When Alan Tudge needed to promote what became known as robodebt in December 2016, he found willing media outlets in the Australian newspaper, 2GB and A Current Affair.
“Welfare debt squad hunts for $4bn,” the Australian dutifully reported at the time. The then-human services minister next went on 2GB, where then-host Chris Smith said in the introduction: “Are all those people with their hands in the taxpayer pocket in genuine need?”
At the end of the interview, Smith said: “Keep at it, you’re doing a great job.”
The next day, Tudge went on A Current Affair to talk up the new system.
“We will find you, we will track you down, and you will have to repay those debts, and you may end up in prison,” he said.
The royal commission report into the robodebt scheme paints a grim picture of a minister keen to use “more friendly media” to counter reporting on the scheme, and a “particularly mean-spirited” strategy to attempt to silence victims speaking out that was labelled as an abuse of the power of his office.
In early 2017, victims of the robodebt scheme began speaking to media, including Guardian Australia, about the debt notices they were receiving and the devastating impact it was having on their lives.
The commissioner, Catherine Holmes, said in her report that Tudge’s then media adviser, Rachelle Miller, developed a media strategy to introduce a “counter narrative” in “more friendly media” that was focused on “cracking down” on welfare cheats.
The strategy included finding case studies of “legitimate” debts detected by the robodebt system and placing stories about convicted “welfare fraudsters”.
A media officer in the Department of Human Services noted in an email in January 2017 that “News Corp isn’t interested in the line being run by left-leaning media – but is keen on the alternative view. As such, the focus will be on working with News to achieve this.”
The minister’s office then requested information on cases that had appeared in the media, as well as cases supposedly demonstrating the success of the system.
The report found Tudge had “personally involved himself in responding to media”.
Tudge told the commission in his evidence his “focus was on addressing the implementation issues with the scheme, rather than engaging in a strategy of deflection”.
The report found Tudge had approved the release of information about case studies sent to the national affairs editor of the Australian, Simon Benson, in early January 2017.
Tudge said earlier his focus was on fixing the system, not the media. There's quite a bit of evidence of his direct involvement in this drop to the Australian. The eventual article on page one of the Australian pic.twitter.com/62N6rFz1Av
— Luke Henriques-Gomes (@lukehgomes) February 1, 2023
Benson went on to write an “exclusive” that appeared on the front page of the paper on 26 January 2017, claiming Labor had made an “embarrassing blunder” and referring to people who had spoken publicly about their experiences with robodebt as “so-called victims”.
Tudge was then interviewed on the conservative talkback station 2GB, where the host said Tudge “must be quite happy” with Benson’s article.
“It’s a very significant story that he’s written,” Tudge said, but did not disclose that his office was the source of the information.
The then minister also released the information of one person to the media after she wrote an opinion piece about her treatment by Centrelink, which was then reported in Nine newspapers. Tudge later said in hindsight the information should have come from his department to correct the record, not his office.
But Miller told the commission that as a result of the release of this personal information “there were less people speaking out in the media, which was the intention”.
Holmes said correcting the record could be a legitimate exercise of a minister, but it was not done openly, with Tudge instead feeding information to the press without disclosing that his office was the source when talking about it publicly later.
“Mr Tudge’s engagement in this media strategy, and use of the media in this way, had the effect of discouraging criticism of the scheme, and inhibiting open dialogue and analysis of the flaws of the scheme,” Holmes said.
“It also had the effect of undermining the credibility of complaints and concerns about flaws in the scheme.”
Holmes said as a minister, Tudge had a significant amount of public power and he abused that power with this strategy.
“Mr Tudge’s use of information about social security recipients in the media to distract from and discourage commentary about the scheme’s problems represented an abuse of that power,” she said.
“It was all the more reprehensible in view of the power imbalance between the minister and the cohort of people upon whom it would reasonably be expected to have the most impact, many of whom were vulnerable and dependent on the department, and its minister, for their livelihood.”
In a statement, Tudge said he strongly rejected the commissioner’s comments.
“At no stage did I seek to engage in a media strategy that would discourage legitimate criticism of the scheme,” he said.
He said he released information about the person who wrote about their experience because their debt was unrelated to robodebt.
Holmes also criticised the media strategy of the human services department under its secretary, Kathryn Campbell. Campbell described some of the reporting at the time as “fabrication” and Holmes said the department’s response to media about robodebt was to repeat the same narrative, with no critical evaluation of the messaging or its accuracy, “because the ‘gatekeepers’ of its content were more concerned with ‘getting it [the media criticism] shut down as quickly as possible’”.
In 2018 the Guardian published a story on an academic paper from the former Administrative Appeals Tribunal member Prof Terry Carney suggesting the scheme was illegal. The report found the department lawyers engaged to respond did not seek to address Carney’s central point on the insufficiency of averaging as evidence of a debt.
They claimed in response that the scheme “complied with the administrative law requirement of procedural fairness”, which Holmes said “was not really the point”.
When the Guardian article was provided to the then minister Michael Keenan’s office, Holmes suggested this might have caused Keenan to seek legal advice. Instead, Keenan’s email to staff in his office referred to “a former member of the AAT – what a lofty authority” and there was no evidence legal advice was sought.
Holmes noted that journalists, activists and academics who played a crucial role in bringing the scandal to light had been thwarted by the blanket exemption of cabinet documents from freedom of information law and recommended that it be removed.
“What has happened in the case of the scheme demonstrates the need for greater transparency of cabinet decision-making,” she said. “The mere fact that a document is a cabinet document should not, by itself, be regarded as justifying.”
Anthony Albanese told a press conference on Friday his government valued the proper advice of public servants, indicating a reluctance to implement the recommendation.
“If it is all out there, you will end up having more verbal advice. You will undermine the capacity of the public service to give frank and fearless advice,” the prime minister said.
But Holmes said in the report that was not at risk.
“Nothing I have seen in ministerial briefs or material put to cabinet suggests any tendency to give full and frank advice that might be impaired by the possibility of disclosure.”
On Friday, one 2GB host described robodebt as shameful and a human tragedy.
