Tony Abbot, have
Speaker 5: a heart.
Speaker 3: Let's take a moment to pay our respects to those
Speaker 3: great humanitarians.
Speaker 5: It would never cease to amaze me that they were
Speaker 5: the ones who were like, you've gone too far, mister rabbit.
Speaker 5: And so they killed it off behind the scenes, and
Speaker 5: of course the Abbot government was embarrassed it got stuck
Speaker 5: in the Senate. And then he also, you'll remember, ran
Speaker 5: on a regulatory agenda and they had those stupid, stupid
Speaker 5: red tape repeal reduction days, just like, oh, everyone burn
Speaker 5: a rule, everyone burn a rule. It's like a pagan
Speaker 5: equinox festival. The least Catholic thing about him was this
Speaker 5: idea that you could have a spiritual experience around cutting
Speaker 5: rules and regulations. And because of those two things, there
Speaker 5: was a new budget process rules that said you can't
Speaker 5: have new spending without a saving, and a saving doesn't
Speaker 5: count if it's likely to get stuck in the Senate
Speaker 5: or if it needs legislation. So that is a reason
Speaker 5: why when it does become obvious that Robodet needs legislation,
Speaker 5: and there is legal advice in December twenty fourteen that
Speaker 5: says that the new budgets underway already, if someone had
Speaker 5: briefed that to Scott Morrison and didn't realize that at
Speaker 5: the time, and then had to turn around and go
Speaker 5: back to Scott Morrison and say, actually, that thing I
Speaker 5: said that was going to save one point two billion
Speaker 5: dollars needs legislation. I don't want to be that person.
Speaker 5: And the secondly, the people, the boffins that came up
Speaker 5: with it in the compliance unit, literally piggybacked on the
Speaker 5: back of the deregulatory agenda and they said, here is
Speaker 5: a way that we can do something cool for us
Speaker 5: in compliance, which is we've got to need to spend
Speaker 5: some money to update our computer systems, but here's all
Speaker 5: this amazing whiz bang stuff we can do as long
Speaker 5: as we tell Tony Abbot that we're reducing rent tape.
Speaker 5: And to do that, they were basically saying, we're going
Speaker 5: to stop relying on small businesses to revite payslips when
Speaker 5: we coercively ask them using our vast powers of government,
Speaker 5: and we're just going to tell people to tell us
Speaker 5: instead to go back and get their pay slips, and
Speaker 5: if the business doesn't want to give it to them,
Speaker 5: it's not our problem. And so you've got these twin
Speaker 5: kind of horrors merging to create the perfect storm for Robodette,
Speaker 5: and Robotette is born.
Speaker 3: When we return, Rick explains how bureaucratic ineptitude revealed Robotette
Speaker 3: to be the scandal the government was trying to hide.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: The book opens with two particularly acute epigrams. The first
Speaker 3: is from Australian saist writer Robert Skinner and says, imagine
Speaker 3: having to prove for insurance purposes that your wife is
Speaker 3: not a dolphin, and no matter how many photos of
Speaker 3: her doing chin ups and playing video games with their
Speaker 3: thumbs you provide, the insurance company keeps saying yes, But
Speaker 3: why then did you visit SeaWorld. I'm keen to mention
Speaker 3: that at this point because I don't know about any
Speaker 3: of you, but the collective trauma of having to think
Speaker 3: about these kind of failures in our name, of our
Speaker 3: political system is pretty acute, and I know that for
Speaker 3: Rick at this point it's profound. And the book is
Speaker 3: against the odds Funny, it has to be said, because
Speaker 3: the book does have an eye on the kind of
Speaker 3: absurdity of self justification that is required to keep this
Speaker 3: engine turning over at absolutely heartbreaking gut wrenching cost, but
Speaker 3: the thing at the center of it, the bureaucratic self justification.
Speaker 3: You almost have to laugh because there's no other possible response.
Speaker 3: It's a very literary book at sites Borges and Hella
Speaker 3: and Kafka and Elma Fad, you know, all these kind
Speaker 3: of great figures of aptitude. Are there single moments for
Speaker 3: you when you were kind of putting it together as
Speaker 3: a book where you just stopped in your tracks at
Speaker 3: the sheer audacity of the stupidity.
