tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/royal-commission-4238/articlesRoyal Commission – The Conversation2023-10-03T04:51:47Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2144792023-10-03T04:51:47Z2023-10-03T04:51:47ZThe disability royal commission heard horrific stories of harm – now we must move towards repair<p><em>The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has shared its final report. In this <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/disability-rc-2023-146083">series</a>, we unpack what the commission’s 222 recommendations could mean for a more inclusive Australia.</em></p>
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<p>The final report of the <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/">Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability</a> follows <a href="https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/126332/1/CICJ.pdf">years of advocacy</a> from the disability community. It gave voice to people with disability to tell their stories of violence, so policymakers and broader community would listen and take action. Segregation emerged as a key driver of violence.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/final-report">report</a> makes 222 recommendations to improve laws, policies and practices for a more just and inclusive society. They include a new disability rights act, including access to remedies when people experience human rights breaches. </p>
<p>The final report recommends disability service providers offer redress to people with disability who experience harm while receiving their services. This could include “apologies, compensation, reimbursement of fees, credits for services and other practical remedies or supports”.</p>
<p>However, there are no recommendations that governments should also offer apologies or redress. In addition, a call for governments and disability services to look back and repair the harm caused by century-long policies of segregation and institutionalisation is missing from the final report. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/disability-royal-commissioners-disagreed-over-phasing-out-special-schools-that-leaves-segregation-on-the-table-214706">Disability royal commissioners disagreed over phasing out 'special schools' – that leaves segregation on the table</a>
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<h2>What do ‘institutionalisation’ and ‘segregation’ mean?</h2>
<p>Institutionalisation involves grouping people with disability together – such as in residential, educational or work settings – and segregating them (keeping them separate) from people without disability. </p>
<p>All people with disability have the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/general-comments-and-recommendations/general-comment-no5-article-19-right-live">human right</a> to live independently in the community regardless of how high their support needs are. This means providing access to services and support so people with disability can exercise choice and control over their lives and make all decisions concerning their lives.</p>
<p>In 20th century Australia, people with disability were institutionalised in many large residential settings. They were <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2023-05/Research%20Report%20-%20Disability%20in%20Australia%20-%20Shadows%2C%20struggles%20and%20successes.pdf">subjected</a> to </p>
<ul>
<li>physical and sexual violence </li>
<li>medical neglect </li>
<li>use of <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/restrictive-practices-pathway-elimination">restrictive practices</a> (such as sedation, locking people in a room or restraining them in a bed or chair) </li>
<li>sterilisation (such as women having their tubes tied)</li>
<li>and unpaid work. </li>
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<p>Eventually, Australian government policies prompted the gradual closure of many large residential settings.</p>
<p>Shutting down institutions has not put an end to injustices. Follow-up processes have not been established to <a href="https://cid.org.au/our-campaigns/disability-institutions/">recognise and redress the experiences</a> of people who lived there. </p>
<p>This institutional history intersects with Australia’s violence towards <a href="https://www.daru.org.au/resource/culture-is-inclusion">First Nations people with disability</a> and with <a href="https://www.eugenicsarchive.ca/around-the-world?id=530b8d09acea8cf99a000001">broader practices of eugenics</a> (discriminatory “planned breeding”). </p>
<p>People with disability remain traumatised by their experiences, yet governments and charities have not been called to account. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-disability-royal-commission-recommendations-could-fix-some-of-the-worst-living-conditions-but-thats-just-the-start-213466">The disability royal commission recommendations could fix some of the worst living conditions – but that's just the start</a>
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<h2>Problems today</h2>
<p>Today, many people – especially those with intellectual disability – live in <a href="https://www.inclusionaustralia.org.au/story/group-homes/">group homes</a> where segregation, social isolation, violence and lack of choice in their daily lives are <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-with-disabilities-in-group-homes-are-suffering-shocking-abuse-new-housing-models-could-prevent-harm-197989">a common reality</a>. </p>
<p>Harms such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/26/disabled-australian-women-face-forced-sterilisation-abortion-and-contraception-health-groups-say">sterilisation</a>, restrictive practices and below-minimum wages continue. </p>
<p>The disability royal commission heard how <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/public-hearings/public-hearing-3">group homes</a> replicate the harm of large residential settings, with <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/news-and-media/media-releases/report-finds-service-provider-failed-prevent-violence-and-abuse-against-residents-group-homes">operators</a> failing to prevent violence and avoiding accountability. </p>
<p>People with disability have called for an end to <a href="https://pwd.org.au/pwda-calls-for-a-radical-response-to-end-segregation-and-discrimination/">segregation</a> in housing and other aspects of their lives. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/people-with-disabilities-in-group-homes-are-suffering-shocking-abuse-new-housing-models-could-prevent-harm-197989">People with disabilities in group homes are suffering shocking abuse. New housing models could prevent harm</a>
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<h2>Recognising wrongs</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/basic-principles-and-guidelines-right-remedy-and-reparation">Reparations</a> are actions to recognise and respond to systemic wrongs. They might involve compensation, restitution (such as returning money or property) or rehabilitation (health or legal services). Reparations can seek satisfaction (with apologies and memorials) and guarantees something won’t happen again via law reform or human rights education. </p>
<p>In Australia, we’ve seen <a href="https://www.nationalredress.gov.au/">compensation, rehabilitation</a> and apologies for <a href="https://www.childabuseroyalcommissionresponse.gov.au/national-apology">institutional child sexual abuse</a>. </p>
<p>We have also seen <a href="https://www.aboriginalaffairs.nsw.gov.au/healing-and-reparations/stolen-generations/reparations-scheme/">reparations</a> and an <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/national-apology#:%7E:text=On%2013%20February%202008%20Prime%20Minister%20Kevin%20Rudd,government%20policies%20of%20forced%20child%20removal%20and%20assimilation.">apology</a> for members of the Stolen Generations.</p>
<p>People with disability are entitled to reparations as a <a href="https://www.hhrjournal.org/2022/06/reparations-for-harms-experienced-in-residential-aged-care/">human right</a>, including for <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/legal-standards-and-guidelines/crpdc5-guidelines-deinstitutionalization-including">institutionalisation</a>. </p>
<p>There are overseas examples of reparations for people with disability, including <a href="https://www.eugenicsarchive.ca/encyclopedia?id=5554c14735ae9d9e7f0000a2">compensation for sterilisation</a>, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/denmark-apologizes-for-abuse-of-people-with-disabilities/a-66783019">apologies for disability institutionalisation</a>, <a href="https://truthsofinstitutionalization.ca/">public education</a> and <a href="https://www.mass.gov/info-details/special-commission-on-state-institutions-statute">truth-telling</a>. </p>
<h2>What do people with disability want?</h2>
<p>Co-author Jack Kelly describes the ongoing effects of institutionalisation:</p>
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<p>People with disability were not seen as part of local communities when they lived in institutions. This has to change and still takes time. I think it is really important that we address the history of what has been going on and say; ‘Sorry that we didn’t look after your loved ones’ and ‘Sorry we didn’t value you as a person’. It is time to work with people with disability towards a national apology from the government.</p>
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<p>Jack’s statement <a href="https://wwda.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ACDA_Sub_Sen_Inquiry_Violence_Institutions.pdf">resonates</a> with broader calls by the disability community for reparations. </p>
<p>In 2021, the Council for Intellectual Disability demanded withdrawal of an <a href="https://cid.org.au/our-campaigns/peat-island/">application for tourist re-zoning</a> of Peat Island (the site of a disability institution for 99 years) and for memorialisation and truth-telling. </p>
<p>There have been recent calls for <a href="https://www.livedexperiencejustice.au/">apology and truth-telling</a> in the mental health system and reparations for <a href="https://wwda.org.au/2023/04/disability-royal-commission-wwdas-submission-on-sexual-and-reproductive-rights/">sterilisation</a>.</p>
<p>Our research explored what people with intellectual disability want the public to know about large residential settings. </p>
<p>We <a href="https://cid.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/UTS-ER-Remembering-Disability-Institutions-digital-accessible.pdf">found</a> people with intellectual disability support the wider community learning more of what was experienced in these places. Sharing this history is an important step towards repairing past wrongs, ending institutionalisation, segregation and exclusion, and realising equality and inclusion. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-shove-us-off-like-were-rubbish-what-people-with-intellectual-disability-told-us-about-their-local-community-179479">'Don't shove us off like we're rubbish': what people with intellectual disability told us about their local community</a>
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<h2>A way forward</h2>
<p>People with disability, <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-shove-us-off-like-were-rubbish-what-people-with-intellectual-disability-told-us-about-their-local-community-179479">including</a> those with intellectual disability, must lead reparation design and development. </p>
<p>The disability royal commission has highlighted systemic violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation in today’s Australia. These criminal practices reinforce a century-long history of injustice from institutionalisation. </p>
<p>Now is the time to act to ensure this does not continue. Reparations are one way to do this.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214479/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack Kelly has contributed to projects that have been funded by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Linda Steele has received funding from Women with Disabilities Australia, Council for Intellectual Disability, Dementia Australia Research Foundation, Australian Association of Gerontology, and Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation. She is on the board of management of Intellectual Disability Rights Service. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phillippa Carnemolla has received funding for previous projects from the National Disability Insurance Agency, National Disability Services and The Achieve Foundation. She is a Director for the Centre for Universal Design Australia.</span></em></p>The disability royal commission recommended providers offer redress to people who experience harm while in their care. But reparations for past harms were not addressed.Jack Francis Kelly, Honorary Research Fellow, School of the Built Environment, University of Technology SydneyLinda Steele, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Technology SydneyPhillippa Carnemolla, Associate Professor, School of the Built Environment, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2147062023-10-02T06:03:18Z2023-10-02T06:03:18ZDisability royal commissioners disagreed over phasing out ‘special schools’ – that leaves segregation on the table<p><em>The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has shared its final report. In this <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/disability-rc-2023-146083">series</a>, we unpack what the commission’s 222 recommendations could mean for a more inclusive Australia.</em></p>
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<p>The <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au">Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability</a> delivered 222 recommendations on Friday after four and a half years of investigation and deliberation. In its 32 hearings and nearly 8,000 submissions, people with disability shared difficult stories of personal and systemic violence. The commission’s <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/final-report">final report</a> showed Australians of all ages with disability continue to experience injustice that must be addressed. </p>
<p>As signatories to the <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/disability-rights/united-nations-convention-rights-persons-disabilities-uncrpd">Convention for the Rights of People with Disability</a> and the <a href="https://www.unicef.org.au/united-nations-convention-on-the-rights-of-the-child">Convention of the Rights of the Child</a>, the commission concluded children and young people have a right to inclusive education. </p>
<p>But the commissioners passed down divided recommendations that will continue education segregation for Australia’s young people for at least a generation and possibly longer.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-disability-royal-commission-recommendations-could-fix-some-of-the-worst-living-conditions-but-thats-just-the-start-213466">The disability royal commission recommendations could fix some of the worst living conditions – but that's just the start</a>
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<h2>Split on segregation</h2>
<p>Many disability advocacy organisations <a href="https://www.dana.org.au/end-segregation/">hoped</a> the commission report would call for an end to segregation of people with disability across education, housing and employment. Yet the final report found the commissioners split on this issue. </p>
<p>Commissioners Barbara Bennett, Rhonda Galbally and Alastair McEwin <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2023-09/Final%20Report%20-%20Executive%20Summary%2C%20Our%20vision%20for%20an%20inclusive%20Australia%20and%20Recommendations.pdf">believe</a> “the deliberate and systematic separation of people based on disability constitutes segregation”. The remaining commissioners disagreed. </p>
<p>Two contrasting sets of education recommendations emerged from this split. </p>
<p>One seeks to phase out “special” or segregated education by 2051. Commissioners Galbally and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-01/final-report-recommends-end-to-school-segregation/102922216">McEwin</a> – who are the only disabled commissioners and have close relationships with the disability community – support this approach, along with Bennett. </p>
<p>This proposal has still come under fire. West Australian senator Jordon Steele-John argues a 30-year phase out process is <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/wildly-inadequate-senator-calls-out-australias-segregated-school-phase-out-plan/i3oanwgjw">too long</a>. He says it would mean disabled children entering school today would likely be separated from their age peers for the duration of their school life.</p>
<p>Organisations such as the Australian Coalition for Inclusive Education have previously set out <a href="https://acie105204494.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/acie-roadmap-final-11-feb-2021.pdf">roadmaps</a> to end segregated education within a decade. </p>
<p>The alternative recommendation proposed by commissioners Andrea Mason and John Ryan seeks to maintain special schools but, where practicable, locate these close to mainstream schools. This could create partnerships so students can participate in activities together. Critics of this approach <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-30/disability-community-responds-to-royal-commission-report/102917604?sf269343817=1">say</a> it does not suggest a time when segregated schooling might cease. </p>
