Showing posts with label lies and lying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lies and lying. Show all posts

Sunday 17 March 2024

Liberal MP for Dickson & Leader of the Coalition Opposition Peter Dutton called the CSIRO an unreliable scientific body producing "discredited" work and is now reaping what he has sown


"In the growing heat of debate over Coalition nuclear energy policy, Mr Dutton described the CSIRO’s GenCost report on the cost of electricity generation as “discredited” and “not a genuine piece of work” and suggested it was “well documented” that the CSIRO cannot be relied on." [InnovationAUS, 15 March 2024]





 

Open letter from Dr Doug Hilton, Chief Executive, CSIRO

15 MARCH 2024

NEWS RELEASE


Science is crucial to providing the data and models that allow society to tackle profound challenges; challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic, transition to net zero, keeping Australian industry productive and sustainable, and protecting our unique biodiversity.


For science to be useful and for challenges to be overcome it requires the trust of the community. Maintaining trust requires scientists to act with integrity. Maintaining trust also requires our political leaders to resist the temptation to disparage science.


As Chief Executive of CSIRO, I will staunchly defend our scientists and our organisation against unfounded criticism.


The GenCost report is updated each year and provides the very best estimates for the cost of future new-build electricity generation in Australia. The report is carefully produced, its methodology is clearly articulated, our scientists are open and responsive to feedback, and as is the case for all creditable science, the report is updated regularly as new data comes to hand.


The GenCost report can be trusted by all our elected representatives, irrespective of whether they are advocating for electricity generation by renewables, coal, gas or nuclear energy.


No matter the challenge we are tackling, CSIRO’s scientists and engineers can be relied on by the community to work creatively, assiduously and with integrity.


Dr Douglas Hilton

Chief Executive, CSIRO



Some of the mainstream media headlines generated by Dutton's attempt to deny the considerable downside of introducing nuclear power stations into Australia's energy grid........


The Guardian

CSIRO chief warns against ‘disparaging science’ after Peter Dutton criticises nuclear energy costings

Douglas Hilton says he will 'staunchly defend' scientists as opposition leader repeats incorrect claim that CSIRO report does not accurately...

15.03.24


Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Nation's science agency CSIRO hits back at Dutton claim that nuclear power costings were 'discredited'

The CSIRO has rebuked politicians seeking to undermine its research showing nuclear energy would be much more expensive than solar or wind...

15.03.24


The Sydney Morning Herald

Don’t disparage the science’: CSIRO hits back at Dutton on nuclear energy

Australia's top science agency has made a rare political intervention as CSIRO chief executive Doug Hilton defended his agency's findings on...

15.03.24


News.com.au

Nuclear question Dutton won’t answer

Peter Dutton has failed to answer a key question in a fiery clash with Bill Shorten over nuclear energy.

15.03.24


The New Daily

CSIRO hits back at Dutton's 'unfounded' criticism

Australia's national science agency has taken aim at Liberal leader Peter Dutton in a highly unusual public intervention.

15.03.24


The Canberra Times

CSIRO Chief defends GenCost report from political attack

Dr. Doug Hilton stands by CSIRO's GenCost report findings amidst political criticism from Coalition leader Peter Dutton.

15.03.24


The Age

CSIRO hits back at Dutton attack on its nuclear energy reports

Australia's top science agency has made a rare political intervention, with CSIRO chief executive Douglas Hilton defending his agency's...

15.03.24


Hunter Valley News

CSIRO boss defends scientists after Dutton attack

CSIRO chief executive officer Douglas Hilton has issued a rare public statement to urge politicians to "resist the...

15.03.24


The Wimmera Mail-Times

CSIRO boss defends scientists after Dutton attack

CSIRO chief executive officer Douglas Hilton has issued a rare public statement to urge politicians to "resist the...

15.03.24


Then on the same day the Centre for Independent Studies, a conservative seemingly pro-nuclear 'think tank' which also supported the No position in the 2023 national referendum and whose executive director just happened in 2008 to have been a senior adviser to former federal Liberal Party Leader Brendan Nelson and in 2009 was himself he a candidate to replace Nelson in his northern Sydney electoral seat of Bradfield, attempted to ride to Peter Dutton's rescue on social media with a whitewash of the Opposition Leader's comments and an interesting interpretation of the contents of CSIRO news release.


Centre for Independent Studies @CISOZ

CIS responds to @CSIRO's open letter.


