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Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Tribute to Therese

 With deep sadness I share the news that our former colleague  at the NSW Parliamentary Library passed away few days ago. 

Some people’s souls shine so brightly, burn so intensely, that their flame goes out too soon.  Such it seems is the case with  Georgette Therese Papadopoulo, TP, who was still young as she was only 70. 

For Therese, Marlene and me our common parliamentary privilege began in 1982 at the Library, where we played a part in facilitating democracy.


Therese inspired great loyalty and affection among library staff. She took great interest in the people she worked with, getting to know them, sharing their concerns and offering useful advice when asked. She offered to babysit my two daughters no matter how busy she happened to be.


“Whether it be an ancient quote, a long-lost recipe, or the need to find an obscure reference in Government Gazette, Therese, aka Theresa aka TP, could find it. She was thorough, meticulous and dogged in her efforts. It paid off. There was always a positive result.


To these days well catalogued shelves of government publications  which Therese organised  are lining the back walls and side aisles in the parliamentary library.


Therese, a member of the library staff for over two decades, is remembered for the grace and intelligence with which she approached her work, as well as for her wide-ranging creativity and irrepressible sense of humor.  



She had a gift. When she talked with you, she made you feel like you were the most important person in the world, and for her, in that moment, you were. She loved people, with all her heart, and it was real. She didn’t do it to make people feel that way, she did it because it was who she was. After a movie, with her best friend Robyn, or a dinner at Rose Bay one was able to share any problems with TP she was there for so many of us …


We all loved her.


While Therese looked like the stereotypical librarian, with her glasses, sensible shoes and tidy long black hair, she was known for her salty Armenian Egyptian Greek story telling  and an insightful wit.



The NSW Parliamentary Library is not open to the public, yet we serve the people of the state by providing library services to enable Parliament. Established in 1840, it is one of the oldest continuously running libraries in Australia. Classified as a ‘special library’, we house a bespoke collection that reflects key subject areas relating to the Parliament of NSW. In addition to our rare, valuable and historic items, we capture contemporary news articles, media releases and government publications and store them for generations to come in our digital archive. Our service mission is, ‘For every question, an answer you can trust,’ and we took our responsibility as stewards of this mighty collection with earnest.

Dr Cope a rare leader in the library 📚 fields 

Parliament NSW

What should we conclude from the continuing and unexpected decline of Australian state parliamentary libraries? Are we not seeing inevitable changes, perhaps long overdue, now taking place? One conclusion, however, seems unavoidable: the parliamentary libraries as a class, despite all efforts to demonstrate the contrary, in reality remain merely useful and non-essential add-ons to their parliaments. Are they, to use a biblical phrase, simply a ‘non-continuing city’? But, as the quotation continues, should we not rather seek the city to come? Are such observations worth a further word?

The reform of parliament, a highly ambiguous concept, is of ancient lineage and resurfaces periodically. Is it likely that the reform of parliament is needed before we can seriously consider the renewal of parliamentary libraries? This seems a rather forlorn prospect and a doomed expectation. But, on a more cheerful note, we might ask whether the community of parliamentary librarians, that is, those professionals who still, despite all, believe in the value of their type of librarianship, can find a voice to articulate publicly a case for their calling? Can they demonstrate that parliamentary librarianship has values and a vision capable of providing a bridge to the future?

As individual parliamentary libraries their scope for action is simply too dependent on their own institution which may have already shown itself more responsive to other priorities. If this observation is correct, hope may lie in collective action, perhaps taking various forms over an extended period. Is a creative response possible to what may be in essence an existential crisis?

Have the parliamentary librarians the intellectual power and the vision to articulate the convincing strategies and goals that seem necessary? Can alternatives be offered? Can indeed the goodwill of those who ultimately will decide the future and fate of the parliamentary libraries be secured for the larger benefits potentially available to all? These are big issues raising fundamental questions which might apply to librarianship in general. Is there the pool of professional expertise available for this task?