<p>And bringing mainstream and special schools together would not necessarily achieve inclusion. The suggestion of scheduling in partial participation could send a message to students and teachers that not everyone belongs in all learning spaces. </p>
<p>The recommendations did not mention the private education sector, referring only to a future possibility of inclusion within state schooling. </p>
<h2>Why inclusive education is important</h2>
<p>Education is not just about academic outcomes and future employment. It is about creating tomorrow’s Australian communities, society and citizens. </p>
<p>The disability royal commission’s recommendations represent progress in terms of understanding diversity, listening to the voices of young people, capacity building, leadership and governance, and employment opportunities. But they lack insight into the importance of <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/11/1/16">inclusive education</a> in achieving all of these goals.</p>
<p>The very establishment of the commission was a commitment to addressing the violence and discrimination people with disability experience. But the lack of a firm commitment to a fully inclusive education system denies the opportunity for all young people to grow and understand their diversity of experiences.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614538978">All children</a> and young people in a community need to play, grow and develop together. This means they can learn how to develop social-emotional skills and empathy for each other’s strengths and differences. </p>
<h2>Why some see segregated education as necessary</h2>
<p>Not everyone within the disability community sees segregated education as problematic. There are a number of reasons why special settings for students with disability have been established and chosen by families and students. </p>
<p>Schools are under-resourced and teachers in mainstream settings are often <a href="https://theconversation.com/70-of-australian-students-with-a-disability-are-excluded-at-school-the-next-round-of-education-reforms-can-fix-this-213369">under-trained</a> for working with students with disability in inclusive ways. </p>
<p>Many schools lack the facilities and adjustments required to keep some students with disability safe and included alongside their peers. There are concerns about bullying and meeting personal needs in some cases. Staff in specialist education settings may be more experienced with these needs. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-disability-royal-commission-delivers-its-findings-today-we-must-all-listen-to-end-violence-abuse-and-neglect-213253">The disability royal commission delivers its findings today. We must all listen to end violence, abuse and neglect</a>
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<p>The royal commission recommendation that teaching standards should include inclusive education training across the careers of teachers is important. But teachers cannot achieve this without the time or resources to develop the meaningful meetings and planning of Individual Education Plans (IEP) with students, carers and other professionals, including classroom assistants. </p>
<p>Much of the expertise in meeting the needs of students with disability are located in specialist schools, with little opportunity for skill and strategy sharing with mainstream teachers. Continuing to segregate these skills will make inclusive education unachievable.</p>
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<h2>Where to next?</h2>
<p>The commission’s final report identifies the need for better data collection and analysis to make decisions. Existing mechanisms including the Disability Standards for Education, the Australian Curriculum, the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability, and an additional monitoring of progress through IEP reporting will be an important step in identifying where additional supports may be required at the school and student level. </p>
<p>Many within the disability community will not be heartened by the disability royal commission’s recommendations because they leave an option for segregation on the table. And this may set up the next generation of disabled children and young people for a life of being excluded from mainstream society. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-students-with-disability-go-to-special-schools-when-research-tells-us-they-do-better-in-the-mainstream-system-184652">Why do students with disability go to 'special schools' when research tells us they do better in the mainstream system?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Smith receives funding from CYDA and Down Syndrome Victoria. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Dickinson receives funding from ARC, NHMRC and CYDA</span></em></p>Education segregation could continue for Australia’s young people for at least another generation – and possibly longer – in light of the disability royal commission recommendations.Catherine Smith, Senior lecturer, The University of MelbourneHelen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2132532023-09-27T20:05:09Z2023-09-27T20:05:09ZThe disability royal commission delivers its findings today. We must all listen to end violence, abuse and neglect<p><em>The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has shared its final report. In this <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/disability-rc-2023-146083">series</a>, we unpack what the commission’s 222 recommendations could mean for a more inclusive Australia.</em> </p>
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<p>The <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/">Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability</a> will hand its final report and recommendations to the Australian governor general today. </p>
<p>Many people are waiting keenly to hear how the recommendations can make a difference to the lives of people with disability. Others are unsure how the royal commission could improve people’s safety and wellbeing. </p>
<p>Since it was established in mid-2019, the <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/">disability royal commission</a> has held 32 public hearings with evidence from 837 witnesses and received 7,944 submissions – 55% from people with disability and 29% from family members.</p>
<p>While we wait for the report to be made public, we can learn from how government action from the previous <a href="https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/">child abuse royal commission</a> helped improve people’s lives. </p>
<h2>What was involved</h2>
<p>The disability royal commission was a big and long investigation. Over four and half years, it held hearings, heard stories from witnesses, received submissions and conducted research. All the evidence shared by people about their experiences and the poor quality of our current policies means many now have high expectations that the commission must generate change. </p>
<p><a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2023-05/Research%20Report%20-%20Rapid%20Evidence%20Review%20-%20Violence%2C%20abuse%2C%20neglect%20and%20exploitation%20of%20people%20with%20disability.pdf">High rates</a> of violence and harm against people with disability have not improved very much over many decades. The impact of this ongoing history of violence was evident in the <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2020-10/Research%20Report%20-%20Something%20Stronger_Truth-telling%20on%20hurt%20and%20loss%2C%20strength%20%20and%20healing%2C%20from%20First%20Nations%20people%20%20with%20disability.pdf">grief and trauma</a> expressed by the thousands of people at the commission’s public and private hearings. </p>
<p>Research about violence, harm prevention and personal safety shows change needs be in <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2023-05/Research%20Report%20-%20Changing%20community%20attitudes%20to%20improve%20inclusion%20of%20people%20with%20disability.pdf">two parts</a>. </p>
<p>Making changes to specialist systems such as the <a href="https://www.ndiscommission.gov.au/">National Disability Insurance Scheme</a> (NDIS) – currently under review – will help those involved. Bigger change is also needed to address the social problems and criminal acts that compromise the safety and wellbeing of people with disability. This fundamental change is urgently needed. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/inclusion-means-everyone-5-disability-attitude-shifts-to-end-violence-abuse-and-neglect-199003">Inclusion means everyone: 5 disability attitude shifts to end violence, abuse and neglect</a>
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<h2>Ableism and ‘othering’</h2>
<p>Violence can <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2020-10/Research%20Report%20-%20Hierarchies%20of%20power_Disability%20theories%20and%20models%20and%20their%20implications%20for%20violence%20against%2C%20and%20abuse%2C%20neglect%2C%20and%20exploitation%20of%2C%20people%20with%20disability.pdf">happen</a> when people with disability are seen as less valuable, or even less than human – a perspective called “othering”.</p>
<p>People with disability are often treated in ways that are not acceptable for any member of society. When people without disability are prioritised, it is called “<a href="https://theconversation.com/ableism-and-disablism-how-to-spot-them-and-how-we-can-all-do-better-204541">ableism</a>”. When people with disability are viewed or treated as inferior, it is called “disablism”. </p>
<p>An example of these types of discrimination is when a waiter asks a carer what a person with disability wants, instead of asking the person themselves. Or when a person with disability is <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-with-disabilities-in-group-homes-are-suffering-shocking-abuse-new-housing-models-could-prevent-harm-197989">expected to live</a> with <a href="https://www.unsw.edu.au/research/sprc/our-projects/supported-accommodation-evaluation-framework-saef">strangers who hit them</a>, because that is the only housing available. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ableism-and-disablism-how-to-spot-them-and-how-we-can-all-do-better-204541">Ableism and disablism – how to spot them and how we can all do better</a>
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<p>You might think excluding people in these ways does not happen anymore or does not matter. But our current social structures make it depressingly common. </p>
<p>Children with disability report high rates of <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(21)00371-0/fulltext">loneliness and bullying</a> at school. People using disability services are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2022.2029357">grouped together</a> and called “clients” or “participants” instead of by their names. People cannot reliably find a <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/most-public-toilets-inaccessible-to-people-with-disabilities/adsx7cnr8">usable, accessible toilet</a> when they are out and this can stop them from leaving their home at all. </p>
<p>These daily problems <a href="https://www.researchdci.flinders.edu.au/projects/confronting-everyday-harms%3A-preventing-abuse-of-people-with-disability">set a norm</a> where violence is usual and less likely to be checked or punished. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-want-to-get-bogged-at-a-beach-in-my-wheelchair-and-know-people-will-help-micheline-lee-on-the-way-forward-for-the-ndis-213348">'I want to get bogged at a beach in my wheelchair and know people will help'. Micheline Lee on the way forward for the NDIS</a>
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<h2>What we hope the commission will recommend</h2>
<p>The disability royal commission listened to people with disability, family members and organisations about what they want to happen. A consistent <a href="https://www.inclusionaustralia.org.au/joint-media-statement-disability-rights-organisations-call-for-an-end-to-the-violence/">view</a> is that it is not enough to focus on stopping violent acts where they are happening now. We need strong government responses that address the root causes of segregation, discrimination and exclusion. </p>
<p>Law and policy must prioritise people with disability and their allies in the way solutions are found and implemented.</p>
<p>We know from the government responses to the previous child abuse commission that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14443058.2018.1467725">four factors</a> made an immediate difference to the safety and wellbeing of children:</p>
<ul>
<li>bringing child sexual abuse into public discussion</li>
<li>prioritising the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajs4.134?casa_token=0aMFz18YDQwAAAAA%3ASel-vHYdZg-lhNinOyRR8W05746DWIo8JZhheqDXHvAKJyYhhgf-ZwVSzPGeu97I8gj8SevD8_KGMNY">voices</a> of children and survivors in policy and practice about them</li>
<li>compulsory compliance for any organisation in contact with children to meet <a href="https://childsafe.humanrights.gov.au/national-principles/about-national-principles">safety standards</a></li>
<li>requiring any organisation with a history of child abuse to participate in a <a href="https://www.nationalredress.gov.au/?gclid=CjwKCAjw38SoBhB6EiwA8EQVLqe5aL4x6zXcHsSrruc_81lKMe2KTenvmW1kiuPDPZCzJ9Q_jcqinRoCPV4QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">redress scheme</a>, with sanctions if they refuse or delay.</li>
</ul>
<p>The disability royal commission recommendations and government responses should follow the example set by the child abuse commission. The need for a voice, compliance and quality standards remains relevant to people affected by disability policy. </p>
<p>And the responsibility for real change stretches beyond government. Change happens when the responsibility to listen and act is <a href="https://www.unsw.edu.au/research/sprc/our-projects/changing-community-attitudes-to-improve-inclusion-for-people-wit">taken up</a> by all organisations, communities and members of the public. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1702486054618681375"}"></div></p>
<h2>What happens next</h2>
<p>The disability royal commission recommendations to the government will be important not only for preventing and responding to violence, but also for how people with disability are treated fairly by every person, every day.</p>
<p>Equally, how the government responds to the recommendations is vital. Immediate action, as we saw in the child abuse commission, will demonstrate priority for the rights of people with disability.</p>
<p>Everyone’s contribution to changing attitudes, building belonging and recognising people’s shared humanity is needed to defeat exclusion and prevent violence. </p>
<p>Poet <a href="https://amongtheregulars.com/">Andy Jackson</a> recited his work <a href="https://comms.external.royalcommission.gov.au/v/89073/1613401/email.html?k=ws1yfek5f9DM_7EWZaiUh6PwHn4hJeVWMleBIksMslk&ref=bluntshovels.au#listen">Listen</a> at the disability royal commission’s ceremonial closing sitting two weeks ago. His words were a powerful call to action, including the lines: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here in this awkward, sacred stillness open your mouth, ears, hands </p>
<p>The air is full of seeds </p>
<p>This time let your discomfort mean something </p>
<p>This cannot be the end of listening but its beginning[.]</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213253/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Robinson receives research funding from the Australian Research Council and Australian Federal and State governments. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen R Fisher receives funding from Australian Research Council, state and federal governments and nongovernment organisations. </span></em></p>The disability royal commission has heard from thousands of people with disability and their families. But the response must involve everyone.Sally Robinson, Professor, Disability and Community Inclusion, Flinders UniversityKaren R Fisher, Professor, Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2107222023-07-31T10:30:44Z2023-07-31T10:30:44ZMorrison labels Robodebt findings against him unsubstantiated and absurd and accuses government ‘lynching’ campaign<p>Scott Morrison has accused the Robodebt royal commission of making wrong, unsubstantiated and absurd findings against him, in a detailed statement to parliament.</p>
<p>The former prime minister, who was excoriated by the commission, was unrepentant, giving no ground on any of the criticisms Commissioner Catherine Holmes made of him in her report.</p>
<p>He also accused the government of a “campaign of political lynching” to discredit him and his service to the country, once again weaponising “a quasi-legal process to launder [its] political vindictiveness”. </p>
<p>Rising on the first sitting day after the report’s release during the recess Morrison, speaking to a near-empty house, said he rejected the commission’s findings he had allowed cabinet to be misled, provided untrue evidence, and pressured departmental officials. </p>
<p>Morrison was social services minister when the scheme, announced in the 2015 budget, was being worked up. He was an enthusiast for pursuing savings in the welfare area and saw the plan, based on income averaging, as a powerful means to do this. </p>