"Not all criticisms are unfounded. If the CEO wants to defend the methods and conclusions of a particular report from criticism, he should do just that, rather than simply asserting that the report can be trusted when serious flaws still exist."

15.03.24


Wednesday 13 September 2023

Australian National Referendum Question Number 45 since 1901 - State of Play 2023: this "No" case cold calling is a low act, a mongrel act - as the grown men of my childhood would have said

 

The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September 2023, p.1:
















The campaign to sink the Voice has instructed volunteers to use fear and doubt rather than facts to trump arguments used by the Yes camp.


In an online training session, the national campaigning chief for leading No activist group Advance, Chris Inglis, detailed the anti-Voice movement's core strategy of playing on voters' emotions.


Inglis instructed volunteers not to identify themselves upfront as No campaigners as they make hundreds of thousands of calls to persuadable voters, but instead to raise reports of financial compensation to Indigenous Australians if the Voice referendum were to succeed.


"When reason and emotion collide, emotion always wins. Always wins," he said as he displayed the same quote from US psychology professor Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain.


The No case is leading in several national polls ahead of the October 14 referendum. The latest RPM poll published yesterday showed support for the Indigenous Voice slumping to 43 per cent, with voter sentiment swinging against the constitution amendment in every state except Tasmania.


Inglis explained at the meeting on Monday, August 28, that the No camp's job was to make people suspicious of the Voice and its backers, while the Yes campaign continued to cite academic arguments and documents such as the Uluru Statement.


"This is the difference between facts and figures or the 'divisive Voice'," the long-time Liberal Party staffer said. "That feeling of uncertainty, of fear or doubt, that stays. That lasts for a very, very long time."


"I'm going to hammer in a lot of this emotive language."


"If you took everything that I had just said and turned it into one little thing, this is what you should write down and remember forever so you can tell your kids, tell your grandkids, tell your nephews and nieces - that people vote based on how they feel."


Advance runs the leading No campaign Fair Australia, which is aligned with the Coalition's Indigenous Australians spokeswoman, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.


Advance was started in 2018 as a conservative counterweight to GetUp and counts former prime minister Tony Abbott on its advisory board. It claims it has a 250,000-strong supporter base fighting "woke politicians and elitist activist groups ... taking Aussies for a ride with their radical agenda".


It is not suggested that either Price or Abbott endorses the coaching methods outlined in the training session run by Inglis.


Scripts used by Advance's 10,000-strong network of phone campaigners show how they are taught not to introduce themselves as calling from "the No campaign".


Instead, they are asked to sound as if they were concerned citizens associated with Fair Australia who "heard" the Voice will push for financial compensation for Aboriginal people. "It's been designed purely for soft voters. If we had put [No] in the opening line ... that in itself will scare people, right?" Inglis told volunteers.


"It's not from the 'No campaign'... Fair Australia's soft, it's calming."


The script states: "I've also heard that some of the people who helped design the Voice proposal are campaigning to abolish Australia Day and want to use the Voice to push for compensation and reparations through a treaty. All of these things raised a few questions in my mind and made me wonder if there was more to it all than meets the eye".


Inglis told supporters that phone canvassing - using a tool called CallHub employed by successful campaigns in Europe and the US - was integral to Advance's efforts.


If 250 people attend a phone calling session, Inglis said, they could reach 15,000 so-called "soft" voters yet to make a firm decision.


Inglis, a former ACT Liberal staffer, said in the briefing that he had worked on election campaigns for about 12 years.


His briefing outlined Advance's "three-wave plan" through Fair Australia to defeat the Voice.


The strategy was first deployed in autumn when No campaigners started raising awareness of the Voice as an issue of concern.


In the winter, the conservative activists began talking about the "Voice of division".


As referendum day looms, the Fair Australia campaign has begun discussing consequences of voting Yes and asking Australians to act by rejecting the proposal….


Read the full article online at:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/no-campaign-s-fear-doubt-strategy-revealed-20230910-p5e3fu.html



Sunday 27 August 2023

Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) issues media release in response to factual errors and misleading comments concerning national referendum voting instructions

 



Despite the legislation concerning national referenda being clear (as evidenced by the above interview with Antony Green), misinformation and at times deliberate disinformation is to be found in both mainstream and social media concerning the proposed 2023 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament referendum.


The level of factual inaccuracy has become a matter of concern.....


