The horror stories revealed by the Robodebt Royal Commission have prompted commentaries that have criticised Robodebt as an ethical or moral failure, a legal failure, a failure of common sense, a failure to apply the laws of mathematics, a failure of the hollowed-out public service and a failure of leadership. However, there is an aspect of Robodebt that was a staggering success: its vivid portrayal of the worldview of the people responsible.
The information revealed, explained, explained away, excused and not recalled by the witnesses during Commissioner Catherine Holmes’s admirable forensic examination of certain aspects (her terms of reference were unfortunately quite limited) of the conception, gestation and life of Robodebt gripped many of us. The horror stories have prompted commentaries that have criticised Robodebt as an ethical or moral failure, a legal failure, a failure of common sense, a failure to apply the laws of mathematics, a failure of the hollowed-out public service to provide expert, frank and fearless advice and a failure of the people responsible to display the values required for leadership – and no doubt there have been more failures identified that I have not read.
However, there is an aspect of Robodebt that was a staggering success: its vivid portrayal of the worldview of the people responsible. First, its introduction was a success for some, probably not all, in the Liberal and National parties and some in the higher echelons of the Commonwealth public service who share a particular worldview. In Robodebt they were able to implement in public policy some of their most cherished values and gaols. And second, it has demonstrated to the rest of us, particularly those of us who have a different worldview, that many people in positions of power in Australia are vindictive and mean-spirited. They will do all they can to protect and improve their own privileges while ensuring that people who are much less fortunate will not only continue to struggle to live a life of even modest comfort and dignity but also be subject to ever-increasing, state-sanctioned, difficulties and depredations.
According to the worldview of those responsible for Robodebt, society is characterised by two sorts of people: the deserving and the undeserving, those who contribute and those who take, lifters and leaners, those who have achieved financial and social success as a result of their own merits and hard work and those who have failed because of their moral and practical fecklessness.
This is a worldview that is predominantly held by people who might be characterised as being on the right of the political spectrum, in some cases the far right but also people in the more moderate right. The latter includes those whose great wealth confers great influence and those who have more modest means but do not wish to share its small material, social and psychological benefits and privileges.
It is a worldview that underpins and justifies government policies that:
- reward even further the deserving, the contributors, the lifters, the hard workers and punishes the undeserving, the lazy, the leaners. This has the dual effect of reinforcing the lifters’ perception of themselves as both ‘chosen’ and resourceful, and forcing the allegedly feckless into even deeper misery that will, by some unspecified mechanism, encourage them to pull their fingers out; and
- protect and extend the material and non-material privileges enjoyed by the achievers. Indeed, if there is one thing you can count on from those of a conservative orientation, it is that, regardless of how privileged they already are, they will do all they can to protect all their existing privileges and strive to acquire more.
As the Commissioner’s enquiries have revealed, for the people responsible for Robodebt the law doesn’t matter and frank and fearless advice is unneeded because they, the rightful leaders, know and adhere to the right ethical values, and a program that rewards the deserving and punishes the undeserving makes obvious common sense, not to mention economic and political sense. And depending on the adherent’s religious beliefs, may even be sanctioned by god.
Robodebt is but one example of a government program that is underpinned by this worldview – negative gearing, different tax rates for different sources of income, the contrasting superannuation arrangements for rich and poor during Covid, the 3rd stage tax cuts, the stagnant Jobseeker allowance, for example. It is, however, the one for which the worldview of its proponents has been most clearly, and for some of us most horrifyingly, revealed it during its lifetime and during the Commission’s hearings.
For those responsible for Robodebt, the politicians and public servants, the tragedy is not that, in retrospect, they can see that they were guilty of a moral, legal, mathematical or common sense failure. No, the tragedy is that their success in developing a program that fitted their worldview so well was ultimately undermined by their incompetence, their inability to implement it smoothly, quietly and invisibly; to implement it so that no one beyond its victims knew enough to care. By way of contrast, there hasn’t been a Royal Commission into Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers who have been equally abused but much more successfully kept away from the public’s gaze.
For many of us, however, Robodebt has been a success in shining a bright light on the pernicious worldview of its protagonists. It is a revealing example of the political application of the oft referenced ‘traditional Liberal’ (but not liberal) values that members of the party like to call up. Oft referenced but vaguely and self-servingly defined. Show me a socialist who doesn’t value opportunity and choice; show me a poor person who wouldn’t like to accumulate some wealth; show me a struggling parent, unable to pay the gap to see a GP, who wouldn’t like ready access to the best health care for their sick child.
Show me a recipient of welfare support who likes to be deceived, intimidated and robbed by a system designed by politicians and public servants whose worldview sees them as undeserving parasites rather than citizens to whom society has rights and obligations, not least of which is to treat all people with dignity.
We might feel grateful to Robodebt had not so many people suffered so much under its yoke. As residents and citizens of Australia they had a right to receive better treatment from their elected representatives and public servants. In some ways the greatest failure in this sad story is the failure of our democracy to elect better people to government.
Peter Sainsbury is a retired public health worker with a long interest in social policy, particularly social justice, and now focusing on climate change and environmental sustainability. He is extremely pessimistic about the world avoiding catastrophic global warming.