<p>But the scheme was found to be illegal and, by the time he was prime minister, it had raised $1.76 billion unlawfully from hundreds of thousand of people, and the government was forced to repay a huge amount in total to people wrongfully pursued for money they didn’t owe.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/robodebt-royal-commissioner-makes-multiple-referrals-for-prosecution-condemning-scheme-as-crude-and-cruel-209318">Robodebt royal commissioner makes multiple referrals for prosecution, condemning scheme as 'crude and cruel'</a>
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<p>In his statement, Morrison reiterated that when he was social services minister and the plan was being prepared, the final advice to him was that legislation was not required, and he had no reason to doubt the integrity and knowledge of officials. This superseded an earlier minute indicating legislation could be needed.</p>
<p>The commission’s suggestion it was reasonable he would or should have formed a contrary view to this advice was “not credible or reasonable,” Morrison told parliament. </p>
<p>He said when the scheme was announced in the 2015 budget, the Labor opposition did not express concerns about its legality. </p>
<p>“The commission’s finding unfairly and retroactively applies a consensus of the understanding of the lawful status of the scheme that simply was not present or communicated at the time,” Morrison said. “This is clearly an unreasonable, untenable and false basis to make the serious allegation of allowing cabinet to be misled.” </p>
<p>Morrison said the commission’s finding he had given untrue evidence was “unsubstantiated, speculative and wrong”, with the commission seeking to reverse the onus of proof. “I had stated in evidence what I understood to be true, the commission failed to disprove this and simply asserted it unilaterally as fact.”</p>
<p>Arguing the commission’s allegation pressure was applied to officials that prevented them giving frank advice was “absurd”, Morrison said the department had already initiated the proposal before he arrived as minister. “How could I have pressured officials into developing such proposals, while serving in another portfolio?”, he said. “The department had already taken the initiative and were the proponents of the scheme.”</p>
<p>Further, “the Commission’s suggestion that an orthodox policy setting of seeking to ensure integrity in welfare payments would be seen as intimidating to the department and its senior executive is both surprising and concerning. That is their job.”</p>
<p>Morrison said that “at no time did the department advise me as minister of the existence of the formal legal advice prepared prior to my arrival in the portfolio, regarding the scheme.” </p>
<p>He said the “uncontested fact that senior departmental executives withheld key information regarding the legality of scheme from their minister is inexcusable.”</p>
<p>Morrison once again expressed his “deep regret” for the scheme’s “unintended consequences” on individuals and their families. </p>
<p>Opposition leader Peter Dutton told the ABC Morrison had put “a very strong case” of his position, and he had been right to put it in parliament. </p>
<p>The commission has referred a list of people involved in Robodebt for further action, but the names have not been released. </p>
<p>A key top bureaucrat involved in the scheme, Kathryn Campbell, has resigned from the public service in the wake of the report’s condemnation of her.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210722/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The former prime minister, who was excoriated by the commission, was unrepentant, giving no ground on any of the criticisms Commissioner Catherine Holmes made of him in her report.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2093772023-07-09T10:46:33Z2023-07-09T10:46:33ZView from The Hill: The ‘sealed’ chapter of the Robodebt report should be released<p>The secrecy surrounding the recommendations for prosecution and other action against those who drove or facilitated the Robodebt scandal threatens to dilute the impact of the strong findings of the royal commission. </p>
<p>Commissioner Catherine Holmes has said the report’s secret chapter “recommends the referral of individuals for civil action or criminal prosecution”. But she said this “sealed” section should not be tabled “so as not to prejudice the conduct of any future civil action or criminal prosecution”.</p>
<p>Holmes has submitted relevant parts of the sealed chapter “to heads of various Commonwealth agencies, the Australian Public Service Commissioner, the National Anti-Corruption Commissioner, the President of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory and the Australian Federal Police”.</p>
<p>So far the government is adhering to Holmes’ position about not releasing names, although the Minister for Government Services Bill Shorten said on Friday he had “conflicting emotions” when he read Holmes’ recommendation on this, and Anthony Albanese said he did, too. </p>
<p>While at first blush Holmes’s argument for suppressing the names sounds fair and the right thing to do, it is in fact flawed. </p>
<p>By not identifying people publicly, this does a disservice at several levels. The case for secrecy can be made, but it is trumped by that for disclosure. </p>
<p>The general public, and especially the victims of Robodebt, deserve to know who has been referred. The scheme did immense damage to a huge number of people. The commission has been scathing about many individuals. There is a strong case for revealing what actions it believes should be taken against which people. </p>
<p>The secrecy is also unfair to some involved in the hearings who have not been referred. People may assume, wrongly, that they have been. </p>
<p>On the other hand, have some individuals not been referred when it might be expected they would have been?</p>
<p>Individuals who have been referred can identify themselves, but it can’t be assumed they will. (A couple of former ministers on Friday were quick to say they had not received referral notifications.) </p>
<p>The situation becomes even more opaque when no number has been given of the referrals.</p>
<p>One would expect a hierarchy among the referrals – being recommended for criminal charges is not the same as being referred for lesser action. </p>
<p>There is little doubt names will leak out over coming days, which is the worst way for them to emerge. </p>
<p>Publication of names would hardly be a new thing. The royal commission into trade unions, set up by the previous government, listed referrals, the grounds for them, and the agencies to which they were sent.</p>
<p>Following Friday’s report, the bureaucracy has started a process for dealing with fallout in its bailiwick. But while there’s been a shake up in the public service and its top personnel under Labor, the public won’t necessarily have confidence the process will ensure action is being robustly pursued. </p>
<p>The Public Service Commission announced that “a centralised inquiry mechanism has been established to inquire into alleged breaches of the Code of Conduct by [Australian Public Service] employees, former APS employees and Agency Heads arising from the Royal Commission”.</p>
<p>In its statement the Public Service Commission poses the question, “What information will be available about individual referrals and inquiries?” Its answer amounts to saying, damn all.</p>
<p>“The sealed chapter of the report refers to individuals and is subject to a Direction Not to Publish issued by the Royal Commissioner.</p>
<p>"In order to maintain the integrity and procedural fairness of any further inquiries, and consistent with the Direction Not to Publish, information about individual cases will not be released,” the statement says.</p>
<p>As to whether individuals named in the sealed section continue to be employed in the public service, this will be “a matter for their current employer,” who can act “before a formal investigation has started or concluded”.</p>
<p>In deciding this, the statement says, their boss needs to consider the “seriousness of the allegations, as well as the particular circumstances of the individual’s employment including their current roles and responsibilities”. </p>
<p>Just in case anyone has any further questions, the Public Service Commission and individual departments and agencies “will not be commenting on the employment arrangements of individuals because, to do so, may inadvertently disclose content contained in the sealed chapter or risk prejudicing ongoing inquiries”.</p>
<p>This is less than satisfactory. As is a situation where some senior public servants know more than ministers about who has been named. </p>
<p>How can we monitor what happens to which individuals if we don’t know who all those individuals are? How will we know the time frame – when the follow-through is finished? Are we talking about weeks, months?</p>
<p>There are strong grounds for the government to make public the sealed section, in the name of transparency. Not to do so will only bring problems.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209377/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bill Shorten said on Friday he had “conflicting emotions” when he read Holmes’ recommendation on this, and Anthony Albanese said he did, too.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2092162023-07-07T11:09:28Z2023-07-07T11:09:28ZVictims now know they were right about robodebt all along. Let the royal commission change the way we talk about welfare<p>The long-awaited <a href="https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/report">robodebt royal commission report</a> landed today, making searing adverse findings against both politicians and bureaucrats. </p>
<p>Key individuals are denounced in stark moral terms: for venality, cowardice and callous disregard. </p>
<p>The report contains the statement that “on the evidence before the commission, elements of the tort of misfeasance in public office appear to exist”. </p>
<p>The victims and key advocates who have laboured in obscurity, through days when no listened, can now know they were right all along.</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<h2>Consequences</h2>
<p>The report leaves a core question unanswered: will anyone ever face consequences for what happened? Robodebt Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes’ decision to keep referrals confidential should be perceived as victim-centred. </p>
<p>A royal commission is the last fail-safe of our democracy, the one way we open doors those in power would prefer to keep shut. </p>
<p>It’s a mechanism that is particularly precious to the marginalised, those failed by the media and party political cycles. </p>
<p>The confidentiality serves to highlight the elemental values that were denied to people during robodebt itself: procedural fairness, ethics and attention to proof.</p>
<p>On compensation for the victims, the report states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The administration costs of a scheme which addressed all the different ways in which people were harmed by the Scheme and examined their circumstances to establish what compensation was appropriate in each case would be astronomic, given the numbers involved. A better use of the money would be to lift the rate at which social security benefits are paid.</p>
</blockquote>
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<h2>Holmes’ challenge for Australians</h2>
<p>The report leans heavily into the importance of pursuing a deeper change in our political life. This reflects the arguments of advocates that even if it had been lawful, robodebt was still a scandal. </p>
<p>The commissioner’s call to consider raising the rate of JobSeeker directs us to the bigger picture. Welfare advocates in this country can now forcefully critique any government program that trades on stigma or vulnerability and ignores real-life suffering.</p>
<p>That will now forever be known as robodebt governance.</p>
<p>As the report reads: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>politicians need to lead a change in social attitudes to people receiving welfare payments. The evidence before the commission was that fraud in the welfare system was miniscule, but that is not the impression one would get from what ministers responsible for social security payments have said over the years. Anti-welfare rhetoric is easy populism, useful for campaign purposes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The report reflects that Australia’s constitution places all its trust on responsible politicians and a vibrant parliamentary culture. </p>
<p>The law does not offer the protections the public often thinks it does, and plays an outsized role in public debate. Across more than 900 pages, the key take away for social security recipients is effectively: find a way to get political power and cultural influence, any way you can.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/robodebt-royal-commissioner-makes-multiple-referrals-for-prosecution-condemning-scheme-as-crude-and-cruel-209318">Robodebt royal commissioner makes multiple referrals for prosecution, condemning scheme as 'crude and cruel'</a>
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<h2>‘Robodebt’: the power of a word</h2>
<p>It was confronting to watch today as politicians and media picked over the findings of the report, when it took so long to have the wrongs of robodebt noticed by anyone.</p>
<p>The report detailed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The beginning of 2017 was the point at which Robodebt’s unfairness, probable illegality and cruelty became apparent. It should then have been abandoned or revised drastically, and an enormous amount of hardship and misery (as well as the expense the government was so anxious to minimise) would have been averted.</p>
<p>Instead the path taken was to double down, to go on the attack in the media against those who complained and to maintain the falsehood that in fact the system had not changed at all. The government was, the DHS and DSS ministers maintained, acting righteously to recoup taxpayers’ money from the undeserving.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My thoughts were with the #notmydebt volunteers. With transparency advocate Justin Warren who spent years seeking the very documents that could have stopped this long ago. </p>
<p>To Asher Wolf, Lyndsey Jackson, Amy Patterson and the forever anonymous volunteers who <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-robodebt-how-twitter-activists-pushed-a-government-scandal-from-hashtags-to-a-royal-commission-209131">built the very word on everyone’s lips</a>. The people who were told it was disrespectful and wrong to even use the word “robodebt”.</p>
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<h2>Change comes from the outside</h2>
<p>Australians carry as many ideas about their government as the politicians who run it. Robodebt stands as a warning against rose-tinted visions of the rule of law, or any idea our institutions are inherently self-correcting. </p>
<p>The politicians have taken this report into their world. We must always remember the spaces it actually comes from. How social security recipients found the power to make this all happen. Commissioner Holmes has named that as the path to real change.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-robodebts-use-of-income-averaging-lacked-basic-common-sense-201296">Why robodebt's use of 'income averaging' lacked basic common sense</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209216/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darren O'Donovan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Welfare advocates in this country can now forcefully critique any government program that trades on stigma or vulnerability and ignores real-life suffering.Darren O'Donovan, Senior Lecturer in Administrative Law, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2093182023-07-07T04:01:45Z2023-07-07T04:01:45ZRobodebt royal commissioner makes multiple referrals for prosecution, condemning scheme as ‘crude and cruel’<p>Robodebt Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes has referred multiple individuals involved with the illegal scheme for civil and criminal prosecutions and other actions. </p>
<p>But the names remain secret. They are contained in a sealed section of Holmes’ report, released Friday, with referrals variously being made to the Public Service Commission, the new National Anti-Corruption Commission, the Australian Federal Police, and professional bodies. </p>
<p>In a swingeing indictment of the scheme, the commission says: “Robodebt was a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals. In essence, people were traumatised on the off-chance they might owe money. It was a costly failure of public administration, in both human and economic terms.”</p>
<p>The commissioner has not made public the names of those in the secret section so as not to prejudice future actions. </p>
<p>Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told a news conference he did not have the sealed section, but the head of his department, Glyn Davis, did. </p>