Speaker 5: I mean, there are so many, but the things that
Speaker 5: ended Robotat is the funniest example of bureaucratic inaptitude, I think.
Speaker 5: Because they've got federal court cases and I don't want
Speaker 5: to skip ahead, but I'll do it. It's been going
Speaker 5: for four and a half years, and the lawyers finally
Speaker 5: find a perfect victim in Madeline Masterton, who's a young
Speaker 5: woman who had a debt raised against her. She didn't
Speaker 5: owe a single cent of it, and they needed a
Speaker 5: perfect victim who didn't have some like you know, rough
Speaker 5: edges or you know, owed a little bit of money.
Speaker 5: So she was perfect, and they took it to the
Speaker 5: federal court and the Department of Human Services is like, ah, fuck,
Speaker 5: what are we going to do? The thing that's been
Speaker 5: running for four and a half years, we're pretty sure
Speaker 5: is suspect. What we'll do is we'll get some for
Speaker 5: the first time ever in the history of Robota in
Speaker 5: March twenty nineteen. It started in twenty fifteen. For the
Speaker 5: first time ever, they get actual external legal advice that
Speaker 5: they don't leave in draft form from the Australian Government
Speaker 5: solicitor that says, Medline Masterton's case and they've only had
Speaker 5: a brief look at it is not hopeless, so we
Speaker 5: need to find a way to get rid of the
Speaker 5: case from court. And the way they go about doing
Speaker 5: that is the funniest thing ever. They go to Madeline
Speaker 5: Masterton and they say, pretty please, can you give us
Speaker 5: your pacelets? And her lawyer says, are you for real?
Speaker 5: You have raised four and a half thousand dollars against
Speaker 5: my client and you are now saying through court could
Speaker 5: we please have the evidence for it? You are insane?
Speaker 5: And the department says, ah, damn, all right, we'll get
Speaker 5: rid of that. So they move on to option two.
Speaker 5: Option two is to devise a new policy for the
Speaker 5: first time ever, the very first time, this policy has
Speaker 5: ever been used. Is to go back through the lawyer's
Speaker 5: affidavits for Maline Masterton and where the lawyer says, not
Speaker 5: Madalin masters And the lawyer says, I have seen Madeline
Speaker 5: Masterton has been updating sendaling about her income over the years,
Speaker 5: and this is what Madeline Masterton tells.
Speaker 4: Me she earned.
Speaker 5: And the department says, they're fair enough, We'll accept it.
Speaker 5: We believe that now they had this information, but now
Speaker 5: we believe it zero the debt got rid of it. Hilarious.
Speaker 5: It wouldn't be funny if it succeeded forever, but it's
Speaker 5: hilarious because a few months later, Diana Romato comes along
Speaker 5: and she's exactly the same as Madeline Marterton. They try
Speaker 5: and get rid of her debt, and they do. They
Speaker 5: zero it by using pretty much the same circumstances, except
Speaker 5: that Marto's debt was raised after twenty eighteen, when the government,
Speaker 5: in its infinite wisdom, decided to expand the general interest
Speaker 5: charge to social security debts. And according to commwealth law
Speaker 5: or prison I'm not entirely sure how to describe it,
Speaker 5: a government can get rid of the debt if they
Speaker 5: want to. They can wave a debt, but they can't
Speaker 5: waive an interest charge, and they still required Diana Romato
Speaker 5: to pay one hundred dollars in interest, and they couldn't
Speaker 5: get that out of the federal court. And that is
Speaker 5: the case that ended robodet their own greed. It wasn't
Speaker 5: enough to raise a debt. They had to get the
Speaker 5: money back.
Speaker 3: I love that story and I wanted that in there
Speaker 3: because I think part of what has characterized your reporting
Speaker 3: on this right through has been an awareness of the
Speaker 3: human costs. You started by talking about being raised by
Speaker 3: a single mum, knowing what it is to be in
Speaker 3: a Sentra Link office, and it struck me right through
Speaker 3: your reporting that that understanding of the reality of being
Speaker 3: a welfare recipient is missing largely from our journalists classes.