This paper argues that we have to abandon the non-continuing city which is, as it were, passing away before our eyes. Whilst a digital future may seem the obvious choice, we must acknowledge that this is but a partial solution. Technology is an instrument to be used and exploited in ever new forms and sophistication, but we need something that is an enduring value, capable of growth and elaboration. That may well be in our time a bridge too far.

A new discourse on values and visions is what is required, and this clearly calls for fresh ideas and formulations. The discourse is wide open and will not be followed up here. Is it possible for the state parliamentary librarians collectively to discover a range of values and a vision to guide their efforts, and perhaps to create strength of purpose? Who knows whether there is more than one new city to be discovered?

No Continuing City, or the City to Come? Observations on Parliament and its Library



 Dr Cope the Father of the Mother of Parliamentary Libraries in Australia 📚 



PS: Obituaries can reveal much about the way a profession is conceived and structured in the popular imagination. This article examines obituaries of librarians in the New York Times between 1977 and 2002 to determine how librarians were presented to the general public by a major newspaper. Although librarianship is a female‐intensive profession, 63.4 percent of the obituaries chronicled the lives of male librarians. Although public and school librarians outnumber their academic counterparts, obituaries focused on academic librarians. 

Far from creating a stereotypical portrait of librarians as shy, dour, dowdy, and sheltered individuals, the emphasis on large‐scale achievements in the obituaries produces an image of librarianship as a glamorous profession. Some librarians are presented as sleuths and detectives who amassed large collections. They contributed to the progress of scholarly research with extensive publications. 

Many others had connections to prominent people, making the most of these social networks in their work. Librarians were also players on the global stage, founding libraries abroad and developing international guidelines that led to institutional progress. 

Emphasis on large‐scale accomplishment, however, tends to obscure the contributions of librarians who daily perform countless small and caring acts that, summed together, positively affect the lives of ordinary individuals.


NSW’s longest serving treasurer and Labor heavyweight Michael Egan – who helped deliver the Sydney Olympics and bring down significant government debt – has died, aged 75.


Taxing Wealth Report Generation Z are two generations Amen

 “Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.”

― Malcolm Muggeridge


Veteran journalist’s $500k legal fight after having name cleared

Veteran journalist Steve Barrett is seeking to be paid nearly $500,000 after spending five years to clear his name.



Lehrmann inquiry head made 55 calls to The Australian during probe, court hears 


Rich People Don’t Talk to Robots Josh Brown 


Boeing Whistleblower: Production Line Has “Enormous Volume Of Defects” Bolts On MAX 9 Weren’t Installed View from the Wing  


Why the oligarchs LOVE democracy Alex Krainer 


When corporate profits force 53% of inflation the rats are fleeing Western-style democracyRamin Mazaheri 

 

Why are HMRC understating the number of Tax Commissioners by 14%? 

An, as yet, unpublished part of the Taxing Wealth Report is on the governance of HM Revenue & Customs, which I have long felt to
Read the full article…


NEW: an ideological divide is emerging between young men and women in many countries around the world. I think this one of the most important social trends unfolding today, and provides the answer to several puzzles. Australia is excluded


The chart for the UK is *remarkable*. All groups of people, young and old, men and women, have become more liberal on race and immigration *except young men*


In Poland’s elections last year, 46% of young men voted for the far-right nationalist Confederation party, compared to just 16% of young women.

One theory is negative polarisation. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, young women have both become more progressive and more vocal about their views. Many young men feel threatened and have reacted by taking the opposite position.

A new global gender divide is emerging Young men and young women’s world views are pulling apart. The consequences could be far-reaching


Avi-Yonah: 2023 Was A Remarkable Year For The IRS In Tax Litigation

 “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

―  Mark Twain


Uber driver Hassan Zia Rana's sophisticated Telstra mobile phone scam spanning two continents uncovered after six years - as he's jailed and faces deportation: 'Pure greed'


Journalist Steve Barrett vindicated after big court win over extortion allegation

A veteran journalist’s five-year battle to clear his name has come to an end after prosecutors dropped a blackmail charge against him.