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<p>Robodebt, designed to raise maximum revenue, used income averaging to strike debts to recover money from welfare payments. It unlawfully raised $1.76 billion from hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients, but many of the calculated debts were wrong, and after the illegality of the scheme was exposed the former government had to announce it would repay the money. </p>
<p>Former Liberal ministers come in for trenchant criticism. </p>
<p>Scott Morrison, who as social services minister was an initiator of the scheme, “allowed Cabinet to be misled,” the report says. </p>
<p>“He took the proposal to cabinet without necessary information as to what it actually entailed and without the caveat that it required legislative and policy change,” it says.</p>
<p>“He failed to meet his ministerial responsibility to ensure that Cabinet was properly informed about what the proposal actually entailed and to ensure that it was lawful.” </p>
<p>Morrison said in a statement later: “I reject completely each of the findings which are critical of my involvement in authorising the scheme and are adverse to me. They are wrong, unsubstantiated and contradicted by clear documentary evidence presented to the Commission.”</p>
<p>In a news conference after the report’s release, Albanese said Morrison’s defence of the scheme was, in the wording of the report, based on a “falsehood”. </p>
<p>The report says of the former minister for government services, Stuart Robert, who argued he was obliged to defend the scheme despite his doubts about it: “It can be accepted that the principles of Cabinet solidarity required Mr Robert to publicly support Cabinet decisions, whether he agreed with them or not”. </p>
<p>“But Mr Robert was not expounding any legal position, and he was going well beyond supporting government policy. He was making statements of fact as to the accuracy of debts, citing statistics which he knew could not be right.</p>
<p>"Nothing compels ministers to knowingly make false statements, or statements which they have good reason to suspect are untrue, in the course of publicly supporting any decision or program,” the report says.</p>
<p>The Guardian has reported Robert saying: “I have NOT received a notice of inclusion in the ‘sealed section’ and I understand they have all gone out”.</p>
<p>The commissioner says of former human services minister Alan Tudge that his “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.</p>
<p>"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.”</p>
<p>In a Friday statement Tudge said: “I strongly reject the Commission’s comments of the way I used the media and that I had abused my power in doing so. At no stage did I seek to engage in a media strategy that would discourage legitimate criticism of the Scheme.” He said he had not received notification that he was one of those referred in the sealed section of the report. </p>
<p>The report is highly critical of the then-head of the human services department, Kathryn Campbell, finding she stayed silent about the misleading effect of the income averaging proposal, and the advice it needed legislative change, “knowing that [social services minister] Mr Morrison wanted to pursue the proposal and that the government could not achieve the savings which the [scheme] promised without income averaging”.</p>
<p>In her preface to the report, the commissioner says: “It is remarkable how little interest there seems to have been in ensuring the Scheme’s legality, how rushed its implementation was, how little thought was given to how it would affect welfare recipients and the lengths to which public servants were prepared to go to oblige ministers on a quest for savings. </p>
<p>"Truly dismaying was the revelation of dishonesty and collusion to prevent the Scheme’s lack of legal foundation coming to light. </p>
<p>"Equally disheartening was the ineffectiveness of what one might consider institutional checks and balances – the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s Office, the Office of Legal Services Coordination, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal – in presenting any hindrance to the Scheme’s continuance.” </p>
<p>She says the sealed section “in part is intended as a means of holding individuals to account, in order to reinforce the importance of public service officers acting with integrity. </p>
<p>"But as to how effective any recommended change can be, I want to make two points. </p>
<p>"First, whether a public service can be developed with sufficient robustness to ensure that something of the like of the Robodebt scheme could not occur again will depend on the will of the government of the day, because culture is set from the top down. </p>
<p>"Second, politicians need to lead a change in social attitudes to people receiving welfare payments.</p>
<p>"The evidence before the Commission was that fraud in the welfare system was miniscule, but that is not the impression one would get from what ministers responsible for social security payments have said over the years. </p>
<p>"Anti-welfare rhetoric is easy populism, useful for campaign purposes. It is not recent, nor is it confined to one side of politics.”</p>
<p>“Largely, those attitudes are set by politicians, who need to abandon for good (in every sense) the narrative of taxpayer versus welfare recipient.”</p>
<p>The Minister for Government Services, Bill Shorten, who pursued the Robodebt issue in opposition, said the report showed “the previous government and senior public servants gaslighted the nation and its citizens for four and a half years. They betrayed the trust of the nation and its citizens for four and a half years with an unlawful scheme which the Federal Court has called the worst chapter of public administration.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209318/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a swingeing indictment of the scheme, the commission says: “Robodebt was a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals.”Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2091312023-07-07T03:58:23Z2023-07-07T03:58:23ZThe rise of #Robodebt: how Twitter activists pushed a government scandal from hashtags to a royal commission<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536216/original/file-20230707-30-26rfz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=46%2C0%2C5184%2C3453&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robin Worrall / Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The royal commission into <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/feb/06/government-warned-robodebt-scheme-unlawful-but-wont-say-when">the unlawful</a> robodebt scheme has <a href="https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/report">delivered its findings</a>. </p>
<p>On the final day of public hearings, Commissioner Catherine Holmes highlighted the crucial role of citizen journalists and activists on Twitter. She described the mainstream media reporting as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/13/robodebt-inquiry-commissioner-praises-committed-coverage-by-guardian-australia">patchy</a>”, and noted the “remarkably useful and important public service” provided by tweeters covering the scandal from its emergence to the royal commission’s final hearings. </p>
<p>We have been monitoring this Twitter activity closely since 2016. While the nation digests the commissioner’s findings, it’s worth reviewing how a small but committed group of Twitter users tracked the faulty robodebt scheme and helped generate the pressure for a royal commission.</p>
<p>As Twitter declines under Elon Musk’s ownership, the #Robodebt saga is a useful reminder of the platform’s potential for social good.</p>
<h2>The beginnings</h2>
<p>Around July 2016, after a small pilot program, Centrelink deployed a data-matching algorithm to compare its own datasets against the data held by the Australian Tax Office, to find over-payments to welfare recipients. The algorithm was faulty and unlawful, resulting in the automatic issuing of thousands of incorrect debt letters, some demanding four- and five-figure sums of money. </p>
<p>Vulnerable people reported stories of mental and financial hardship, of long Centrelink call centre queues, and of deep confusion about these debt notices. The Department of Human Services released <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/27/centrelink-recipients-data-released-by-department-to-counter-public-criticism">private information</a> about the few who dared to speak publicly. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/amateurish-rushed-and-disastrous-royal-commission-exposes-robodebt-as-ethically-indefensible-policy-targeting-vulnerable-people-201165">'Amateurish, rushed and disastrous': royal commission exposes robodebt as ethically indefensible policy targeting vulnerable people</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But there was no framework for collating the accounts of robodebt victims. The very term “robodebt” hadn’t yet been coined. </p>
<p>The task of documenting the flaws, failures and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/2030-people-have-died-after-receiving-centrelink-Robodebt-notice/10821272">fatal consequences</a> largely fell to activists who initiated a Twitter campaign under the #NotMyDebt hashtag. In late 2016, they also introduced the “robodebt” moniker, which eventually became the official title of the royal commission. </p>
<p>Almost seven years later, we can document the role of activists like <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/who-is-the-person-behind-the-handle-asher-wolf-20230425-p5d31z.html">Asher Wolf</a> and their Twitter network in highlighting robodebt’s faults.</p>
<h2>The evolution</h2>
<p>The robodebt campaign began on Boxing Day 2016, as the first debt notices came to light and #NotMyDebt first trended on Twitter. Over the months to May 2017, a small group of digital activists dedicated their time to tweeting about the issue, setting up the <a href="https://www.notmydebt.com.au/">Not My Debt</a> website, and curating stories, evidence and information. </p>
<p>About 100 Twitter accounts initially produced around 50% of the posts, garnering engagement from some 10,000 others. Much of this early activity was dominated by the #NotMyDebt hashtag, but in 2017 #Robodebt gradually took over. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535974/original/file-20230706-29-5qwt6j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Top hashtags over time" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535974/original/file-20230706-29-5qwt6j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535974/original/file-20230706-29-5qwt6j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535974/original/file-20230706-29-5qwt6j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535974/original/file-20230706-29-5qwt6j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535974/original/file-20230706-29-5qwt6j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535974/original/file-20230706-29-5qwt6j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535974/original/file-20230706-29-5qwt6j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Twitter hashtags tell the story of how the robodebt campaign became entwined with party politics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By late 2018, #Robodebt was well established – and overlapped considerably with Australia’s <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/90463/">perennial hashtag</a> for political discussion, #auspol. Some prominent Labor politicians (Bill Shorten, Anthony Albanese, Mark Dreyfus) also became active during this early timeframe.</p>
<p>This shows how robodebt gradually became a major political – rather than merely administrative – issue, and was increasingly linked with the Liberal/National Coalition government. The first calls for a royal commission to investigate the scheme also appeared during this time. </p>
<p>These early activists were central to the early campaign, but also assumed a critical role again as the royal commission commenced in August 2022. Since then, central members of this group – and other core participants who emerged subsequently – have initiated some 40% of all robodebt-related tweets. </p>
<p>From early 2019, particularly after Labor’s loss in the May 2019 election, the composition of the community discussing robodebt changed notably. A second wave of accounts with a strongly pro-Labor stance, including prominent Labor politicians, joined the online campaign. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535975/original/file-20230706-27-d929qi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Posts by participant groups" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535975/original/file-20230706-27-d929qi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535975/original/file-20230706-27-d929qi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535975/original/file-20230706-27-d929qi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535975/original/file-20230706-27-d929qi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535975/original/file-20230706-27-d929qi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535975/original/file-20230706-27-d929qi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535975/original/file-20230706-27-d929qi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Three distinct groups of activists participated in the robodebt campaign as it gathered momentum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Highlighting robodebt as a failure of the Coalition government, they mobilised their Twitter networks and became increasingly active before the 2022 election. This advocacy continued through to the establishment of the royal commission. </p>
<p>A third group of “new” activists became more active in the final years of the Morrison government. They argued robodebt indicated not only a failure of Centrelink, but of the previous government’s policies. This reflected an overall hardening of anti-Coalition sentiment.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535694/original/file-20230705-15-dzlb2v.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535694/original/file-20230705-15-dzlb2v.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535694/original/file-20230705-15-dzlb2v.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535694/original/file-20230705-15-dzlb2v.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535694/original/file-20230705-15-dzlb2v.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535694/original/file-20230705-15-dzlb2v.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535694/original/file-20230705-15-dzlb2v.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The network of participant groups changed markedly over time. The first #NotMyDebt wave is shown in blue, second pro-Labor wave in red, and the third wave in green.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The future</h2>
<p>The robodebt scheme was illegal, and its continuation despite legal advice was a scandal. Its detrimental impact on thousands of lives has been documented by the royal commission’s hearings. </p>
<p>But much of what we now know about the scheme is thanks to pressure substantially maintained by the initially small number of activists who curated information about the scheme, and popularised the name by which it is now known. As Commissioner Holmes has acknowledged, Australians have benefited from the unpaid public service of these activists.</p>
<p>But what about the next such scandal? Under Musk’s chaotic leadership, Twitter is losing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/13/twitter-lose-users-elon-musk-takeover-hate-speech">its authentic user base</a>, being overrun by <a href="https://time.com/6232635/twitter-blue-fake-accounts-elon-musk/">trolls</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/11/twitter-fake-verified-accounts/">fake accounts</a>, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/twitters-sacking-of-content-moderators-will-backfire-experts-warn/a-63778330">blocking and shadow-banning</a> critical activists, dropping its <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-14/elon-musk-sacks-outsourced-twitter-moderators/101650146">moderation teams</a>, and facing <a href="https://waxy.org/2023/07/twitter-bug-causes-self-ddos-possibly-causing-elon-musks-emergency-blocks-and-rate-limits-its-amateur-hour/">technological decay</a>. </p>
<p>Where else will such activism go? None of the other major social media platforms provide the same opportunities for highly public engagement. Few bring together activists, experts, journalists and politicians in the same open space. </p>
<p>If mainstream media coverage is “patchy” and unreliable, if social media communities are under threat from platform owners and unchecked hordes of trolls, where will activists go now to speak truth to power?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209131/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Axel Bruns receives funding from the Australian Research Council as an Australian Laureate Fellow and a Chief Investigator in the Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society,</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ehsan Dehghan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Twitter activists played a key role in the robodebt scandal, driving social pressure to end the unlawful welfare scheme.Ehsan Dehghan, Lecturer, Queensland University of TechnologyAxel Bruns, Professor, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2023372023-07-04T20:08:39Z2023-07-04T20:08:39Z‘The culmination of years of suffering’: what can we expect from the robodebt royal commission’s final report?<p>On Friday, the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme will submit its final report to the federal government, which is expected to release it to the public shortly thereafter.</p>
