Well, more accurately, another Robodebt asshole. Along with Kathryn Campbell AO and ScoMoFo there were plenty. But Renée Leon PSM is the asshole currently being defended and so Renée Leon PSM is the asshole whose assholeness should currently be trumpeted.
Leon was whacked in the Robodebt Royal Commission Report and, along with eleven other public servants, was recently found by the Australian Public Services Commissioner to have breached the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct. Along with Campbell, Leon was named in the APSC report, but there are ways in which the two are very different: whereas Campbell is a low class thug, Leon is intelligent, scholarly and very well-presented, a highly respected public servant; and while Campbell was a key architect of Robodebt, Leon was the Secretary who finally ended Robodebt and was probably sacked by ScoMoFo for her efforts.
It is on the basis of such differences that people have been defending Leon, including Leon herself. When the APSC report came out, Leon posted a LinkedIn statement, expressing how “disappointed” she was “with the way the Australian Public Service Commission has come to its decision”:
“I acted as expeditiously as possible to convince a government that was wedded to the Robodebt scheme that it had to be ceased.”
Leon was also supported by: Martin Parkinson AC PSM; Charles Sturt University, of which Leon, leper that she now clearly is, is currently Vice Chancellor; Australian commentator on “rule of law”, Chris Merritt (Murdoch, paywalled); and, most recently in the Saturday Paper, University of Canberra professor of politics, Chris Wallace. It is all bullshit.
Rick Morton, who has been reporting on Robodebt for a very long time and who knows the workings of the story better than any other journalist, is having none of it. When Leon’s auto-exculpation appeared, and seeing the mandarin class rally around Leon, Morton wrote a detailed rebuttal. Morton was clearly annoyed by this class behaviour and by this rewriting of history, but he responded calmly and carefully. Wallace’s disgraceful piece, however, in Morton’s own paper, clearly made him livid. Morton has been unrelentingly walloping Wallace (whose article defence of Leon has been substantially revised). Rightly.
We won’t paraphrase Morton’s arguments. Just dig up anything and everything Morton has written on Robodebt; it will simultaneously destroy and restore one’s faith in humanity. (27/09/24 And, everyone should pre-order Morton’s forthcoming book on Robodebt.) We’ll just make a couple quick points.
It is really worth watching Leon’s testimony before the Royal Commission, the entire three hours of it. Leon is polite and intelligent, answering all questions in a clear and straight-forward manner, with very few “I can’t recall”s, and it is all utterly disgusting. Time and time and time again, Leon notes that her politician overlords didn’t want to hear things. Time and time and time again, Leon points out that her trusted underlings flagged nothing of Robodebt’s potential illegality. All of which was probably true and all of which is bullshit obfuscation. Time and time and time again, Leon uses the awfulness of her underlings and overloads to dispassionately excuse her own appalling conduct and lack of conduct. Very rarely is there any acknowledgment of just how many people Robodebt hurt so needlessly; the rare notes of regret are, at best, lip-service through pursed lips. Leon’s is an astonishingly sociopathic performance.
Renée Leon PSM administered Robodebt for over two years. She has a Masters in Law from Cambridge University. And yet, somehow it took Leon over two years to smell that there was anything wrong legally, let alone morally, with Robodebt? Leon merely trusted in and worked for the wrong people? Bullshit. Leon didn’t know because she didn’t want to know.
One should also compare Leon’s testimony with the testimony of Madeleine Masterton and her representative from Legal Aid Victoria, Miles Browne. Masterton is one of the victims and one of the heroes of Robodebt, and was dealt with, badly and farcically, on Leon’s watch. Masterton’s was not nearly the worst case – one has to go the suicides for that – but Masterton was willing to have LAV use her case as a legal test case, which became a very large lever in the later workings. Contrasting Masterton’s gentle, human testimony to that of Leon’s is all that one requires to understand Robodebt.
At one point Masterton has an exchange with Counsel Justin Greggery (at 4:49:20), on why Masterton was willing to put herself through the work and stress of a challenge to the fundamental legality of Robodebt (rather than either requesting an internal review through Centrelink or trying to gather the payslip evidence that Centrelink was demanding to waive her debt):
“Why was it that option 3, the challenge in the Federal Court, was attractive?”
“I suppose I felt that I could have gone through Centrelink’s process of submitting records and see what they said about my debt, whether it was legitimate or not, but there was a part of me that felt that testing the lawfulness of it would have a greater impact socially I suppose.”
“That it’s more than just you.”
“Yes.”
“And were you aware of other cases of debts alleged in your social network or broader network involving the Robodebt scheme?”
“Yes, a number of my friends had received similar debt notices and I had heard in the media of a large number of people.”
For Masterton, for us humans, it is “more than just you”. For Leon, it was just Leon.
Renée Leon PSM may not be nearly as awful as Campbell but she is pretty damn awful. As are her born-to-rule mandarin class defenders. Fuck them all.
This, from a post on Morton’s blog, sums up things neatly: “one can make an argument, even if others disagree, that Leon did the best she could in the circumstances. This does not equate to argument that she did nothing wrong and made no mistakes. And to think this, truly, marks you as part of the problem.”
Yes, that’s the easy and strong argument in response to assholes like Wallace.
But the fact is also, Leon did *not* do the best she could under the circumstances. You cannot not have known that Robodebt was illegal unless you know zero about the law and/or have an IQ under 50 and/or you were wilfully blind. Neither of the first is remotely true of Leon, which leaves the third. Or, she was simply lying.
“Leon’s is an astonishingly sociopathic performance.”
That, was a great line. She also relentlessly stalks people online in my experience.
Really? Any reference or evidence?