Bill Shorten furious over former public servant’s claims she was robodebt ‘scapegoat’
Government Services Minister Bill Shorten has rebuked claims from a former high-ranking public servant that she was a scapegoat over the robodebt scandal.
Kathryn Campbell, former secretary of the Department of Human Services, told The Weekend Australian she was “set up” and deliberately linked to the robodebt crisis, which led to scathing Royal Commission findings against her.
Ms Campbell worked as secretary of the Department between 2011 and 2017.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“There had been ministerial comments from Minister Shorten about me and no one else, just me,” she said.
“He drew parallels about problems with (former Prime Minister) Morrison and I. He did try and connect me to Mr Morrison, so I thought there was a bit of an angle there.”
The Australian Public Service Commission found Ms Campbell liable for breaching the APSC’s code in a bombshell report released Friday, which followed a 15-month probe.
It says she was among multiple former and current public servants who breached the commission’s code of conduct 97 times.
Robodebt was an automated debt recovery scheme that wrongly accused about 440,000 people on social security benefits of owing the Federal Government money after being set up in 2015, leading to widespread grief and several suicides.
On Saturday, Mr Shorten chastised the claims and said Ms Campbell was failing to empathise with victims.
“Robodebt was a shocking betrayal and failure of empathy towards vulnerable people who needed support from the Government,” he said.
“And today and yesterday, we’ve seen one of the key central actors in the tragedy of robodebt yet again, in my opinion, (has) failed to show empathy to the victims.”
The former Labor leader described Ms Campbell’s comments as a “furious tirade” that deflected wrongdoing.
“Somewhat bizarrely, one of the senior leaders of the public service, against whom there were six different breaches found against her, has launched a furious tirade blaming everyone else,” he said.
“The reality is the attacks on 430,000 people using welfare were political. The politics wasn’t against the Coalition Government; it was by the Coalition Government.”
Ms Campbell rejected all findings against her by the APSC.