<p>The report will be the culmination of years of suffering and work by victims to hold their government to account. </p>
<p>So what can we expect?</p>
<h2>Conspiracy or ‘stuff up’?</h2>
<p>The headline questions the commission will adjudicate are confronting:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Did officials at one Commonwealth department deceive another when removing key legal and policy warnings from the cabinet submission that launched robodebt?</p></li>
<li><p>Even worse, did two departments collude to remove references to the unlawful method of averaging?</p></li>
<li><p>Did department officials mislead the Commonwealth ombudsman in its 2017 investigation?</p></li>
<li><p>Why was damning legal advice left unactioned by officials?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The whistleblowing of true public servants like former Centrelink employee <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/03/you-are-being-misled-the-centrelink-worker-who-tried-to-stop-robodebt-as-it-started">Colleen Taylor</a> means the report’s release will not be a dark day for the whole public service.</p>
<p>It will, rather, collapse the established worldview of its senior executive class. A worldview that denies Australians the facts about their government and fobs off independent oversight.</p>
<p>Adverse findings against individuals will not be lightly reached. Hearings, however viral they go, only explore possibilities, but reports make careful findings. Shockingly poor record creation practices in Commonwealth agencies may limit the character of what can be found.</p>
<p>If it recommends further investigation into individuals’ conduct, the report’s release will be tailored to avoid prejudicing any future proceedings.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1635045723220656129"}"></div></p>
<h2>Standards in political life</h2>
<p>Coverage surged for politicians’ appearances at the commission, with many holding out for “who knew what when” moments. In giving evidence, politicians often relied on public servants’ failure to deliver warnings at key moments in the scheme. Ministers who oversaw robodebt consistently used this lack of frank advice to defend their failure to stop it.</p>
<p>The final report will spend time reacquainting our political class with basic expectations of responsible government and standards in public life.</p>
<p>Our public representatives emerged as utterly insubstantial figures, consumed by marketing political images like “welfare cop” and party political combat. They displayed a striking lack of curiosity towards key questions. Adverse information flowed around, rather than through them.</p>
<p>The final report will reflect on standards in our public life and the ethical lows that are plumbed for party political ends: for example, the <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2023/02/04/fw-urgent-tudge-leaked-personal-data-cow-welfare-critics">leaking of private information</a> by the office of then-Human Services Minister Alan Tudge to “correct the record” and discourage people speaking out.</p>
<p>It will tackle <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-02/qld-robodebt-scheme-government-royal-commission-stuart-robert/102034796">warped ideas</a> of ministerial responsibility and cabinet solidarity that see facts or views suppressed in the name of defending a position.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-robodebt-scheme-failed-tests-of-lawfulness-impartiality-integrity-and-trust-193832">The Robodebt scheme failed tests of lawfulness, impartiality, integrity and trust</a>
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</em>
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<hr>
<p>This commission was fiercely independent, despite <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/25/witch-hunt-peter-dutton-decries-morrisons-ministries-inquiry-and-robodebt-royal-commission">misdirected efforts</a> by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to portray it as a “witchhunt”.</p>
<p>It painstakingly examined the history of unlawful income averaging (which was used to calculate robodebts), setting out <a href="https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/dutton-misleads-with-shorten-robodebt-claim/">the fundamental differences</a> in investigation approaches over time. It found <a href="https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/exhibit/Exhibit%208737%20-%20CTH.9999.0001.0041_R%20-%20%5BFinal%5D%20Services%20Australia%20-%20Updated%20Response%20to%20NTG-0014%20%5B27%20October%202022%5D%20%5BCLEAN%5D.pdf">2010 documents</a> describing the use of averaging as a last resort to close files where evidence was not available.</p>
<p>It uncovered the <a href="https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/exhibit/Exhibit%204-6548%20-%20CTH.4000.0068.4975%20-%20310120%20Remediation%20user%20stories_1.pdf">corners cut</a> in remediation, as debts such as these were never paid back. These are the invisible spaces no political slogans ever address, where unapproved practices take root against people who can’t argue back.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1636218449230807040"}"></div></p>
<h2>Access to justice at the frontline</h2>
<p>The governance dynamics that sustained robodebt are not limited to a certain time or place. Consider <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/AATA//2023/1286.html">the unlawfully crude use</a> of bank statements by Services Australia when reprocessing robodebts, which was called out by an appeals tribunal in May. </p>
<p>Our social security system is <a href="https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/AATA/2023/719.html">still failing</a> to provide people with disability adequate reasons for life-changing pension decisions.</p>
<p>Robodebt used <a href="https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/exhibit-4-7628-cth100000089520-attachment-d-dhs-population-insights">behavioural economics approaches</a> to engineer feelings of shame and prevent legal consciousness from forming.</p>
<p>It gamed our administrative law system to overwrite or rapture the debts of those who did complain, while nothing changed on the frontline.</p>
<p>It imposed an administrative burden on those unable to carry it, confident they would triage the trauma and cop the debt.</p>
<p>We must have legal reform to oblige Centrelink to implement tribunal standards of decision-making where it matters: right at the frontline.</p>
<h2>Building a culture of accountability</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.themandarin.com.au/217248-gordon-de-brouwer-apologises-for-robodebt-flags-ses-crackdown/">early signs</a> are that Australian Public Service leaders are pursuing a robodebt response that centres on non-binding, internal cultural reforms put forward by themselves.</p>
<p>When it comes to careerism or the pursuit of power, history tells us human nature will not be changed by refreshed seminars on ethics. You need to change the underlying relationships of power and accountability.</p>
<p>Change is always hard. But we know what stops it. Consider a freedom of information appeal handed down in the last week of the royal commission. </p>
<p>Six long years ago, transparency advocate Justin Warren sought the weekly manager reports on robodebt’s disastrous launch. Services Australia refused to hand them over. About 2,220 days later, the information commissioner (<a href="https://www.themandarin.com.au/213913-foi-commissioner-resigns-says-change-needed-to-address-timeliness-of-reviews/">who resigned</a> in protest recently) <a href="https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/AICmr/2023/13.html">had to order</a> their release. He found the basis Services Australia thought they could even try denying the documents was “not readily apparent”. </p>
<p>Beware those who offer “cultural” fixes and non-binding reassurances to self-correct. The Albanese government should not fall back on the very institutions who never fully investigated or acted until the political fluke of an exceptional royal commission.</p>
<p>Future scandals will be prevented by the things that stopped robodebt: access to facts, firm legal rights and enforceable remedies for injustice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202337/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darren O'Donovan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Beware those who offer ‘cultural’ fixes and non-binding reassurances. The government shouldn’t fall back on the very institutions that never fully acted until a royal commission.Darren O'Donovan, Senior Lecturer in Administrative Law, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2047362023-06-26T02:42:20Z2023-06-26T02:42:20Z‘Madness stripped away the niceties’: Tara Calaby imagines herself into a 19th-century asylum<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530851/original/file-20230608-21-5zn4i2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=32%2C124%2C2647%2C2177&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">claudia soraya m w sirVs unsplash</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Kew Asylum, when it opened in 1872, was the larger of two public institutions in wider Melbourne that housed people with mental illness. <a href="https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00797b.htm">Grand and imposing</a>, it opened a few years after the overcrowded Yarra Bend Asylum. </p>
<p>A new historical novel, set at Kew Asylum in 1890s Melbourne, prises open this world – inviting contemporary readers into the taboo subjects of women’s mental breakdown and institutional confinement, through a same-sex romantic love story. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: House of Longing – Tara Calaby (Text Publishing)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>As a researcher of psychiatric institutions, I’ve often wondered about the potential and power of fiction to bring this hidden history of hospitalisation to life. People in the historical record have often struck me as remarkable, full of personality. </p>
<p>We can hear their words – scribbled in the margins of the clinical case notes, or in patient and family letters – as if they were spoken aloud. Far from being invisible or forgotten, decades of historical research using patient records has brought these experiences to light, but mostly inside academic studies.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A new novel set at Kew Asylum prises open the hidden world of women’s mental breakdown and confinement in 1890s Melbourne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Charles Rudd/State Library of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tara Calaby, whose novel is based on research, draws on these voices and writes in between the gaps, or at the interstices, of historical evidence. Her imagination fleshes out experiences that are hard for historians to access; she enters the interior lives of people from the past.</p>
<p>Her protagonist, Charlotte, becomes a cipher for the reader.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Charlotte had once read a newspaper report that had compared madwomen to wild animals. She knew, now, that lunatics were no more bestial than the men and women who gathered in Melbourne tea rooms to gossip and be seen. Madness stripped away the niceties, that was all: the base drives of fear and hunger and wrath and lust were simply more visible here.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/girl-interrupted-interrogates-how-women-are-mad-when-they-refuse-to-conform-30-years-on-this-memoir-is-still-important-199211">Girl, Interrupted interrogates how women are 'mad' when they refuse to conform – 30 years on, this memoir is still important</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Women’s secrets</h2>
<p>Charlotte Ross lives with her father George. Together they supply Melbourne’s professional middle class and elites with stationery: inks, paper, pens and ledgers. George is a widower who has grown a respectable and specialist business that allows Charlotte to maintain her role as an unmarried daughter in gainful employment, thus encountering people and the public world through the shop. The book opens with reference to the “noise and bustle of Elizabeth Street”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While she possibly considers herself “plain” when judged alongside Melbourne’s society women and their fashionable dresses, Charlotte is a strong character with considerable presence. Her capacity for deep thought and ability to attune to the emotional states of other people are both strengths and weaknesses as the events of her life unfold; some tragic, others with vibrant potential and possibility.</p>
<p>When Charlotte encounters Flora Dalton, a doctor’s daughter, an instant attraction sparks something in her. The book’s title, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/house-of-longing">House of Longing</a>, refers to a hidden desire both women slowly begin to acknowledge openly – but also to the many lives and desires of the women Charlotte later meets in the psychiatric institution.</p>
<p>Nineteenth-century Melbourne, with its much-rehearsed preoccupations with class, gender and social reputation, proves the perfect setting for Calaby to explore women’s secret emotional and sexual experiences in a world constrained by gender conventions. Calaby centres questions of women’s independence from men in this society.</p>
<p>Alert to the narrative of psychiatric illness and the language used in this book, I was interested in the way Charlotte and Flora use the word “mad” early in their friendship. As two women who possess a keen and wry sense of the world around them, they initially make light of the notion of losing reason, of the way “losing one’s senses” might be a “a freedom”.</p>
<p>Charlotte and Flora experience freedom by spending time together dressed as young men, camping in the bush east of Melbourne.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As soon as they thought it safe to do so, Charlotte and Flora ventured into the trees – deep enough to ensure privacy but not so far from the road as to risk getting lost – and exchanged their dresses for shirts and trousers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At first Charlotte finds the trousers “strangely confining compared to skirts” but later, when she changes back into her dress, she finds that clothing newly “constraining”, suggesting a gentle shift in her identity has taken place.</p>
<p>Here, too, Calaby seems to draw on the historical record: it wasn’t unheard of for women to escape their stifling lives by dressing as men in the 1890s. Accounts of <a href="https://theconversation.com/trans-people-arent-new-and-neither-is-their-oppression-a-history-of-gender-crossing-in-19th-century-australia-201663">women “passing” as men in the colonial era</a> were reported in newspapers and documented in medical and institutional records, as recorded by historians <a href="https://sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/products/78679">Lucy Chesser</a>, <a href="https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00848b.htm">Ruth Ford</a> and <a href="https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/provenance-journal/provenance-2021/policing-gender-nonconformity-victoria-1900">Robin Eames</a>.</p>
<p>Charlotte and Flora’s time in the bush gifts them a sense of physical freedom, where they can express bodily difference and sexual desire away from the scrutiny of men. They are literally clothed as gender-neutral, unfettered by the terrible stiffness of women’s dress fabrics and cuts. Flora neither resembles a “boy” nor a “woman”, but is “vulnerable, waiflike” in this experiment with her gender.</p>
<p>On her return to the city, Charlotte experiences a personal tragedy – and chooses a more dramatic escape from her oppressive clothing, stifling social expectations and somewhat lonely life as a solo woman. </p>
<p>Yet instead of liberation, she finds herself in an institutional setting purposefully designed to constrain, confine and sequester women: the lunatic asylum at Kew. Here, the novel’s action begins to revolve around the worlds of women and their keepers.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/trans-people-arent-new-and-neither-is-their-oppression-a-history-of-gender-crossing-in-19th-century-australia-201663">Trans people aren’t new, and neither is their oppression: a history of gender crossing in 19th-century Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Darkest moments and recovery</h2>
<p>In the late 19th century, police were the “first responders” to trauma and mental distress, responsible for taking individuals to the institutions. Physicians were then required to certify a person as needing hospitalisation. Charlotte is arrested by police, then hospitalised, where she is observed by doctors.</p>
<p>Readers less well-acquainted than I am with the processes of 19th-century asylum admissions will likely be horrified by Charlotte’s experience: stripped of clothing, talked about (rather than to); made subject to the medical men.