"The Australian Government collects more money from HECS than it does from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax.


Legendary newsman Steve Barrett’s battle for justice after AFP witch-hunt shows importance of free media

Partisan politics and activist campaigning are undermining Australia’s institutions, including government, the law, the judiciary, the police and sections of the media.

Ironically, much recent institutional politicisation has been driven by conservative governments that have demanded a less political ABC.
Former prime minister Scott Morrison in February 2022 apologised in the parliament to former Liberal Party staffer Brittany Higgins for an alleged rape that had not even been tested in the courts.
Morrison did not defend his then attorney-general, Christian Porter, from tenuous historical rape allegations put by the ABC in 2021 on behalf of friends of a dead woman they claim Porter raped when both were high school students. Porter denied the story outright. 
Nor did Morrison defend his then education minister, Alan Tudge, from November 2020 revelations on the ABC about a 2017 consensual affair with staffer Rachelle Miller.
Yet the Coalition oversaw the payment of $650,000 to Miller while the new Labor government paid $2.4m to Higgins without even obtaining independent legal advice about the commonwealth’s prospects in court. The minister in whose department Higgins worked, Linda Reynolds, and her chief of staff, Fiona Brown, were barred from attending the one-day legal negotiation in December 2022. 
The involvement of then Labor frontbenchers Penny Wong and Katy Gallagher, a personal friend of Higgins’ fiance, David Sharaz, in pursuing the politics of the Higgins allegations is well-known, as was the role of ousted former Coalition PM Malcolm Turnbull – succeeded by Morrison – in driving ABC reporting of the Porter and Tudge allegations.
Newly named ABC chair Kim Williams will have his work cut out trying to police the impartiality he rightly claimed last week should be essential to the corporation’s journalism. 
Reflect on the role of the ABC in the failed witch-hunt against the late Cardinal George Pell over child abuse allegations against two teenagers unknown to him inside Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in his early days as archbishop of Melbourne.
The credibility of the ABC, Victoria Police and the state judiciary was damaged by the pursuit of Pell but at least the High Court of Australia, in a 7-0 decision, ultimately overturned the conviction. That April 2020 decision, a slap to the ABC, was rejected by several senior ABC staff who claimed on social media the result did not mean Pell was innocent. 
In the Higgins matter, the political framing of the MeToo movement to hurt the Morrison government damaged the ABC’s journalism, and Network Ten’s. The case raised doubts about the Australian Federal Police, the ACT legal system and the ACT DPP. Some journalists even publicly questioned the legal principle of the presumption of innocence – the bedrock of the justice system. 
The Coalition federal government directly threatened journalists in June 2019 AFP raids on then News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst’s home, and two ABC reporters. Now disgraced former Home Affairs director Mike Pezzullo pursued reporters over stories partly based on a leaked document in which he proposed allowing the Australian Signals Directorate to access the private information of Australians.
Thanks to a Freedom of Information request by former independent South Australian senator Rex Patrick we now know Pezzullo even wrote to AFP deputy Neil Gaughan on June 4, 2019 congratulating the AFP: “Good work by all involved.”
The AFP will be in the frame again this week when veteran NSW television and newspaper crime reporter Steve Barrett – “Bar Rat” to his friends – takes a costs action to the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney over a failed prosecution alleging involvement in a $5m bribe attempt.
The matter concerned another institutional failure: Adam Cranston, son of then federal deputy commissioner of taxation Michael Cranston, was convicted and jailed over the $105m Plutus Payroll tax fraud. Cranston and four others were found guilty in March last year in the NSW Supreme Court over charges relating to causing loss to the commonwealth and dealing with the proceeds of crime between March 2014 and May 2017.
Barrett, 66, a prolific story breaker for 40 years, was unintentionally caught up in a scam. Blackmailers were threatening to reveal details of the tax fraud through the media unless the fraudsters paid them $5m. Barrett knew nothing of the blackmail attempt. He was simply trying to firm up the story for publication and the AFP knew he had already briefed A Current Affair.
Barrett was told about the tax scam by property developer and conman Daniel Hausman. Barrett, an independent media contractor, received one payment of $2000 from Hausman for work done as a journalist trying to substantiate the story. 
The Australian’s Stephen Rice reported here last July 14 that internal AFP emails showed senior officers working on the Barrett matter “recommended the AFP reject a request by prosecutors to obtain a statement from their star witness (Hausman) because he was not considered a witness of truth”. The commonwealth DPP had dropped all charges against Barrett that day.
In an email on August 28, 2020, eight months before Barrett’s first trial: “AFP Detective Sergeant Morgan Blunden said his team had already discontinued taking a statement from Mr Hausman because he was ‘untruthful’, ‘unreliable’ and at times ‘incoherent’.”
David Sharaz and Brittany Higgins. Picture: Jacquelin Magnay
David Sharaz and Brittany Higgins. Picture: Jacquelin Magnay
Jurors at that first failed trial were never told of the AFP’s assessment of Hausman because the email was ruled inadmissable. That trial collapsed after the jury was hung, but Hausman was found in subsequent matters to have lied repeatedly. He is serving an eight-year sentence.
The near seven-year saga has left Barrett – who was initially told he was not to be charged after the AFP raided his Sydney home on May 17, 2017 – significantly out of pocket, and his reputation damaged. He was forced to sell his house and his name was revealed to the media before any formal charges were laid. 
But Barrett on that 2017 morning was more concerned he had lost his scoop. As Rice reported last July 15, Barrett was suspicious a magistrate had signed the warrant for the search of his house at only 5.08pm the previous day, the very day Barrett obtained the documentary proof he believed would allow him to break one of the biggest stories of his life. 
A year after his face was plastered all over national TV bulletins wrongly accusing him of being a director of a straw company associated with the fraud, Barrett in 2018 received a letter informing him he had not been identified as a conspirator. At some point over the next year police changed their minds and Barrett was charged with a single count of blackmail. 
Barrett’s lawyer rang to ask the AFP why the change of mind and was told: “The commonwealth wants it.”
Hopefully Wednesday’s hearing will bring justice for the man who tracked down pedophile Dolly Dunn in Honduras for 60 Minutes in 1996. Bar Rat’s achievements read like a merit list of the most important crime stories of the past 40 years. 
Politicians, even now working on dangerous misinformation and disinformation laws, should reflect on the importance of a free media. Bar Rat’s journalism was never driven by political activism but by a search for truth. 