Australian Electoral Commission, AEC Newsroom, Media releases 2023



Media advice: Referendum voting instructions


Updated: 25 August 2023



Australian voters are rightly proud of their electoral system – one of the most transparent and robust voting systems in the world. As a result, there is an intense, and highly appropriate level of public interest in all aspects of that system, and associated commentary online and in mainstream media. Sometimes this commentary is immediate and based on emotion rather than the reality of the law which the AEC must administer.


There has been intense commentary online and in mainstream media regarding what will and will not be a formal vote for the 2023 referendum; specifically around whether or not a ‘tick’ or a ‘cross’ will be able to be counted. Much of that commentary is factually incorrect and ignores:


  • the law surrounding ‘savings provisions’,

  • the longstanding legal advice regarding the use of ticks and crosses, and

  • the decades-long and multi-referendum history of the application of that law and advice.


The AEC completely and utterly rejects the suggestions by some that by transparently following the established, public and known legislative requirements we are undermining the impartiality and fairness of the referendum.


As has been the case at every electoral event, the AEC remains totally focussed on electoral integrity. Indeed, electoral integrity is a central part of the AEC’s published values; underpinned by, and supported through, complete adherence to all relevant laws and regulations.


How to cast a formal vote


The formal voting instructions for the referendum are to clearly write either ‘yes’ or ‘no’, in full, in English.


It is that easy: given the simplicity, the AEC expects the vast, vast majority of Australian voters to follow those instructions and cast a formal vote.


Previous levels of formality


It is important to keep scale, or a lack of it in this instance, and precedent in mind when discussing this matter.


More than 99% of votes cast at the 1999 federal referendum were formal. Even of the 0.86% of informal votes, many would have had no relevance to the use of ticks or crosses.


AEC communication


Instructions for casting a formal vote – to write either yes or no in full, in English, will be:


  • part of the AEC’s advertising campaign,

  • in the guide delivered to all Australian households,

  • an instruction by our polling officials when people are issued with their ballot paper,

  • on posters in polling places, and

  • on the ballot paper itself.


This is why the level of formal voting at previous referendums has been so high and why the AEC expects the vast, vast majority of voters to follow those instructions.


The law


Like an election, the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984 includes ‘savings provisions’ - the ability to count a vote where the instructions have not been followed but the voter’s intention is clear.


  • The AEC cannot ignore the law and cannot ignore savings provisions.


The law regarding formality in a referendum is long-standing and unchanged through many governments, Parliaments, and multiple referendums. Legal advice from the Australian Government Solicitor, provided on multiple occasions during the previous three decades, regarding the application of savings provisions to ‘ticks’ and ’crosses’ has been consistent – for decades.

This is not new, nor a new AEC determination of any kind for the 2023 referendum. The law regarding savings provisions and the principle around a voter’s intent has been in place for at least 30 years and 6 referendum questions.


The longstanding legal advice provides that a cross can be open to interpretation as to whether it denotes approval or disapproval: many people use it daily to indicate approval in checkboxes on forms. The legal advice provides that for a single referendum question, a clear ‘tick’ should be counted as formal and a ‘cross’ should not.


Media resources:


AEC Newsroom

AEC YouTube (AECTV)

AEC imagery (AEC Flickr)

