First senior bureaucrat suspended after Robodebt royal commission | ABC News

Kathryn Campbell, the senior bureaucrat who oversaw the rollout of the illegal Robodebt scheme, has been suspended without pay following the damning findings of the royal commission.

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Read more here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-20/kathryn-campbell-suspended-without-pay-over-robodebt/102623918

Kathryn Campbell was the secretary of the Department of Human Services between 2011 to 2017 and was in the top job during Robodebt's inception in 2014.

In 2022 the Labor government quietly appointed Ms Campbell as a special adviser on the AUKUS nuclear submarine project with a salary package of nearly $900,000 a year.

This morning Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told ABC Sydney Ms Campbell had been suspended from that role without pay.

He said the "failings with bureaucracy" and "human tragedy" caused by the scheme meant action had to be taken.

"This was a decision made by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPC) and appropriate bodies. It's not appropriate given the potential legal matters that are involved to go through all of the detail there," he later told ABC Melbourne.

Two weeks ago the Robodebt royal commission handed down its findings into the debt collection scheme which was scathing of Ms Campbell.

The report has a sealed section which recommends individuals for civil and criminal prosecution and the DPC is one of three government agencies who have access to that section.

Commissioner Catherine Holmes said it had to be kept sealed so as not to prejudice any future prosecutions.

The royal commission found Ms Campbell "did nothing of substance" when exposed to information about the illegality of the program and gave the federal cabinet misleading advice about Robodebt at a 2015 Expenditure Review Committee.

"Ms Campbell had been responsible for a department that had established, implemented and maintained an unlawful program," the royal commission report said.

"When exposed to information that brought to light the illegality of income averaging, she did nothing of substance. When presented with opportunities to obtain advice on the lawfulness of that practice, she failed to act."

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