The Taxing Wealth Report 2024: an update

I have this morning published the latest note within the Taxing Wealth Report 2024. Unusually, and for the first time, this note suggests a change
Read the full article…


The current tax scandal was avoidable – and major reform are still required so that small business is taxed fairly

Posted on January 19 2024

The so-called loan scheme tax charge imposed by HM Revenue & Customs mainly on those who had, in my opinion, undoubtedly engaged in tax avoidance
Read the full article…


Avi-Yonah: 2023 Was A Remarkable Year For The IRS In Tax Litigation


It’s not just the Post Office that needs reform: HM Revenue & Customs does as well

I have posted this thread on Twitter this morning: There is justifiable outrage right now about the fact that the Post Office has been able

Read the full article…

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

After robodebt: Restoring trust in government integrity and accountability

 While my mum and dad were working as teachers, it was my great-grandmother, Lucy, who looked after me as a child. Lucy had worked at the Australian Taxation Office for decades. She was working when women were systematically paid less than men, and the tax-free threshold was just 100 pounds.

She was a proud public servant who helped war widows like herself get the support they needed. Her final working years were at the new tax office building at 1 St Georges Terrace, now converted to the Duxton Hotel.

Family Story: The Hon Patrick Gorman MP is the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Assistant Minister for the Public Service


ESSAYS

After robodebt:
Restoring trust in government integrity and accountability 

By Mark Dreyfus 
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, in rolled sleeves standing in front of Hansard library

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus. Photograph by Mia Mala McDonald

The attorney-general makes the case for reforms to Australia’s institutional checks and balances 

“He was meant to be here.”