AEC media contacts


~~~~ENDS~~~~




BACKGROUND


The Guardian, 24 August 2023, excerpts:


Voters in the upcoming voice to parliament referendum are being urged to write “yes” or “no” on referendum ballot papers – and being warned that if they use a cross, their vote may not be counted.


The well-established and longstanding rule which will mean ticks are likely allowed but votes that use crosses are likely excluded has prompted criticism from the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, the former prime minister Tony Abbott and the no campaign, which claims the requirement will “stack the deck” against them.


The rule has been on the books, without controversy, for 30 years and six referendum questions, and when asked about ticks and crosses on Thursday, an Australian Electoral Commission spokesperson simply said: “Please don’t use them.”.


Fair Australia tweeted: “Looks like just another attempt to stack the deck against ‘no’ voting Australians.”


Abbott claimed on 2GB that “there’s a suspicion that officialdom is trying to make it easier for one side … This is the worry all along that there is a lot of official bias in this whole referendum process.”


Dutton, also speaking on 2GB, called it “completely outrageous” and claimed the situation “gives a very, very strong advantage to the ‘yes’ case”. The opposition leader said he would ask the government to draft legislation to change the rule.


The Coalition opposition did not propose amending this rule during debate on the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act earlier this year, and supported the government’s legislation....



The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 August 2023, excerpt:


Despite Dutton’s insistence that an X should denote a No vote, in his 2022 election candidate nomination form he repeatedly placed an X in a box to indicate a Yes to questions about his citizenship and the country of his parents’ birth, for example.


Click on image to enlarge


In fact across the entire Dutton_Q47P document “x” was used interchangeably by Peter Dutton to denote Yes, No, and Not Applicable.


NOTE:

History of Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984 can be found at

https://www.legislation.gov.au/Series/C2004A02908


Sunday 5 February 2023

The Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme peels back layers of a six year old onion

 


A SINGLE MOTHER HITS OUT AT THE ROBODEBT SCHEME IN EARLY 2017


The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 February 2017:


It all started when I began receiving calls from a debt collector, which I initially ignored. I knew I had no debt and that any request for personal details from a stranger was cause for suspicion. But after some time I gave in to the harassment – my curiosity got the better of me, and by then the calls were interrupting everything from work meetings to putting the children to bed.

And that was how I discovered I had a Centrelink debt…..


Terrorised by Centrelink, I began to behave as the bureaucracy saw me: angry, emotional, confused, dependent and idiotic. It does not matter that I am a full-time employed economist with several degrees, published books and articles, and security clearance for giving economic policy advice on secret government documents. Now, I was a welfare cheat….


The debt recovery operation currently being run by Centrelink using data matching has the extraordinarily high error rate of one in five. I doubt any private enterprise would be allowed to get away with these error rates for debt collection.


You would like to think that my story means at least the one in five errors are all being identified and eventually resolved, but it doesn't. Many of my fellow Centrelink "clients" will lack the assertiveness, confidence, energy and literacy I used to fight for my case. The errors in their debt will not be found. Money will be taken, wrongfully, from some of the very poorest people in this country. I guarantee you they are terrified.


And anyway, my case isn't over.


Days before publication of this piece I was contacted by Centrelink with a new notification of debt. I have been instructed to pay back the Family Tax Benefit we received in the year my ex didn't file his tax return. And so, it begins again.



PUBLIC PUSH BACK BY THE THEN MORRISON COALITION GOVERNMENT BEGINS


Excerpt from The Canberra Times columnist Paul Malone’s article in The Sydney Morning Herald on 24 February 2017:


But Centrelink has a different story.


The agency says Ms Fox's debt is a Family Tax Benefit (FTB) debt for the 2011-12 financial year which arose after she received more FTB than she was entitled to because she under-estimated her family income for that year.


The original debt was raised because she and her ex-partner did not lodge a tax return or confirm their income information for 2011-12.


Centrelink says that after Ms Fox notified the department that she had separated from her partner, the debt due to her partner's non-lodgement was cancelled.


In a later article on 5 March 2017 Malone admitted his 24 February article was based on information supplied by both Centrelink and the office of the Minister for Human Services “To my surprise I got answers to my questions in a series of emails from Centrelink and the office of the Minister for Human Services, Alan Tudge.


They said Ms Fox's case was not a robo-debt matter.


Her current debt was a Family Tax Benefit debt for the 2011-12 financial year which arose after she received more FTB than she was entitled to because she under-estimated her family income for that year”.



POLITICAL EXCUSES APPEAR IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA


The Guardian, 2 March 2017:


The office of human services minister, Alan Tudge, mistakenly sent a journalist internal departmental briefings about a welfare recipient’s personal circumstances, which included additional detail on her relationship and tax history.