Notes are taken about her body, clothes, deportment and speech. She is noted as “stubborn”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women patients exercising at Kew Asylum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Library, London https://wellcomecollection.org/search/works</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Charlotte becomes increasingly aware of the dynamics of the wards and the personalities of doctors and attendant nursing staff. She forms friendships and alliances with other women who represent the range of “types” of patients in the period: the elderly and feeble women; the very young and vulnerable; the tough and scrappy women like Mary, whose life outside was marked by policing and arrests, rape and violence, and ultimately survival; young Eliza, whose baby has died; and the immigrant women like Inge, whose time in the institution was possibly safer for her than her home and marriage.</p>
<p>Calaby describes the asylum’s daily routine, such as menus, the gendered work regime for patients, and the hopeful intercession of visitors and advocates. Her characters are well-drawn portraits of women inmates, but also of the nuances in their care. </p>
<p>Some doctors were sympathetic figures who worked for the recovery of patients. Some nursing staff physically harmed patients. In <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/28344">Attending the Mad</a>, an important, well-regarded history of labour in the asylum, Lee-Ann Monk examines another side of the silenced experiences of both the “mad” and those who worked to manage and care for the confined. Miss Simmons, a controlling nurse who handles the women roughly, reflects the various kind and mean attendant identities in the historical record. The novel’s inmates experience her “care” as “punishment”. </p>
<p>Simmons slaps patients, and makes one young patient, Eliza, empty the “domestics” each morning: “It shouldn’t be her duty, but Simmons says it’s a punishment. For what, I don’t know. Eliza does everything she’s told to”, Inge tells Charlotte.</p>
<p>As it evolved, psychiatric practice became more reliant on the language of diagnosis. Charlotte – a witness to this professionalisation of mental health treatment – notices the way “classes” of patient are given roles or privileges, or deprived, within the institution.</p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230248649">My own research</a> has examined the blurred line between the asylum, families and the outside world. Patients could leave on trial, as Charlotte is able to do. “Recovery” was possible, though often assessed through the performance of appropriate gendered behaviour such as letter-writing, tasks such as needlework, mixing at social events like the asylum ball, or attending church services. All these practices formed part of the “moral therapy” of the day.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-catherine-hay-thomson-the-australian-undercover-journalist-who-went-inside-asylums-and-hospitals-129352">Hidden women of history: Catherine Hay Thomson, the Australian undercover journalist who went inside asylums and hospitals</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Constraint and resistance</h2>
<p>From the start of the book, where Charlotte is forcibly fed through a tube, we understand that submission to the institution is not a choice. She is pinned down by two female attendants and a rubber tube is forced through her nostril by a doctor:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She tried to struggle, but the women held her tightly: she could move only her head. […] this was an assault she never could have imagined. Her sinuses stung, her eyes watered; it felt like the tube must surely pass into her brain.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Force feeding.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Inquiries into <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5912785">Kew Asylum</a> in 1876 and the <a href="https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/papers/govpub/VPARL1886No15Pi-clxxii.pdf">Royal Commission</a> into asylums in Victoria in the late 1880s both took evidence from many people, including inmates. </p>
<p>We have access to their voices of protest and reflection, and to their understanding of the violent treatment they sometimes received – as well as the carelessness that allowed accidents to happen, such as the novel’s horrific one in the asylum’s laundry, where a young inmate has her hand crushed in the mangle, leaving it “like a piece of butcher’s meat, misshapen and pulverised”. These voices of protest and complaint are reflected in Calaby’s novel, and also underscore the agency some women patients had in the space of the official inquiry.</p>
<p>In the 1876 Kew Inquiry, <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Reading_madness/4EkyGQAACAAJ?hl=en&bshm=nce/1">I found</a> the recorded words of women to be loud, full of purpose, and self aware. One patient, Margaret Henderson, gave formal evidence about being treated with “plunge baths” by attendants who held her under water:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I may have been dong something objectionable to them before I would be put into a bath, and I would look to be punished by it […] they said it was a thing belonging to the asylum, and I was to submit to it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Patients emerged in the inquiry as powerful advocates for others who were weaker than themselves, just as we see in Calaby’s novel. Laid bare in the evidence of investigations carried out about the state of asylums during the 19th century, “madness” or mental breakdown was exposed as complex, troubling and unknowable. But the inquiry also reflected a changing understanding of mental illness and its treatment, leading to greater scrutiny of medical men, asylum practices and the quality of care provided.</p>
<p>Kew Asylum and its population was a microcosm of the wider world of deprivation, control, violence, poverty and class that shaped the colonial world.</p>
<p>House of Longing examines the well-documented need for support for inmates from outside the asylum’s walls to achieve “recovery” and release. It also hints at the stumbling efforts of the medical fraternity to understand how to care for the mentally ill, who were women and men from all walks of life. </p>
<p>And it’s a hopeful story about love and courage – which suggests alternative futures for women seeking independence from marriage and social norms.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204736/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catharine Coleborne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tara Calaby’s novel peeps into the interior lives of women in a 19th-century asylum and uses her historical imagination to generate new knowledge.Catharine Coleborne, Professor of History, School Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2021012023-03-30T20:20:19Z2023-03-30T20:20:19ZThe Millionaires’ Factory lays bare the good and bad about Australia’s millionaire manufacturer – Macquarie bank<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516272/original/file-20230320-22-2zpyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516272/original/file-20230320-22-2zpyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516272/original/file-20230320-22-2zpyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516272/original/file-20230320-22-2zpyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516272/original/file-20230320-22-2zpyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516272/original/file-20230320-22-2zpyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516272/original/file-20230320-22-2zpyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516272/original/file-20230320-22-2zpyob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Joyce-Moullakis-and-Chris-Wright-Millionaires'-Factory-9781761067150/">Allen & Unwin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Joyce-Moullakis-and-Chris-Wright-Millionaires'-Factory-9781761067150/">The Millionaires’ Factory</a>, subtitled “the inside story of how Macquarie Bank became a global giant” by financial journalists Joyce Moullakis and Chris Wright is an impressive, informative book that I enjoyed reading. </p>
<p>As well as providing insights into the Australian financial giant’s evolution, organisation, scope and success, it says a lot about Australia’s financial history. </p>
<p>The large number of Macquarie alumni (the book suggests around 100,000) and current staff (more than 18,000 globally in 2022) will provide a ready market.</p>
<p>But for others, despite the many interesting character sketches and well-written “travelogue” through Macquarie’s exploits, the book may be somewhat heavy going – for one main reason. </p>
<p>Macquarie is a mammoth organisation that has been involved in a huge number of complex financial activities across the international stage. </p>
<p>Macquarie’s 2022 <a href="https://www.macquarie.com/au/en/investors/reports/full-year-2022.html">annual report</a> says it operates across 33 markets in </p>
<ul>
<li><p>asset management</p></li>
<li><p>retail and business banking</p></li>
<li><p>wealth management</p></li>
<li><p>leasing and asset financing</p></li>
<li><p>market access</p></li>
<li><p>commodity trading</p></li>
<li><p>renewables development</p></li>
<li><p>specialist advice</p></li>
<li><p>access to capital, and</p></li>
<li><p>principal investment.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Outlines of key transactions alone, necessarily, form a large part of the book. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, most need virtually an entire book each to explain and, in any event, require a high level of financial expertise to properly understand.</p>
<p>Those who are not finance experts can skip over the specific deals and will still find much value in (at least) two parts of the book. </p>
<p>One is the information on the management and governance of the organisation, including the adaptability of its divisional structure to opportunities and challenges.</p>
<p>Macquarie has consistently shown a willingness to expand into new (generally “adjacent”) activities suggested by staff (rather than from the top) under a strict risk-control framework. </p>
<p>A second (related) element is its emphasis on the quality of its staff and its dependence on its staff to investigate, generate and develop new activities.</p>
<h2>Turning staff into millionaires</h2>
<p>The remuneration arrangements bring the promise of rich personal rewards if successful, while failure in a new activity that has received the go-ahead under strict risk controls is not a career-limiting outcome.</p>
<p>Some readers may find strange the continued recitation of names and characteristics of key Macquarie personnel – but it is the people involved who have made Macquarie what it is today. As the saying goes, in financial institutions the main assets walk out the door every night (or early morning in many cases).</p>
<p>One thing the book does not do is provide any tables or graphs showing the enormous growth of Macquarie since its creation out of Hill Samuel in 1985, its integral role in Australia’s financial system and its successful overseas expansion. </p>
<p>Of course, given the scope of Macquarie’s activities, relevant metrics for comparison purposes are not easy to identify. For example, Macquarie Bank (the “commercial banking” part of the group) is small compared to the four major banks, with resident deposits about one-third of the smallest of the big four, ANZ. </p>
<p>The Macquarie Group overall has about half the number of employees of ANZ, but its overall personnel expenses in 2022 were around 15% higher than the ANZ (reflecting the words “millionaires’ factory” used in the book’s title).</p>
<h2>Pushing boundaries</h2>
<p>The authors hint at, but do not address, several questions posed by Macquarie Group’s critics.</p>
<p>First, to what extent have Macquarie’s profits come from pushing the boundaries of tax arbitrage (such as moving profits from high-tax locations to low-tax locations and moving losses in the other direction), such that its resulting profit isn’t a reward for adding social value but is instead generated at the expense of taxpayers? </p>
<p>There are always loopholes in tax law due to imperfect drafting, or grey areas that fall between what is clearly within or outside of the law. The opportunity to exploit such loopholes is greater when several jurisdictions are involved, and the book refers to several, such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-robbery-of-the-century-the-cum-ex-trading-scandal-and-why-it-matters-124417">“cum-ex” dividend arbitrage</a>. There are others.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-robbery-of-the-century-the-cum-ex-trading-scandal-124417">The robbery of the century: the cum-ex trading scandal</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The profit motive underpinning Macquarie and its remuneration structure naturally lead towards attempts to exploit such opportunities even if the private gains are purely at the expense of government tax revenue and not involving any (or much) creation of social value. </p>
<p>The authors quote former Treasurer Peter Costello saying “they engineered tax breaks to within an inch of their lives”, which often led to changes to tax laws to prevent such activities. How much this is ethical behaviour is a matter of opinion!</p>
<h2>Heavily charging customers</h2>
<p>The second question is: in constructing value-adding deals with clients and customers, how much of the net benefit has accrued to Macquarie, and how much to its customers? </p>
<p>As well as the nickname of “Millionaires’ Factory”, Macquarie has also been referred to as the “fee factory”. </p>
<p>For example, in its now-abandoned infrastructure trust structures, various parts of Macquarie would obtain fees: when purchasing assets for the trust (and “clipping the ticket” via a profit on the sale price into the trust), fees from managing the trust, commissions from selling units in the trust to investors, etc.</p>
<p>Macquarie’s position as an innovative creator of financial products and structures has often given it a first-mover advantage, such that with no competing supplier, Macquarie has been able to extract a major part of the value created. </p>
<p>Obviously, some value for the client needs to be provided, and concerns that a perceived unfair distribution of benefits would make it hard to repeat the exercise limit the amount of value extraction possible. But what is “fair” is a matter of opinion!</p>
<h2>Exploiting the poorly informed</h2>
<p>The third question is: to what extent did Macquarie benefit from exploiting poorly informed (wholesale and retail) consumers and users of its financial products – as the <a href="https://www.royalcommission.gov.au/banking">Hayne Royal Commission</a> found to be the case for the four major banks and others? </p>
<p>Macquarie escaped from the Royal Commission with its image barely tarnished compared to the big four. One reason was that its then-chief executive, Nicholas Moore, was able to point to the remediation activities it had put in place prior to the commission once it had recognised the problems. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518370/original/file-20230330-27-ihue68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518370/original/file-20230330-27-ihue68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518370/original/file-20230330-27-ihue68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518370/original/file-20230330-27-ihue68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518370/original/file-20230330-27-ihue68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518370/original/file-20230330-27-ihue68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518370/original/file-20230330-27-ihue68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518370/original/file-20230330-27-ihue68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Macquarie Group chief Nicholas Moore leaving the Hayne Royal Commission in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joel Carrett/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But Macquarie was also lucky in that the Royal Commission’s terms of reference only required it to look back as far as the global financial crisis. Had it been required to look back further, its findings might have been different.</p>
<p>Prior to the financial crisis, Macquarie (and other banks) created highly financially engineered, structured products and marketed them to retail (and other) investors. Even financially literate investors could not have possibly understood the risks or value of the products they were sold.</p>
<p>A vast majority of these products would not have met current <a href="https://asic.gov.au/regulatory-resources/financial-services/design-and-distribution-obligations-significant-dealing-notification-requirements/">design and distribution obligation requirements</a> aimed at protecting consumers. </p>
<p>This was typical of the time and Macquarie was not particularly different to other purveyors of such products. But whether, in the absence of effective regulation, Macquarie would revert to pushing these boundaries is a matter of opinion!</p>
