00:00This was an investigation of public servants around their involvement in robo-debt.
00:0816 public servants were referred to the Australian Public Service Commissioner last year for
00:12this investigation.
00:13They have come back today and said that 12 former and current public servants have been
00:19found to have breached their code on 97 occasions.
00:23Now, there have been sanctions against four of those public servants, but the others,
00:28they say, have since left or retired from the public service.
00:32Now, robo-debt, you might remember, has been described as one of the worst instances of
00:37public administration in Australia's history.
00:41$1.7 billion in debt was raised from people unlawfully, and the Commonwealth has already
00:47settled a class action for $1.8 billion to repay some of those debts.
00:52Now, the Australian Public Service Commissioner, Gordon De Bruyere, has released a statement
00:57today and he has apologised for the public service's involvement in this.
01:02Here is a little bit of what he had to say.
01:04The vast majority of public servants are good people, working hard to serve you, the community,
01:10every day.
01:12Public servants made mistakes.
01:15We can't change what happened, but we can learn from it and work together to make sure
01:20those mistakes won't happen again.
01:24And Isabel, the Commissioner has named two former public servants.
01:28Who are they?
01:29Yeah, so they've named two public servants.
01:33One is Catherine Campbell.
01:35She's a former secretary of the department, and they've said that she has found to have
01:40committed 12 breaches of the Code for things like failure to seek legal advice, failure
01:45to sufficiently respond to public criticism, and creating a culture that prevented scrutiny
01:52of robo-debt.
01:53They've also singled out another former secretary, Renee Leon.
01:58Now, she's released a statement saying that robo-debt had already been in operation for
02:03two years when she became Secretary of Human Services, the department that ran it.
02:09She said when legal doubts were raised, she sought definitive advice from the Solicitor
02:13General, and she says when ministers delayed, she directed that it be stopped, and two weeks
02:19later as Secretary, she was terminated by a government that did not welcome frank and
02:24fearless advice.
02:25So she's pushing back on that, and she is now the Vice-Chancellor of Charles Sturt University,
02:31and they've also released a statement in support of her.