Speaker 5: Is that a fair well, I mean, yeah, I think
Speaker 5: it's missing. It used to probably be more prevalent because
Speaker 5: journalism used to be a trade like anything else, but
Speaker 5: it's now just if you've got money, you do journalism
Speaker 5: because you can afford to fail. No, I mean journalism
Speaker 5: has a problem ful stop because we know we like
Speaker 5: to tell people how it is, and I'm sure there
Speaker 5: are many things that I talk about vociferously that I'm
Speaker 5: wrong on or you know, people disagree with me on.
Speaker 5: The one thing I hope that I'm consistent on is
Speaker 5: my values and principles and so the.
Speaker 4: One thing I know and you know, I know. And
Speaker 4: there's been a little bit.
Speaker 5: Of a closing of the ranks post Royal Commission report
Speaker 5: about from very senior people going well, you just don't
Speaker 5: understand how hard it is to be a public servant.
Speaker 5: And it's like, I don't and I know that it
Speaker 5: is in the same way that it's hard to be
Speaker 5: a good journalist in a system where our editors want
Speaker 5: certain types of stories. And you know, I used to
Speaker 5: work with the Australian I trust me, I know, so
Speaker 5: I get that. But at the same time, you know,
Speaker 5: some things ought to be inalienable, and one of them
Speaker 5: is that you treat people, I think, with basic human
Speaker 5: dignity and respect, and I think we saw it through
Speaker 5: the Royal Commission. The hardest thing for some people seems
Speaker 5: to have been to understand that it actually did hurt
Speaker 5: physically and psychologically people to be told that they might
Speaker 5: own money.
Speaker 3: Tell us about some of the heroes who made it
Speaker 3: better understood, better known, who kind of broke the back
Speaker 3: of the collective willingness to go along with us.
Speaker 5: I mean there are so many like you know, we're
Speaker 5: talking about digital activists like Asha Wolf, who actually spotted
Speaker 5: this thing in the wild, which is very hard to do.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 5: She got a tip off about a government gazette notice
Speaker 5: with some data matching stuff, which you know always grabs
Speaker 5: her attention, and then she saw Reddit forums talking about
Speaker 5: these debts and you know, you have to see a
Speaker 5: pattern there when you know so many people didn't and
Speaker 5: Asher did, and then she starts whipping up this online campaign.
Speaker 4: And the thing is there was a woman involved. She
Speaker 4: took over as.
Speaker 5: A national general manager of the robodette program after it
Speaker 5: had begun, Karen Harfield. She's a former London cop and
Speaker 5: you know, didn't cover herself in glory. But the one
Speaker 5: funny thing she said at the Royal Commission was.
Speaker 4: That because we had refused to.
Speaker 5: Put a phone number on these letters and so that
Speaker 5: people would go online to contact us, they also went
Speaker 5: online to complain and again they shot themselves in the foot.
Speaker 5: And so there was this Twitter storm. And Twitter was
Speaker 5: actually good then because it wasn't owned by a fucking
Speaker 5: moron and Ashall was whipping up the storm. Good journalists,
Speaker 5: not me. Good journalists got involved. A Christopher Norse at
Speaker 5: the Guard in Australia managed to get a whistleblower to
Speaker 5: write the first real details of the fact that they
Speaker 5: were using this weird mismatch and the debts were wrong
Speaker 5: twenty percent of the time, which is a number that
Speaker 5: the department was furious at because in their mind they
Speaker 5: were saying, no, the debts weren't wrong twenty percent of
Speaker 5: the time. In twenty percent of the cases when we
Speaker 5: heard back from people, they were able to tell us
Speaker 5: they didn't owe anything. So that's perfect, and it's like,
Speaker 5: what is wrong with you? But that was so they
Speaker 5: hated that figure because it wasn't a debt outcome and
Speaker 5: it's like, none of this stuff matters. You were splitting
Speaker 5: hairs And this is where I think it matters to
Speaker 5: you have a practical understanding of how policy works in
Speaker 5: the street.
Speaker 4: Not that I think they didn't. That just didn't really care.
Speaker 5: And then of course you've got people like Colleen Taylor,
Speaker 5: who's my favorite person in the world, a public servant
Speaker 5: and the very best public servant.
Speaker 2: The Runov applause for Collin Taylor, who.
