‘We knew it was dodgy’: Centrelink workers’ submissions made public before robodebt royal commission findings

Former Centrelink staff and public servants have revealed the lengths they went to to stop the shambolic robodebt scheme.

Centrelink staff and public servants who worked through the robodebt period are “still struggling” with the impact their work had on clients, new public submissions reveal.

Uploaded two days before the Royal Commission into Robodebt hands down its findings on Friday, the submissions reveal workers – some of whom were decades into their service – knew what they were doing was “dodgy”, but the issues they raised around the ethics of the practice with their superiors “fell on deaf ears”.

Robodebt, active from 2015 to 2019, was an automated method of calculating welfare recipients’ alleged debts by matching their reported pay with their supposed annual incomes, which were estimated by averaging data from the Australian Taxation Office. It issued debt notices to 443,000 welfare recipients.

The royal commission heard its final submissions in March this year, and commissioner Catherine Holmes has spent the last few months preparing her recommendations for the government.

Centrelink staff and public servants were on the frontline of robodebt. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Geraghty

Among the dozens of submissions made public on Wednesday was that of former Services Australia employee Gareth Mills, who submitted that the robbodebt experience had a “profound impact” on him and his colleagues.

“Throughout my experience I have felt a great sense of frustration that the people who had control of this scheme were missing the key point,” he said.

“The record shows that this scheme was not lawful. Workers undertaking this work had that view from the beginning and shared it with their managers.

“I struggle to discern whether this inability of key figures to understand this was disinterest, perfidy or deliberate. That is for the commissioner to decide.”

Former prime minister Scott Morrison gave evidence to the royal commission for his former role as social services minister. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

Kaye Fagan, a customer service centre employee between 2014 to 2018, said frontline staff were “never warned or alerted to this new process”, and she left Centrelink after 22 years because she “could not continue to work for an organisation which showed little respect for natural justice”.

“Authorised review officers knew that the process was illegal and had their say on this. New staff who did not know the legislation were employed at call centres to apply the debts and contact customers,” she wrote in her submission.

“Customers kept coming in with letters and still nothing that office staff could do to assist to sort out this mess. We knew it was dodgy.

“When ministers say they were not aware of the illegality I say that cannot be so. Staff knew, our legal people knew, as did many managers. Our CEO must have known or else she did not confer adequately with her staff.”

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull also gave evidence. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

Joshua Klaehn, who worked as a compliance officer for the Department of Human Services between 2015 and 2017, said a “large number” of his team had “expressed vocal doubts and opposition to the accuracy of the system”, noting concerns about the safeguards it would bypass “compared to human intervention”.

“I personally expressed opposition to the program at that point (in late 2016),” he said.

Other workers told the royal commission how they had been given no briefing prior to the implementation of robodebt, which they described as “highly irregular”.

“All of us were staff of long standing and knew how to read the Act and that this new process was illegal,” said Judith Stolz, who was a senior complaints officer in Centrelink at the time of robodebt’s implementation.

“However, no discussion could move anyone from their view that robodebt was perfectly legal.”

Stephen Fuller, who worked across the Department of Social Services and Centrelink, said as a public servant he had been trained to adhere to the “highest standards”.

“I am outraged that the Commonwealth Public Service has been used and managed in a manner that has destroyed lives and severely diminished the reputation of the service upon which Australian democracy relies,” he said.

The royal commission will make its findings public on Friday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Emma Brasier

Andrea Therese Leck told the Royal Commission that she had been employed by the department in July 2015 to be trained in and implement robodebt, and after two weeks’ training the system went live.

“I and other staff were telling leadership that the process was illegal and unethical, but it fell on deaf ears,” she said.

“A few staff went to the union to advise what was going on, and then we found out there had been a client suicide due to the process.

“I am still struggling with this.”

Julie Holmes, who worked across the DSS, human services, and Centrelink for 26 years between 1992 and 2017, said “from the outset” it was apparent that many aspects of robodebt were “legally dubious at best and completely illegal at worst”.

“I told my superiors of my concern, but their attitude was that ‘there’s nothing we can do about it’,” she said.

She said she was forced to take stress leave in 2017 and before long had to leave her employment “before I had a complete nervous breakdown”.

“I resigned from work … at the age of 55, at least five years before I had intended to,” she said.

Originally published as ‘We knew it was dodgy’: Centrelink workers’ submissions made public before robodebt royal commission findings