One of the most powerful moments of 2023 was watching Kathleen Madgwick give evidence about her son, Jarrad, to the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme. Jarrad took his own life hours after learning of a decision that Centrelink had made about him: without evidence and with no explanation, Centrelink alleged that Jarrad owed the Commonwealth a $2000 debt. Jarrad was just 22.

Jennifer Miller’s evidence to the commission was equally profound and moving. Her son, Rhys, was 28 years old when he took his own life. Rhys’s own government had relentlessly pursued him for alleged debts amounting to more than $10,000. After his death, Rhys’s debts were reduced to zero.

Ms Miller told the commission, “[h]e was let down by the system”.

He sure was. These are stories no parents should ever have to tell.

A single mother of two in my electorate contacted my office for help after she received a debt notice asserting that she owed the government $6000. Jane received the notice after she returned to full-time work following the death of her partner. In between raising two kids on her own, and working full-time to support them, Jane was forced to spend months challenging a debt she did not owe while being forced to pay it back in instalments.

More than half a million Australians from so many walks of life were targeted by the robodebt scheme. They were vilified, worn down and made to feel like criminals by their own government. A catastrophic failure of public administration on such an extraordinary scale should not have been possible in Australia.

The current opposition leader, Peter Dutton, was a senior cabinet minister throughout the entire life of the scheme. As were many of his senior colleagues.

Before the royal commission reported, Mr Dutton had already dismissed it as a “witch hunt”. To this day, Mr Dutton has refused to apologise or take any responsibility for the role he and his colleagues played – as cabinet ministers of the former government – in creating, maintaining and defending the robodebt scheme. Instead, Mr Dutton continues to assert that “[w]hen the problems were brought to the attention of the government at the time, the program was stopped”.

The royal commission found that the opposite was true: in early 2017, when “Robodebt’s unfairness, probable illegality and cruelty became apparent”, the path taken by the former government “was to double down, to go on the attack in the media against those who complained and to maintain the falsehood that in fact the system had not changed at all”. It was not until mid 2020 that the robodebt scheme finally came to an end. Not because the former government stopped it voluntarily, but because the Federal Court forced it to be stopped by finding the scheme unlawful.

The robodebt scheme and a slew of other scandals under the former government revealed that the system was broken. By the time of the 2022 federal election, there was no doubt that Australians were in the mood for change. The Australian people deserve a government that is as hard-working, compassionate and fair-minded as they are. Since coming to office in May 2022, the Albanese government has embarked on a series of reforms to make government work better for Australians.

In my portfolio, the most well known of these reforms is the establishment of the National Anti-Corruption Commission – the most significant Commonwealth integrity reform in at least a generation. Less well known are reforms that are aimed at restoring or revitalising public institutions that once served Australians well but which the former government spent a decade neglecting, undermining or trying to dismantle. The tragic cost of the former government’s calculated assault on these institutions was exposed by the robodebt scheme.




In my first speech in parliament, I said that what we see and do in our path to becoming elected representatives must affect how we act as legislators, what we understand to be the role of the elected representative, and what we hope to achieve in our time in parliament. That is certainly the case for me.

My work as a parliamentarian and as a minister has been informed by my experience as a field officer for the then-embryonic Northern Land Council – my first job out of university – and by my experience as a lawyer.

As a lawyer, I represented members of the Stolen Generat-ions in their efforts to hold the Commonwealth accountable for the role it played in Aboriginal children being removed from their families. I represented individuals, businesses and community organisations in freedom of information matters in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, and in environmental, climate and free speech cases in superior courts.

Through my experience in these and other cases, I witnessed ordinary – and extraordinary – Australians using the systems of government to hold government accountable. It is a big part of the reason why I am such a passionate advocate for building strong public institutions and for greater accountability and integrity in government: not as ends in themselves, and not only to stop abuses of power like the robodebt scheme, but also because I think they lead to better government.