Senior departmental figures were grilled at Senate estimates on Thursday about the release of welfare recipient Andie Fox’s personal information last month.


Fox had written an opinion piece critical of Centrelink and its handling of her debt, which ran in Fairfax Media in February. The government released her personal details to Fairfax journalist Paul Malone, who subsequently published a piece attacking Fox and questioning the veracity of her claims.


Two responses were given to the journalist, one from the department of human services and the other from Tudge.


The department said its response – three dot points containing only minimal detail on Fox’s personal history – was cleared by lawyers and was lawful. The minister’s office then added two quotes from Tudge and sent its own response to Malone.


Guardian Australia can now reveal that the minister’s office also accidentally sent the journalist two internal briefing documents, marked “for official use only”, which had been prepared by the department…..



SIX YEARS LATER THOSE POLITICALLY MOTIVATED LIES ARE REVEALED 


Excerpts from Twitter threads by journalist Rick Morton @SquigglyRick as he live tweeted from the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme public hearing on 31 January 2023:


Greggery: "You said the media demand was very high while the Minister was on leave, the media was generally adverse, heavily critical. Would you say that by January 2017... the media situation was in crisis mode?"

Miller "Yes, but I didn't think it was not able to be shut down."

1:22 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Miller: "He [the Minister, Tudge] was very firm with me that I needed to shut this story down. The Minister became very quickly aware that the Prime Minister was unhappy. At the time, we were trying to decline as many media opportunities as we could."

1:23 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Miller: "That media strategy that I developed was very comprehensive and that involved placing stories in more friendly media about how the Coalition was actually catching people who were cheating the welfare system."

1:24 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Miller: "We were getting feedback from the Prime Minister's office that this was playing quite well in the marginal seats, Western Sydney, that sort of thing."

1:25 PM · Jan 31, 2023


This "counter-narrative" in the crisis strategy that Miller developed included pushing the message that they were "tracking down debts from the period when Labor was in Government that were not detected because they did not take the integrity of the welfare system seriously."

1:27 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Greggery asks about using "real life examples."

Miller: "The Minister was very adamant with me that I needed to hunt down as many case studies as I could, he was really very forceful about obtaining these."

He wanted to dismiss the stories that he thought were gussied up.

1:30 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Miller: "He wanted to put the attention back on the Labor Party and say 'what, you would let these guys go, you would happily give them taxpayer money that they were not entitled to'."

Miller spoke to Bevan Hannan, head of media at DHS etc

1:31 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Greggery: "What do you recall of the topic of releasing personal information from persons with whom Centrelink dealt to media?"

Miller: "So we didn't think of doing that at all ever."

This is early on. But then the author of an SMH/Age piece gets in touch.

1:38 PM · Jan 31, 2023


This journo sees this case in the media and says the case is "disgraceful" and "how is it the Minister can let this happen on your watch and he said I am going to write another piece about this." But he asks: can you assure me that what the author has written is correct?

1:41 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Miller talks to the DHS, they say well actually you CAN release very limited details about a person to "correct the record."

"The Minister requested the file of every single person who had appeared in the media."

The file was already in the MO

1:42 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Miller recalls Tudge being adamant they wanted people to think twice about going to the media with "false" information because if it's not true "we will correct the record."

"I wasn't too worried about [the criticism from the leftwing media]. That didn't surprise me at all."

1:44 PM · Jan 31, 2023


But she was worried, she says, that what they were doing was legal.

Miller says of the one case, where they released details "and the publicity that it got" sent the message that the Govt would push back.

1:45 PM · Jan 31, 2023


In the case of the person whose name they released, but in other cases too, Miller says there was "formal, signed legal advice." The Minister "requested that specifically."

1:46 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Miller: "It wasn't usual practice at that stage for Ministers in that portfolio to do that. It was a risk. There weren't, to my knowledge, previous cases of people using that particular loophole."

In retrospect, Miller says it is "not something I would do again."

1:48 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Miller says it was unethical that some leftwing journalists were not even going to them for comment.

"The usual relationships I would have with journalists were not working, and this particular group were being quite vindictive, being very biased and unbalanced."

1:49 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Of the name they did release, Miller says: "I did trust the reporter who was going to write that up, that rebuttal of ours, he was reputable, very reputable."

