Twelve public servants, including former department heads Kathryn Campbell and Renée Leon, breached their code of conduct 97 times, a report into the unlawful robodebt scheme has found. The findings of the Australian Public Service Commission’s robodebt taskforce, released on Friday more than a year after the inquiry was launched, detail the breaches former and current bureaucrats made during the course of the income averaging scheme.
The Australian Public Service Commissioner, Gordon de Brouwer, said the scheme was “a failure of government” and apologised for the public service’s role: I apologise for the damage that robodebt caused people and their families and the suffering they endured as a result. The report substantiated six findings against Campbell, who was secretary of the department of human services from 2011 to 2017.