That is why as attorney-general I have no higher priority than delivering on our commitment to restoring integrity and accountability to government. As the robodebt royal commission laid bare, there is a lot of work to be done.


When Australians think of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser in the mid 1970s, “bipartisanship” is not a word that springs to mind.

However, between 1972 and 1977, the Whitlam and Fraser governments engaged in a pioneering and ultimately successful process of law reform: enacting a series of new laws, and establishing a number of key public institutions, to protect the rights and interests of individual citizens and make government more accountable.

At the time, there was general agreement that such reforms were needed to respond to the significant expansion of government – and, in particular, the federal bureaucracy – following World War II. That expansion was the result of, among other things, a wide array of new social programs and social security schemes, including for veterans and war widows.

With the expansion of the federal bureaucracy and government power, there was a need for greater safeguards to hold government accountable for the way in which it exercised that power. Courts alone would no longer be an adequate check on the power of government.

This new system of administrative checks and balances was nothing if not comprehensive. In addition to a new federal court, the system included the creation of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the Administrative Review Council and the Commonwealth Ombudsman.

The AAT was tasked with reviewing the merits – and not just the legality – of a broad range of government decisions. The ARC was given the job of monitoring and providing expert advice on the operation of the federal administrative law system, decision-making practices and other related matters. And the Commonwealth Ombudsman investigated complaints of maladministration by Commonwealth departments and agencies.

This new system of administrative law also included a new legal right for ordinary citizens to request reasons for government decisions that were made about them.

In my career as a lawyer, I saw firsthand how Australia’s innovative system of checks and balances worked effectively to improve government decision-making and make government better. And all Australians benefited from both major parties maintaining a basic, bipartisan commitment to preserving and, from time to time, enhancing this system in the decades that followed.

Disappointingly, this ended with the election of the Abbott government.

I will leave it to historians of the Liberal Party to explain why and how this shift occurred. Suffice it to say that, at least since 2013, it has been difficult to work out whether the modern Liberal Party stands for anything at all other than the pursuit of power as an end in itself.

The full-frontal assault by the Abbott government on Australia’s system of checks and balances began in earnest in 2013 and continued into the government’s final days under Scott Morrison, with profoundly negative consequences for Australians. Between 2013 and 2022, the former government pursued a particularly relentless campaign against the AAT and the ARC. It undermined the former and abolished the latter entirely.

The AAT was exactly the type of public institution designed to protect Australian citizens against a robodebt-type scheme. Each year, tens of thousands of Australians rely on the tribunal to independently review government decisions that have major, life-altering impacts – decisions such as whether an older Australian receives an age pension, whether a veteran is compensated for a service injury, or whether a participant of the NDIS receives funding for essential support. And yes, decisions to issue debt notices to vulnerable Australians too.

And yet, over the course of a decade, the rights and legitimate interests of citizens who rely on the AAT were subordinated to the greed and self-interest of the Liberal Party. The AAT was systematically stacked with at least 85 former Liberal MPs, failed Liberal candidates, former Liberal staffers and other close Liberal associates without any merit-based selection process – including many individuals with no relevant experience or expertise. The former government even appointed Liberal Party–aligned lobbyists as AAT members while those individuals were also being paid by corporate interests to influence government decision-making.

The AAT was undermined in other ways too. The tribunal is not on a sustainable financial footing, it is beset by delays and an extraordinarily large and growing backlog of applications, and is operating multiple and ageing electronic case management systems – a legacy of the former government’s mismanagement of the amalgamation of the AAT with several other Commonwealth tribunals.

In short, the former government did everything possible to undermine the effectiveness and standing of the AAT – including in the eyes of bureaucrats in the Australian Public Service.

The Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme found that AAT members started saying that the scheme was unlawful as early as 2016. In 2017 alone, the commission identified 132 decisions where a member of the AAT was not satisfied that the Department of Human Services had accurately calculated a debt because of the use of income averaging. These decisions kept coming in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

The correctness of these decisions was not challenged by anyone in the former government. Instead, these inconvenient decisions were ignored and buried.