Speaker 5: I personally think should be not just given a Public
Speaker 5: Service Medal, but should be given Katherine Campbell's Public Service Medal.
Speaker 4: Directly.
Speaker 5: And oh yeah, and then at least nine hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: You know, Collein is such a stickler that even after
Speaker 5: she read the book and she's like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: this incredible. And then she gets towards the end and
Speaker 5: I used the line where I said she was sneaking
Speaker 5: into send link files, and she's like, oh my god, no,
Speaker 5: I wasn't sneaking. I was in there for legitimate purposes
Speaker 5: and I would never break a rule. I'm like, of course,
Speaker 5: I'm like, was legitimately very sorry because the last thing
Speaker 5: she's like, I'm not a hero. She's like, all I
Speaker 5: was doing was asking my department to follow its own
Speaker 5: procedures and listen to its own advice. And she was
Speaker 5: the one that wrote to Katherine Campbell that's seventeen pages
Speaker 5: of incredibly detailed technical information. When Campbell wrote to employees
Speaker 5: in an all staff email and said, nothing has changed
Speaker 5: in the way that we raised assessing come and raised debts.
Speaker 5: Nothing has changed, and Colein Taylor blessed her thought that
Speaker 5: someone was misleading Campbell and.
Speaker 4: Wrote to her to help her.
Speaker 5: The first thing Campbell did was ford the email to
Speaker 5: some other senior colleagues and said this is probably already
Speaker 5: with the union, like just so dismissive and cause Colleen
Speaker 5: Taylor then to say I've got your email, and Colin
Speaker 5: Taylor thinks things are going to change, And of course
Speaker 5: the lackeys are dispatched to talk to Colin for two hours,
Speaker 5: and after Colin tells them everything, and she in her
Speaker 5: letter to Campbell and she's right about this and has
Speaker 5: been right at every detail down to the last comma.
Speaker 5: She worked in the old system and she worked on
Speaker 5: the new one checking, so she knew exactly what had changed.
Speaker 5: And she told them all this in a two hour meeting,
Speaker 5: and at the end of it they said, say, what
Speaker 5: you're saying is that the old system was very slow.
Speaker 4: And I was just like, oh my fucking go.
Speaker 5: But they had to dispatch someone to talk to Colleen Taylor,
Speaker 5: and they had to pretend that they'd listened, and they
Speaker 5: had to send her a letter on letterhead saying thank
Speaker 5: you for raising these concerns, but they didn't do anything
Speaker 5: with it. And yeah, so Colleen is an absolute, absolute hero,
Speaker 5: and I just adore her.
Speaker 3: If justice is anywhere between elusive and impossible? Do you
Speaker 3: have an idea of what repair might look like? At least.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think, you know, I'm obsessed with this
Speaker 5: idea that you know, Robot. It's a mosaic of failure,
Speaker 5: and then success is also a mosaic, and so little
Speaker 5: bits of things that are happening, like I think there's
Speaker 5: a new requirement to keep records. There's some new code
Speaker 5: of conducty type things about you know, maybe don't mislead
Speaker 5: the ombudsman again. Nice, nice to codify it a bit
Speaker 5: more possibly, and so one of those little things. You know,
Speaker 5: they will add up eventually. But at the same time,
Speaker 5: we've got a government that just doesn't seem to have
Speaker 5: a whomph about their stated terms for accountability or transparency.
Speaker 5: Not only is there no but there's a certain love
Speaker 5: of the opacity of it all, because that's the thing
Speaker 5: that protects power, and everyone who has some access to
Speaker 5: power knows that the first rule of keeping that is
Speaker 5: to not let other people in on the secret.
Speaker 3: Presumably the first counterpoint to that in the mosaic that
Speaker 3: is repair is a tile very like Meanstreak. Please join
Speaker 3: me in saying thank God for Rick More, Thank you, Michael,
Speaker 3: You're very nice. Rick Martin's incredibly powerful account of the
Speaker 3: Robotdeat scandal is called Meanstreak, and it's available at all
Speaker 3: good bookstores now. And can I just say, as a
Speaker 3: fan of puns in all their form, it took me
Speaker 3: embarrassingly long to see the pun in the title Meanstreak.
Speaker 3: But if you're talking averages, what better way to describe?
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