<h2>An Australian success nevertheless</h2>
<p>There is no question that Macquarie is an Australian success story. </p>
<p>Its 2022 annual report indicates that A$100 invested in its shares at the time of its stock exchange listing in 1996 would have grown to $10,000 in 2022. </p>
<p>More importantly, it has provided or enabled funding for many investment projects of its customers, which might not otherwise have gone ahead.</p>
<p>By taking an active role in the management and governance of large projects (such as toll roads and utilities), it has enabled more efficient operation of such projects than might have otherwise occurred. </p>
<p>It currently is near the forefront of financiers focusing on “green finance”, where activities generating social and environmental benefits can be consistent with profiting from a first-mover position.</p>
<p>There will, no doubt, remain many critics of Macquarie’s profit orientation and a resulting possible conflict with broader social goals. They would gain much from reading this book, both to find specific instances of that conflict, but also to see that profit-seeking is not always inconsistent with social goals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202101/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Davis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As an investment bank, commodities trader and operator of toll roads, Australia’s Macquarie Group has inserted itself into most of our lives. A new book outlines some of the questionable tactics that took it to the top.Kevin Davis, Emeritus Professor of Finance, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2012962023-03-16T03:51:02Z2023-03-16T03:51:02ZWhy robodebt’s use of ‘income averaging’ lacked basic common sense<p>The practice of “income averaging” to calculate debts in the robodebt scheme was completely flawed. This is what I confirmed in <a href="https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/professor-peter-whiteford-report-robodebt-royal-commission">my new report</a> conducted for the robodebt royal commission published last Friday, the final day of the commission’s public hearings.</p>
<p>This process effectively assumed many people receiving social security benefits had stable earnings throughout a whole year. </p>
<p>But this is unlikely to be accurate for the many people who don’t work standard <a href="https://theconversation.com/note-to-centrelink-australian-workers-lives-have-changed-70946">full-time hours</a>, and particularly for students, since the tax year and the academic year don’t coincide. </p>
<p>My report finds averaging of incomes is completely inconsistent with social security policies that have been developed by governments since the 1980s.</p>
<p>Since 1980, social security legislation has been amended more than 20 times to encourage recipients to take up part-time and casual work. These include the <a href="https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/working-credit">Working Credit</a> for people receiving unemployment and other payments, and a similar but more generous <a href="https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/income-bank">Income Bank</a> for students.</p>
<p>These measures are specifically designed to <a href="https://formerministers.dss.gov.au/189/australians-working-together/">encourage people to take up more work</a>, including part-time and irregular casual work, and keep more of their social security payments.</p>
<p>Robodebt’s lack of consistency with long-standing policies should have been obvious from the start. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1634075269140033536"}"></div></p>
<h2>What is income averaging?</h2>
<p>In the robodebt scheme, income averaging involved data-matching historic records of social security benefit payments with past income tax returns, identifying discrepancies between these records.</p>
<p>It reduced human investigation of the discrepancies. The automatic calculation of “overpayments” for many people was based on a simple calculation that averaged income over the financial year.</p>
<p>The “debts” were based on the difference between this averaged income and the income that people actually reported while they were receiving payments.</p>
<p>I wrote <a href="https://theconversation.com/note-to-centrelink-australian-workers-lives-have-changed-70946">an article</a> for The Conversation on this in 2017. At the time, I thought, Centrelink couldn’t possibly have done that. </p>
<p>Well, as the royal commission has found, that’s <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-20/robodebt-scheme-government-royal-commission-fraud-income/101998782">precisely what it was doing</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/note-to-centrelink-australian-workers-lives-have-changed-70946">Note to Centrelink: Australian workers' lives have changed</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A victim of robodebt, Deanna Amato, brought a <a href="https://www.legalaid.vic.gov.au/explainer-deanna-amatos-robo-debt-case">test case</a> to the Federal Court in 2019, which caused the government to admit robodebt was unlawful.</p>
<p>Amato also gave evidence at the <a href="https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/transcript-hearing-day-36-24-february-2023">royal commission in late February this year</a>. She described how it was obvious her debt was in error:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was averaged over the […] whole financial year. Study usually starts at the beginning of a calendar year. So I had been working full-time for the first six months of that year and then I had stopped working full-time to study. So it was really obvious that they had averaged out over the whole year rather than the six months I was actually only claiming Austudy for.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What I found</h2>
<p>It’s well known Australia has a high proportion of casual workers. </p>
<p>Because they’re employed on an “as needed” basis, their hours can vary substantially. Therefore, their income can too. </p>
<p>ABS data showed that in 2014 <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/characteristics-employment-australia">nearly 40%</a> of casual workers didn’t work the same hours each week. Also, around 53% had pay that varied from one pay period to another. These figures have been broadly stable since 2008.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/robodebt-was-a-fiasco-with-a-cost-we-have-yet-to-fully-appreciate-150169">Robodebt was a fiasco with a cost we have yet to fully appreciate</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>My report analyses new data provided by the Department of Social Services to the royal commission. It looks in detail at the circumstances of people who received social security payments between 2010-11 and 2018-19. These payments included Austudy, Newstart, Parenting Payment Partnered, Parenting Payment Single and Youth Allowance.</p>
<p>These payments accounted <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Centrelinkcompliance/Submissions">for around 91%</a> of the people subject to the reviews that identified discrepancies and potential “overpayments” between 2016 and 2019 under the different phases of robodebt. </p>
<p>For Newstart and Youth Allowance recipients – who accounted for <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Centrelinkcompliance/Submissions">75% of those affected by robodebt</a> – between 20% and 40% had earnings while receiving these benefits.</p>
<p>The share of people with income who had stable incomes over the course of the financial year was extremely low. In the Department of Social Services data, it ranged from less than 3% of people receiving youth payments, to around 5% of those receiving Newstart or Austudy, and 5%-10% of those receiving Parenting Payments. </p>
<h2>Share of people on social security payments with stable income over the course of each financial year, 2010-11 to 2018-19</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515377/original/file-20230315-24-i6ezz2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515377/original/file-20230315-24-i6ezz2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515377/original/file-20230315-24-i6ezz2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515377/original/file-20230315-24-i6ezz2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515377/original/file-20230315-24-i6ezz2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515377/original/file-20230315-24-i6ezz2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515377/original/file-20230315-24-i6ezz2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For most of these people with variable income, the variations were large. More than 90% had periods when their income was more than $100 per fortnight different from their average, and more than 80% had variations greater than $200 per fortnight.</p>
<p>Average earnings varied substantially for people receiving social security payments for only part of a financial year. Receiving social security benefits for many people is <a href="https://theconversation.com/our-research-shows-more-australians-receive-unemployment-payments-than-you-think-151289">a short-term and sometimes recurring experience</a>.</p>
<p>To take the example of Newstart, in 2015-16 there were around 783,000 people who received payments at the start of the financial year. About 500,000 people entered the payment system during the year, and 325,000 exited the system. So, in total, nearly 1.2 million people received Newstart payments at some point during the financial year. Flows into and out of the other social security payments were similar. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-robodebt-scheme-failed-tests-of-lawfulness-impartiality-integrity-and-trust-193832">The Robodebt scheme failed tests of lawfulness, impartiality, integrity and trust</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>For the unemployed and students, most people received payments for only part of the year. Almost nobody who received income had completely stable income over the robodebt period. What’s more, significant numbers of people who received social security payments were on such payments for only part of any financial year.</p>
<p>It’s completely inaccurate to assume that income over the course of a financial year can be averaged to produce an accurate figure for the actual patterns of people’s earnings.</p>
<p>Using this to then calculate “overpayments” isn’t only inconsistent with the social security policy directions adopted by government for decades, it also lacks basic common sense.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Whiteford receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a member of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee. This report for the Royal Commission into Robodebt was prepared without charge.</span></em></p>My new report for the royal commission examines why the practice of income averaging is so problematic.Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2011652023-03-10T05:43:33Z2023-03-10T05:43:33Z‘Amateurish, rushed and disastrous’: royal commission exposes robodebt as ethically indefensible policy targeting vulnerable people<p>The robodebt royal commission hearings came to an end on Friday. Over the past four months, they have delivered a telling portrait of unaccountable government power.</p>
<p>As they look back on a mass of limited recollections, missing paper and inaction, what are key things Australians should take away?</p>
<h2>‘I’m appalled’</h2>
<p>The first phase of the inquiry was marked by bombshell revelations. Two iron curtains that protect government – legal professional privilege and cabinet confidentiality – were pulled back.</p>
<p>In the opening week, we learned:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>In 2014, Department of Social Services’ <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/31/legal-doubts-over-robodebt-raised-with-government-department-in-2014-inquiry-hears">legal advice</a> on robodebt was a flat “no”. New legislation was needed to raise debts by averaging annual income. Robodebt went ahead without it.</p></li>
<li><p>In 2017, after enormous public outcry, external legal advice was not sought. Instead, a government lawyer reported feeling “pressure” to produce heavily qualified <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/im-appalled-robodet-inquiry-commissioners-shock-at-departments-admission/4gxm8kigw">legal advice</a>. This unpersuasive advice was then used to justify the scheme.</p></li>
<li><p>In 2018, the Department of Social Services, <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/bad-government-on-display-for-all-to-see-in-robo-debt-debacle-20230205-p5chy1">received advice dubbed</a> “catastrophic” for the scheme. It stayed in draft, something lawyers admitted was a common practice. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Confronted by this, Commissioner Catherine Holmes had only <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/nov/05/a-shameful-chapter-how-australias-robodebt-saga-was-allowed-to-unfold">two words</a>: “I’m appalled”.</p>
<p>Without the commission, the standard rules on transparency would have applied. Australians would never have known any of it.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1588063857624449025"}"></div></p>
<h2>Ethically indefensible</h2>
<p>Robodebt is about so much more than just the absence of law. After years of semantics and political rhetoric, the hearings confirmed robodebt as baseless, ethically indefensible policy. </p>
<p>Holmes <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/turnbull-never-considered-robo-debt-legality-20230306-p5cpp9">rebuked</a> the program as “amateurish, rushed and disastrous”.</p>
<p>The core concept at the heart of robodebt was the tactical imposition of administrative burden on vulnerable people. Instead of the previous system, where evidence would be gathered direct from employers, the onus of proof was reversed. </p>
<p>The hearings revealed the department’s own budget <a href="https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2023-03/transcript-hearing-day-41-3-march.pdf">assumed most people would give up</a>. Hundreds of thousands would effectively cop an averaged and inaccurate debt. </p>
<p>Robodebt should never again be framed as a technological glitch or a legal oversight. It was the active and direct exploitation of people’s vulnerability. The department’s own research into the letters sent confirmed they <a href="https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2023-03/transcript-hearing-day-41-3-march.pdf">generated terror and confusion</a>. We learnt it even held modelling that debts raised under the programme were inflated.</p>
<p>We have built a dense, highly conditional welfare system, which concentrates enormous, life-changing powers in the hands of government decision-makers. The hearings delivered a portrait of a system warped by imbalances of power and a lack of access to justice. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/robodebt-was-a-fiasco-with-a-cost-we-have-yet-to-fully-appreciate-150169">Robodebt was a fiasco with a cost we have yet to fully appreciate</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Welfare cop</h2>
<p>So what of the politicians? Their appearances had one clear theme: they positioned themselves as the victims of the Australian Public Service.</p>
<p>Scott Morrison indicated he was entitled to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-14/scott-morrison-fronts-robodebt-inquiry/101771092">rely on a checklist</a> that read “no legislation needed”. Christian Porter relied on the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/02/christian-porter-tells-inquiry-someone-in-department-assured-him-robodebt-was-legal-but-i-cant-recall-who">verbal assurance</a> of a public servant that the system was above board.</p>
<p>For hours, we cycled through the same phrases: “I did not know”. “I was not told”. “I was entitled to rely on public servants”.</p>
<p>In our Westminster system, a minister is responsible for the actions of their department. The hearings have revealed that to be abstract fiction rather than functional reality. While a storm of suffering and advocacy raged, politicians and their offices didn’t ask even the simplest questions about the core issue.</p>
<p>What they focused on was seeking political benefit – right from the earliest press releases, trumpeting the arrival <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/17/how-morrison-launched-australias-strong-welfare-cop-and-the-pain-robodebt-left-in-its-wake">of a</a> “strong welfare cop on the beat”. In the pursuit of this political brand, we saw egregious actions ranging from deliberately evading questions to approving the <a href="https://indaily.com.au/news/2023/01/31/shut-this-story-down-minister-distributed-private-centrelink-data-after-negative-robodebt-media/">release of the personal information</a> to “correct the record”.</p>