The commission found that the department implemented these AAT decisions “only as far as was convenient and disregard[ed] their effect for the purposes of the Scheme as a whole”. As these decisions were not published, the commission found that the Department of Social Services, and hence the former government, was “shielded from the adverse publicity which would certainly have followed a public understanding of what these decisions were saying and how many of them there were”.

The Abbott government took an even more extreme approach to the Administrative Review Council by defunding it entirely. The ARC had been established, with bipartisan support, to be a “watchdog for the citizen”. At its first meeting in 1977, Liberal attorney-general Bob Ellicott told the council that its role was “to ensure that our system of administrative review is as effective and significant in its protection of the citizen as it can be”.

In comments that appear particularly prescient in light of robodebt, Ellicott told members of the council that the bureaucracy inevitably “throws up questions which involve the citizen. The size of the bureaucracy makes it a greater temptation to apply rules of thumb and therefore it is important that the individual should not be swallowed up in the system and that his particular position be covered.”

What was the use of income averaging under the former government’s unlawful robodebt scheme if not the application of a “rule of thumb” that ignored the particular position of individuals? In a cruel twist of fate, the former government’s decision to abolish the ARC – the “watchdog for the citizen” – was made in the same budget that gave Australians robodebt.

The recent assault on critical aspects of our system of government by the modern Liberal Party has not been limited to these key components of the Whitlam and Fraser reforms of the 1970s. There was also the hollowing out and debasement of the Australian Public Service itself, with the government under Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison spending billions of dollars outsourcing government work to consultants and contractors.

There was the attempt to abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, the independent office responsible for conducting investigations and handling complaints in relation to alleged breaches of freedom of information and privacy laws.

There was the attempt to abolish the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, the office responsible for the ongoing review of the operation, effectiveness and implications of Australian counter‑terrorism and national security legislation.

There was the refusal to establish a national anti-corruption commission.

There were repeated verbal attacks on the judiciary – often led by the current leader of the opposition, Mr Dutton.

There was the contempt shown for public interest reporting and whistleblowers – we should never forget that Scott Morrison’s initial reaction to a journalist’s home being raided by police was to say that “it never troubles me that our laws are being upheld”.

The list goes on and on.


When Treasurer Jim Chalmers wrote in this publication last year about the former government’s record on the economy, he referred to “the wasted decade” that had “made Australia more vulnerable than we should be”. He was right. And the systematic debasement of key public institutions by the former government has also made individual Australians more vulnerable than they should be.

The former government ruthlessly exploited that vulnerability when it created the robodebt scheme. It must not be allowed to happen again.

Since coming to power, the Albanese government has taken many steps to address the systemic failings exposed by the scheme, beginning with the establishment of the royal commission.

The commission produced dozens of valuable recommendations directed at strengthening the Australian Public Service, the social security system and the capability of oversight agencies. Many of these recommendations build on work that was well under way even before the commission handed down its report.

Since the 2022 federal election, the minister for the public service, Katy Gallagher, for example, has been doing extraordinary work to rebuild the Australian Public Service and restore trust and confidence in government. This work is so important because, as the minister has said, “the public service is an enduring institution central to the strength and success of our proud democracy. A stronger public service delivers better government and better outcomes for all Australians.”

The former government either never understood this or didn’t care.

The minister for the NDIS and government services, Bill Shorten, is restoring government services by bringing human oversight back to Services Australia, removing outsourcing of debt collection and increasing capacity so that Services Australia can function properly. The minister for social services, Amanda Rishworth, is pushing forward with reforms to ensure that we have a strong social safety net and that services are being delivered in a way that puts people at the centre.

I could go on. It’s pretty basic: governments work for citizens.

In my role as attorney-general, a key area of focus is on rebuilding and improving the system of checks and balances that holds government accountable. Not just because such a system will go a long way towards preventing another robodebt, but also because it will lead to better government.

As I noted earlier, the creation of the National Anti-Corruption Commission is the single biggest reform to the Commonwealth integrity framework in decades. The NACC began its work on July 1, 2023.