1:51 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Miller: "I did try to seek assurances from the policy issue but he was very firm that 'hey, this isn't your job'."

Policy adviser was Mark Wood.

1:56 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Miller: "Kathryn Campbell was there on a regular basis [in January 2017 at the Minister's office]. She was set up in the boardroom, almost permanently, I think. Malisa Golightly, I can't recall other specific people... Craig Storen."

1:57 PM · Jan 31, 2023


Prime Minister (Turnbull) asked Tudge to return from leave immediately to deal with the Robodebt "crisis."

Miller is asked about what she recalls about people committing suicide after receiving debt letters.

1:59 PM · Jan 31, 2023



The Saturday Paper, 4 February 2023, excerpts:


Alan Tudge, Rachelle Miller and Christian Porter appear at the robo-debt royal commission this week.  CREDIT: ROYAL COMMISSION INTO THE ROBODEBT SCHEME





An ugly “strategy” of demonising welfare recipients extended to almost all elements of the official response to the developing media storm. 


In the Rhys Cauzzo matter, in the week following publication of The Saturday Paper story in February 2017, the minister’s office debated the merits of releasing a dead man’s personal information in order to strike back at what they perceived to be unfair coverage. 


Tudge’s chief-of-staff, Andrew Asten, appeared to draw a line in the sand. 


“I would advise against going through these details in public because I think it is a bad look to be discussing the wrongdoing of a person who committed suicide.” 


He was overruled, presumably by Tudge himself, who micromanaged every aspect of his office’s media strategy, down to dictating the formatting of documents. Journalists were duly briefed about the “facts” as the government saw them. 


What is particularly telling about this specific episode – one in a catalogue of grotesque and deliberate acts designed to save robo-debt from “unethical” journalists, as Miller described them, and their good-for-nothing welfare complainants – is that Tudge ordered an investigation into the department’s handling of Cauzzo’s matter, but only to make them look good. 


A month after briefing journalists with Cauzzo’s protected Centrelink record, a departmental liaison officer working in Tudge’s office emailed her colleagues in the DHS with a “specific request” from the minister. The department and minister’s office had been drafting a letter to send to Rhys Cauzzo’s mother, Jennifer Miller. 


“The Minister has a specific request to open an investigation into Rhys’ circumstances,” the officer wrote on March 31, 2017. “He would like a brief on the investigation. The intent is to be able to update the letter to include a line similar to [redacted] letter, stating that he has investigated the matter and is confident the Department has done everything correctly (etc).” 


Within days, Tudge got the pre-determined outcome he was looking for: a ministerial brief from his department that noted “all interactions were appropriate and undertaken within the parameters of departmental processes”. 


What Tudge didn’t do, however, was investigate the use of income averaging in the creation of debts attributed to Rhys Cauzzo. Part of the fury about The Saturday Paper story at the time was that it was “not a robo-debt case” – even though this newspaper did not suggest that it was. The royal commission heard on Wednesday that Cauzzo’s matter was part of the manual PAYG intervention, which still included the use of income averaging and is now considered to be the very first iteration of the illegal robo-debt scheme. 


Greggery said that this matter was “the first point in time when the potential adverse consequences have gone beyond a matter of mere finance”. 


Addressing Tudge, he said: “Did you ask for an investigation into whether the role of averaging led to the death of Mr Cauzzo, a factor relevant to the suicide?” 


Tudge said what had been written in the piece “concerned him” and he “did want to … directly understand what had occurred”. Tudge’s inquiry deliberately avoided the two key criticisms of the debt recovery system, aired at length by this time in early 2017 and now accepted by Tudge. They were that debts being raised under the system were inaccurate and that Centrelink recipients were being swamped by the sudden reversal of the onus of proof. 


Now, people were killing themselves. 


The conflagration had ruined Tudge’s summer. There were many of these negative stories, beginning in December 2016, before Tudge went to Britain on a family holiday. Over Christmas, however, the situation was so obviously bad that then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull demanded Tudge cut short his holiday and return to deal with the crisis. 


In the royal commission this week, the former minister made a point of mentioning this holiday over and over again. It was a significant moment in a significant career because it was a media disaster and Tudge was a media performer. 


Miller had described her then boss as a “media tart” so obsessed with making a name for himself that he, a junior minister, sometimes did even more media appearances than his senior minister, Christian Porter, who held the Social Services portfolio at the time. 


Turnbull had forwarded to Tudge an article by the Fairfax economics editor Peter Martin, a former Treasury official and economist, in which Martin confidently – and presciently – declared the raising of Centrelink debts by use of income averaging could not be legal. 


Tudge flew back to Melbourne on January 9, 2017. From there he went immediately to Canberra, where “every second or third day” he held meetings in his parliamentary office, in committee meeting rooms or in the Department of Human Services, with the most senior leaders. 


