Well, more accurately a Robodebt asshole, since there was plenty of assholery to go around, with ScoMoFo, of course, being King Asshole. But Kathryn Campbell AO was one of the worst, and to now read Murdoch’s free kick to this monumental asshole is simply nauseating.
Politics and governance is not our beat (although we seem to be getting there). We’d written twice, briefly on Robodebt and figured that’d be it. Best to leave it to the likes of the wonderful Rick Morton. But sometimes you just have to yell, and when Murdoch hack Jack Quail gives the softly softly treatment to an asshole, and when public “servant” Gregory Laurence Moriarty AO turns a blind eye in order to appoint his asshole mate, and when armchair “anti-corruption” stooge Paul Pontius Brereton AM passes the buck to his “anti-corruption” stooge deputy, we’ll be ready to yell. We loathe them. All of them.
Campbell knew. They all knew. They all knew that Robodebt was picking on the weakest, most defenceless people. They all knew it was immoral. They all knew it was illegal. They all knew it was insane. From the beginning they all knew and they just didn’t care. They were evil.
Fuck Kathryn Campbell and fuck everyone, especially right now Jack Fucking Quail, who worked and are still working to let Campbell and all her sociopathic goon-mates off the hook.
I think asshole is to mild a term to describe the criminal sociopathy of Robodebt. (However, I don’t know what to recommend instead, other than screaming obscenities.) And furious anger; indeed rage, is wholly justified. All of them (from Morriscum down) should be thrown in the clink with a very long non-parole period. That Murdoch sees fit to laud any of these people is hardly surprising; seeing as the Murdoch press long ago gave up even the pretence of integrity. It’s utterly disgusting; nauseating, and plain bloody awful.
Bill Shorten did a good job of slapping her down.
Total chutzpah – she played exactly by the unwritten rules of the game and then along came an election and a Royal Commission and by the same rules, her bosses got away with it but she got some blame, (which is after all part of the package of getting handsomely rewarded, including an Order of Australia at a higher level than that given to public servant who acted ethically and raised the wrongness of it all with her).
And then there’s the debacle of the NACC, where the Chair appears to have committed a probity breach in the manner in which he decided not to pursue Robodebt.
I have a nice relative who is extremely right wing. While we don’t agree on solutions, we can totally agree that the system is utterly broken.
The key to Robodebt and how it happened is to focus on the system rather than particular individuals. While individuals can and should be blamed, the system is the real problem. The risk is that people focus on punishing the individuals, rather than fixing a broken system. The irony is that the system is now so utterly broken that it can’t even punish the individuals – a la Napoleon and shooting a general every so often to make an example to the others.
To put it it Marty’s terms, the system is the arsehole.
I generally love Rick Morton’s passion and reporting, but this columnist actually sets out a good argument with which Rick disagrees. Navigating a broken system in an ethical manner isn’t easy.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/sep/24/saturday-paper-journalist-lashes-publications-unethical-defence-of-robodebt-bureaucrat
Bullshit.
I admit I didn’t read it in depth and should have – shall do so.
It’s not that Wallace doesn’t have an argument. Of course she does. It’s that she uses that argument, and misrepresenting the RC, to whitewash the revolting conduct of her mate. I can’t stand any of them. They are all born-to-rule fuckers who think that the rules don’t apply to them. Which is mostly true.
I came across this – Nicholas Gruen puts the whole thing in a far better context than I ever could – https://nicholasgruen.substack.com/p/blessed-are-the-morally-flexible.
They are truly morally flexible, and that’s what the system wants.
Leon took two fucking years. Spare me.