More recently, in parliament’s final sitting last year, I introduced legislation to advance the biggest reform to Australia’s system of administrative review in half a century: the abolition of the AAT and the creation of a new Administrative Review Tribunal.

Like the AAT of old, the Administrative Review Tribunal will provide Australians with a quick, informal and simple means of challenging government decisions that affect their rights and interests. This means people will once again have an effective mechanism to review a huge number of government decisions, including those relating to taxation, child support, social security, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, freedom of information and visas.

A key objective of the new tribunal will be to improve the quality and transparency of decision-making across government. To ensure public confidence in the independence, integrity and quality of the tribunal’s membership, the legislation to establish the new tribunal would require all members to be appointed through a transparent and merits-based selection process.

To help prevent another robodebt, the legislation would establish a “guidance and appeals panel” made up of senior tribunal members who would be tasked with resolving – and publishing authoritative decisions about – matters that raise serious or significant issues in government decision-making. The new tribunal would also be required to publish all decisions involving a significant conclusion of law, or with significant implications for Commonwealth policy or administration (implementing a key recommendation of the robodebt royal commission).

Finally, the president of the new tribunal would be tasked with reporting systemic issues with government decision-making to relevant government entities, ministers and the independent ARC – the “watchdog for the citizen”, which will also be re-established by the legislation. The re-establishment of the ARC was, unsurprisingly, a recommendation of the robodebt royal commission.

The government is also committed to expanding powers of the Commonwealth Ombudsman and imposing an obligation on government officials to respond to ombudsman investigations – implementing two other key recommendations of the royal commission.

In 2023, the Albanese government strengthened Australia’s public sector whistleblowing framework for the first time since 2013 (when I first created the framework as attorney-general), with further improvements to come.

In recognition of the critical role that public interest journalism plays in informing the community and holding governments to account, the Albanese government is working to implement key recommendations made by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security in its 2020 report on press freedom – recommendations the Morrison government claimed to support but never did anything to progress.

In 2022, I asked my department to undertake a comprehensive review of secrecy provisions across Commonwealth laws. In response to that review, the Albanese government is proposing to scrap one fifth of all existing secrecy offences and to introduce important new safeguards to protect journalists from prosecution for public interest journalism.

To deliver the best outcomes for Australians, governments need to listen to the voices of Australians, and the people and organisations that represent their interests. That is why I removed the appalling gag clauses that the former Liberal government inserted into funding agreements with legal assistance providers. Those gag clauses meant that community legal centres in receipt of Commonwealth funding were restricted from engaging in public advocacy on behalf of local communities.

What each of these reforms and initiatives have in common is that they will make government work better for Australians.

However, as the final report of the robodebt royal commission warned, the existence of strong laws and public institutions do not guarantee good government. They do not even guarantee that something like robodebt will not happen again. Because, as the former government demonstrated, given enough time, bad governments can succeed in watering down the laws and undermining the institutions that are supposed to hold them accountable.

Until the election of the Abbott government in 2013, Australia’s system of institutional checks and balances had endured because it enjoyed bipartisan support. While the Liberal Party of Malcolm Fraser supported the creation and maintenance of public institutions that protected Australian citizens against a robodebt-type abuse of power, the Liberal Party of Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton did almost everything possible to undermine or dismantle them.

Every member of parliament, regardless of their political persuasion, has a fundamental duty to protect and, where possible, advance the rights and interests of the people we represent. That duty extends to restoring and revitalising the system of checks and balances that once served Australians so well.

The proposal to create a new Administrative Review Tribunal to replace a broken AAT and the re-establishment of the Administrative Review Council present a particularly significant test for Peter Dutton: if Mr Dutton and the Liberal Party want Australians to believe they have changed course and moved past robodebt, they must wholeheartedly embrace these reforms.

The stakes could not be higher. We all now know the risks if government doesn’t work for people.

MARK DREYFUS 

Mark Dreyfus is the attorney-general of Australia.