“When I came back I very quickly had confirmed for me that this was a program that had been through the cabinet process,” he told the commission. “They are a rigorous process that always have a legal overlay through it so Social Services lawyers would have to have formed a view that it was lawful.” 


Later, Tudge claimed it was “unfathomable” to him that a secretary of his department would ever continue with a scheme that he or she knew to be illegal. That said, he didn’t expect them to bring their concerns to him, if there were any, without first “resolving” them within the department. 


 And so his self-described “laser-like” focus on fixing the scheme never went to the issue of lawfulness in this period. It apparently never went there at all during his time as minister. 


“I did not know the full context about the legalities,” he said. “It just had not crossed my mind until the [2019 federal] court case.” 


One of the “hurdles”, as Justin Greggery described it, was that Tudge knew how important these welfare compliance schemes were for the Coalition government because he had unwittingly, or otherwise, helped further them in the July 2016 election. 


Tudge was sworn into the ministry in February that year and told the royal commission that the then Finance minister, Mathias Cormann, had asked him if there was anything more they could get out of welfare compliance – that is, he was asked by one of the most senior members of the government if there were budget savings that could be made from welfare recipients. 


After this conversation, Tudge spoke with his department’s secretary, Kathryn Campbell, to pass on this request. Her department dutifully sent a raft of so-called “new policy proposals”, or NPPs, with attendant savings figures that could be pursued. 


The April 28 brief noted there were “five NPPs that will increase compliance and debt activity and deliver significant savings commencing July 2016”. 


That year was an election year. Tudge agreed that, once announced, there would be added political pressure making it more difficult to walk-back any money-saving measures if they were later deemed too hard to implement. He noted Cormann would “have absolutely been aware” of the figures. 


Tudge’s office had sent an email to then treasurer Scott Morrison or Cormann, or both, with the new policy proposals attached “for the purpose of announcing during the election campaign, literally a few days before the election”. 


According to estimates shared with the commission, robo-debt was expected to add $1.2 billion to the 2016-17 bottom line. If the debts were raised under the older, manual, lawful system, that number dropped to $150 million. 


One post-election measure was to extend the robo-debt scheme by two years. By early December 2016, Tudge had been given a brief from his department responding to questions about the fiscal savings robo-debt programs were expected to produce for the budget over the forward estimates. 


That figure was $4 billion. Tudge was quick in instructing his staff to drop this story with the “friendly” newspaper The Australian, where it ran on page one on December 5, 2016, with the headline: “Welfare debt squad hunts for $4bn.” 


The interview with A Current Affair followed on December 6, but, according to the national media manager for the Department of Human Services, Bevan Hannan, Tudge was so “bullish” in his approach that it put a big target on their backs. “It conflated welfare fraud with compliance activities,” Hannan told the inquiry on Tuesday. “The rest of the story had nothing to do with putting people in jail, but that – that grab seemed to galvanise everyone. “And so suddenly instead of being a story which would explain what we are doing, it put a big target on things, and the program and the minister became the hunted.”....


When problems began being reported in the press, Tudge fought back with the only weapon he had bothered to sharpen in his political career: a dependent and obsequious relationship with the right-wing media. 


In January, on his instruction, the Department of Human Services put together a dossier of all of the people with debts who had complained in the media. This information contained their protected Centrelink information, albeit anonymised, and special legal sign-off from DHS chief counsel Annette Musolino. It was sent to The Australian’s political editor, Simon Benson. He ran the story as the front-page splash in the next day’s edition: “Debt scare backfires on Labor.” 


This tactic of tying a neat bow around a story and handing it to a favoured journalist, Greggery said to Rachelle Miller, was to ensure the story was written “or at least presented in a way that the minister liked”. 


She agreed. “And Simon Benson,” she said, “was very good at doing that.” 


This preoccupation with establishing a “counternarrative”, as Miller described it, may have clouded the minister’s judgement. But there were at least three concurrent and damning threads running as Tudge faced the royal commission this week. Many of them involved the at times clandestine behaviour of his own department. 


One prominent figure in this is DHS chief counsel Annette Musolino, who herself spent nearly one-and-a-half days in the royal commission witness box this week. During Musolino’s own leave over the new year break in 2017, lawyers within her team at the Department of Human Services drew up draft instructions to seek advice from the Australian government solicitor that could have settled once and for all whether robo-debt was legal. The instructions were never sent.....


It is worth noting that these instructions were drawn up within a day of Alan Tudge arriving back in the country from his aborted overseas holiday to deal with the unfolding catastrophe. 


Did he know anything about them? 


“I’m asking you,” Greggery said on Thursday, “whether you can explain why, if you didn’t turn your mind to legality in the first couple of days when you came back, your legal department would be preparing instructions to the Australian government solicitor about the lawfulness of averaging?” 


Tudge said he couldn’t explain it. 


“It’s the first I’m even aware that that was occurring,” he said. 


Musolino was not in the dark about potential legal issues with the scheme. From at least late 2016 and then into 2017, her team was closely monitoring and providing reports on the outcomes of Administrative Appeals Tribunal decisions that were either rejecting the use of income averaging to raise debts or waving them through. 


In one particular matter, in a March 2017 decision by then AAT member Terry Carney, Musolino’s own lawyers agreed Carney had made no error of law in his reasoning. Despite this, and model litigant obligations placed on Commonwealth agencies, Musolino said DHS didn’t have to agree with the decision. It only had to implement it. If there was no appeal against the decision, it was very unlikely it would receive attention – and so the scheme could continue. 


“So how does the position get resolved where the AAT is making decisions that a significant program is being conducted on a basis which isn’t lawful?” Commissioner Holmes asked. 


“It just ticks along, and as long as nobody ever recommends an appeal, which they never need to because you can always implement the decision without regard to the program, it just goes on forever, does it?” 


Musolino said the AAT decisions “were cutting both ways”. Commissioner Holmes was unimpressed. “Okay,” she said. “I think you’re either missing my point wilfully or inadvertently.” 


The March 8, 2017, decision from Professor Carney did involve a general point of law that Musolino eventually accepted, after much circular argument. Essentially, it found a fundamental aspect of the scheme was unlawful. “That’s … yes,” Musolino finally said. 


This was a significant moment in the hearings, although it was dealt with carefully by Commissioner Holmes.


Musolino was shown a ministerial brief, prepared well over two years later, on November 6, 2019, for then minister for Government Services Stuart Robert, following the unequivocal receipt of legal advice from the solicitor-general, which declared robo-debt had no basis in law. 


Even though the solicitor-general’s opinion was “not a declaration of law” it was sufficiently alarming to DHS officials that they recommended robo-debt be terminated. 


“There is considerable legal and reputational risk should the Department continue to administer the program in its current form,” the document says. 


“[Then] Secretary of the Department, Ms [RenĂ©e] Leon, also carries personal risk associated with the continued administration of the program in its current form by reference to various obligations that she had as a public servant.” 


Crucially, the brief also put in writing a case that is being built brick by brick by the royal commission. “The continued administration of the program in its current form may amount to misfeasance in public office,” the Robert brief says. “This is because continued administration of the program after receipt of the opinion would contribute to an argument that the Department had been raising and recovering debts in bad faith.” 


Commissioner Holmes thought that the Carney decision might have put a concrete time line on when officials ought to have acted. A key element of the offence is acting with “reckless indifference” to the use of an official power that was reasonably expected to cause harm. 


“The fact is that the AAT was finding that averaging was not a legitimate procedure in cases – not all of them, but in some – and that proved to be perfectly correct as the solicitor-general’s opinion demonstrated,” Holmes said on Tuesday. 


“So that went on through 2017, 2018, to some time in 2019, when, around about March 2017, somebody could have been having a look at this. Is that a fair summary? You were getting decisions from the AAT pointing to a problem?” 


When then senior minister in the Social Services portfolio Christian Porter took the witness stand on Thursday afternoon he was asked about whether, while acting for the holidaying Tudge in late December and early January 2017, he formed the view that there was a “reticence” from DHS to publicise detail about how the online compliance system worked. 


“I recall … a sort of acceptance of the position and the talking points,” he said. 


“That then turned, at some point, into circumspection. Then I became sceptical and in the end I was extraordinarily frustrated with the level of information being provided.” 


There was another suicide after Rhys Cauzzo’s. It involved a woman who killed herself just five days after receiving a debt “discrepancy” reminder letter. The woman had previously sought social work support through the department but had no “vulnerability indicator” on her file. 


Despite the fact an employment separation certificate was already on the woman’s Centrelink file, which contained more detailed employment information, compliance officers were not permitted to consider this because, under the design of the scheme, it could never have allowed the government to recoup billions of dollars. 


This was an element of the scheme Tudge had promised to fix five months earlier, in January. He never did. 


Unlike with Cauzzo, whose case had been the subject of reporting, Tudge never ordered an investigation into this case. 


Greggery noted this difference and the reason for it. “I am suggesting,” he said, “the reason you didn’t order an investigation into this case, and you did for Mr Cauzzo, is because you were confident this wouldn’t reach the media.” 


 Tudge denied this.