<p>Moving past individuals, our focus needs to be on tackling the broader ecosystem that produced “welfare cop”. The phrase speaks powerfully to how we have fallen into a social security system driven by shortcut cultural images, rather than on supporting work, families and care.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1266280648903294980"}"></div></p>
<h2>Taken advantage of</h2>
<p>Most people will not have had time to follow the commission. Media coverage, predictably, surged for “politician days”. They missed the most powerful and important contributions. </p>
<p>Victims of the scheme spoke up for what should matter, what a social security system needs to protect and deliver. Sandra Bevan, a single mother of four boys, who works in disability support, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-16/qld-robodebt-scheme-government-royal-commission-victim/101780890">told us</a> about the experience of correctly reporting income and not being listened to.</p>
<p>It was so traumatic that she swore she would “never access Centrelink benefits ever again”. Bevan is a powerful reminder of where courage, strength and leadership are found in our society.</p>
<p>In the final block, another victim, Matthew Thompson, summed up <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-01/qld-robodebt-scheme-royal-commission-matthew-thompson/102039536">what he felt drove robodebt</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It seems to me that the powerful people are always able to take advantage of vulnerable people, as the gap between rich and poorer increases still. And no matter how many royal commissions we have, that always seems to be the case. And I hope this royal commission can change that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Holmes could only give <a href="https://twitter.com/DarrenODonovan/status/1630733001624788995">a simple human response</a>. Somehow, all at once, it spoke to her commitment, the limits on her role, the history of royal commissions and the reality of the system as it currently is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m afraid I can’t promise you that. But we’ll do what we can.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a room in Brisbane, we have learnt of the scale of problems in front of us. Only a broader societal change, not just a royal commission, will ever deliver the change we need.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201165/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darren O'Donovan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Robodebt should never again be framed as a technological glitch or a legal oversight. It was the active and direct exploitation of people’s vulnerability.Darren O'Donovan, Senior Lecturer in Administrative Law, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1990032023-03-07T01:11:49Z2023-03-07T01:11:49ZInclusion means everyone: 5 disability attitude shifts to end violence, abuse and neglect<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513573/original/file-20230306-24-3pj7o2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C51%2C5742%2C3776&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com.au/detail/photo/three-teenage-friends-talking-one-with-down-royalty-free-image/910637268?phrase=disability%20friends&adppopup=true">Getty</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/">Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability</a> is moving into its final phase and will report its findings in September. </p>
<p>For the last four years the commission and the media has reported a disturbing stream of violence and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/14/the-constant-abuse-and-harassment-from-non-disabled-people-isnt-changing-in-fact-its-getting-even-worse">harm in the community</a> and <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/interim-report">disability services</a>. Less media attention has been paid to the commission’s work to find solutions.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/changing-community-attitudes-improve-inclusion-people-disability">research</a> for the commission focuses on what we can do to change attitudes towards people with disability so that we are all included in our communities. This form of social change will improve the lives of the one in five Australians who identify as disabled. And achieving this kind of inclusion will also create a more diverse and interesting community.</p>
<p>When we value and respect people with disability, they are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2020.1794797">less likely</a> to be subjected to harm. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-is-lagging-when-it-comes-to-employing-people-with-disability-quotas-for-disability-services-could-be-a-start-199405">Australia is lagging when it comes to employing people with disability – quotas for disability services could be a start</a>
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<h2>5 ways to change attitudes</h2>
<p>How we treat each other depends on how we think about ourselves and other people, our <a href="http://staffnew.uny.ac.id/upload/132310007/pendidikan/e-book-dinamic-persuasive.pdf">ideology and beliefs</a>. The things we believe about other people influence how willing we are to act. People may find violence and abuse against people with disability repugnant. But they may also look away, and treat this as a problem in systems rather than a crisis for citizens. </p>
<p>Changing attitudes means looking deeper into our beliefs and actions, and how they can either set up the conditions where it is more likely for people to be harmed, or to be safer and better included. Improving inclusion means we need to remove the biases and discrimination in our attitudes, and across the ways that we think, believe and act. </p>
<p>In our <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/changing-community-attitudes-improve-inclusion-people-disability">research</a> we listened to people working in advocacy, community organisations, business, government and academia. They were people with and without disability. They told us about five ways community attitudes can be changed to improve inclusion. </p>
<p>Here are five goals for inclusion with examples of them in action.</p>
<p><strong>1) People with disability are active in all spheres of everyday life</strong></p>
<p>This encourages diversity and contact in schools, work and our local communities. We need contact with people with disability and information about what they want. The Council for Intellectual Disability’s <a href="https://cid.org.au/our-campaigns/our-health-counts/">Our Health Counts</a> campaign is an example. It has harnessed widespread support to improve the health of people with intellectual disability through improving GP practice, training in universities and raising public awareness of health disparity. </p>
<p><strong>2) People with disability lead change</strong> </p>
<p>Changing attitudes works when leaders in the community are people with disability, and when governments and other community leaders value the diverse contributions of people with disability. One vital step is work training for young people with disability, such as the <a href="https://purpleorange.org.au/what-we-do/our-current-projects/road-to-employment">Road to Employment</a> initiative, run by social enterprise Purple Orange. </p>
<p>Another example is the appointment of people with disability to <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-disabled-ndia-chair-is-a-great-first-move-in-the-ndis-reset-heres-what-should-happen-next-191419">leadership roles in the National Disability Insurance Agency</a>, such as Kurt Fearnley and Maryanne Diamond.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-disabled-ndia-chair-is-a-great-first-move-in-the-ndis-reset-heres-what-should-happen-next-191419">A disabled NDIA chair is a great first move in the NDIS reset. Here's what should happen next</a>
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<p><strong>3) Multiple types and levels of policy and action are targeted together</strong></p>
<p>These can range from <a href="https://www.victoriawalks.org.au/How_to_assess_walkability/">walkability checklists</a> and <a href="https://participate.melbourne.vic.gov.au/transportstrategy/walking">transport strategies</a> in local government environmental guidelines (to identify accessibility issues) to policies and laws to require and enforce inclusion, like the <a href="https://www.wa.gov.au/system/files/2022-12/State-Disability-Action-Plan.pdf">Disability Inclusion and Action Plans</a> and the <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/GPGB_disability_discrimination.pdf">Australian Disability Discrimination Act</a>. Working at various levels at once means everyone expects inclusive attitudes. </p>
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<p><strong>4) Actions are sustainable</strong></p>
<p>Changes that are long-term need enough resources to make a difference to the way organisations, government and business work. <a href="https://engage.dss.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/CYDA-supplementary-resource-for-NDS-beyond-2020-submission-1.pdf">Inclusive education</a> – which “values and supports the full participation of all children
together within mainstream educational settings” – is an example of a resourced, long-term policy that has fundamental community-wide impact on attitudes and behaviour. </p>
<p>It not only affects the attitudes of students, teachers and families in schools today, but also affects the attitudes and behaviour of students with and without disability throughout their lifetimes. </p>
<p><strong>5) Measuring, monitoring and research are prioritised</strong> </p>
<p>Keeping track of change can support organisations to make decisions about the action they take and ensure they are accountable for what they say they will do. This is one goal of the Australian Disability Strategy <a href="https://www.disabilitygateway.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2021-11/1816-outcomes-framework.pdf">outcomes framework</a> and local government disability action plans. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/people-with-disabilities-in-group-homes-are-suffering-shocking-abuse-new-housing-models-could-prevent-harm-197989">People with disabilities in group homes are suffering shocking abuse. New housing models could prevent harm</a>
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<h2>What’s next?</h2>
<p>You can make sure the things you do in your work and play welcome people with disability.</p>
<p>What the government can do is encourage and enforce changes to attitudes and behaviour to improve inclusion of people with disability. Attitudes, behaviours and outcomes should be measured. This will help us to know what works to make change and what does not.</p>
<p>Later this year, the disability royal commission will report its findings and propose solutions. Then it will be up to everyone to make sure change happens.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199003/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Robinson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This research was funded by the Disability Royal Commission. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christy Newman receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, and state and federal Australian government departments of health. This research was funded by the Disability Royal Commission.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Idle is employed through a grant from the Australian Research Council. This research was funded by the Disability Royal Commission </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen R Fisher receives funding from the Australia Research Council. This research was funded by the Disability Royal Commission </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gianfranco Giuntoli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When we value and respect people with disability, they are less likely to be subjected to harm.Sally Robinson, Professor, Disability and Community Inclusion, Flinders UniversityChristy Newman, Professor, Centre for Social Research in Health, UNSW SydneyGianfranco Giuntoli, Research Fellow at the Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW SydneyJan Idle, Postdoctoral research fellow, Flinders UniversityKaren R Fisher, Professor, Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1995942023-02-09T05:26:13Z2023-02-09T05:26:13ZAlan Tudge quits parliament, prompting byelection test for Peter Dutton<p>Former Coalition minister Alan Tudge has announced he will quit parliament, creating a byelection in the Melbourne seat of Aston. </p>
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<span class="caption">The seat of Aston.</span>
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<p>In a statement to the House of Representatives, Tudge said the decision, cemented after his father’s recent death, was necessary for his health and for his family, “amongst other reasons”. </p>
<p>His teenage daughters had “had to put up with things that no teenager should have to, including death threats. The most recent of which was last week. My son is a bit younger but equally I want to be a good father to him,” Tudge said. He broke down at one point during his speech.</p>
<p>The byelection will be a major test for opposition leader Peter Dutton, who is particularly unpopular in Victoria. </p>
<p>Aston, in the outer eastern suburbs of the city, was formerly a rock solid seat for the Liberals. But Tudge in the 2022 election had a two-party swing against him of more than 7%. The seat is now on a margin of 2.8%. Tudge, 51, has held it since 2010.</p>
<p>Former treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who lost the nearby seat of Kooyong at the election to teal independent Monique Ryan, will not seek preselection for Aston. He has yet to decide whether he will contest the next election. If he does, he would run in Kooyong. </p>
<p>Among his posts in the Coalition government, Tudge served as human services minister, minister for citizenship and multicultural affairs, minister for cities, urban infrastructure and population, and education and youth minister. Since the election he has been shadow minister for education. </p>
<p>Most recently he has appeared at the royal commission on Robodebt, when he was quizzed about his involvement as human services minister in the scheme, which was found to be illegal. </p>
<p>He admitted in his evidence he was aware the Robodebt income averaging system “had the potential to create inaccuracies”.</p>
<p>During the Coalition government, Tudge was mired in scandal after his former staffer, Rachelle Miller, revealed they had had an affair. She later alleged Tudge had been emotionally, and on one occasion physically, abusive, kicking her out of bed. This led to Tudge, who denied the allegation, standing aside from the ministry in 2021. </p>
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<p>Miller also gave evidence to the royal commission, telling how when she worked for Tudge, she placed stories with friendly media outlets containing private information about people who had publicly contested Robodebt notices they had received. She said this was to correct the record, and led to fewer stories of people speaking out.</p>
<p>Before Tudge made his announcement to parliament, the Minister for Government Services, Bill Shorten, denounced the illegal scheme. “The architects of Robodebt believe that the ends justified the means,” Shorten said in question time. “The only remaining question for me is, when will all of the architects at the top of the Robodebt tree take full accountability and take full culpability and responsibility for the most illegal administrative scheme run by any government in the history of the Commonwealth?”</p>
<p>Tudge told parliament his passion had always been in social policy, rather than the traditional Liberal focal areas of economic and national security. </p>
<p>“I’ve always believed that while the economy is the foundation of our society, that social policies determine whether individuals are given the opportunity and responsibility to realise their potential.”</p>
<p>Both Anthony Albanese and Dutton referred to the pressures on MPs families in their remarks following Tudge’s statement. </p>
<p>Miller was in the public gallery when Tudge made his statement.</p>
<p>Aston saw a crucial byelection in 2001 when the Howard government, embattled at the time, held the seat. This was seen as the start of its recovery which culminated in its 2001 election win.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199594/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The unexpected contest will be a major test for opposition leader Peter Dutton, who is particularly unpopular in Victoria.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1987622023-01-31T02:11:57Z2023-01-31T02:11:57ZVictoria has implemented all 227 recommendations from its royal commission into family violence. So was it a success?<p>In 2016, the <a href="http://rcfv.archive.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Report-Recommendations.html">Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence</a> released its findings following an exhaustive 13-month inquiry. In it were 227 recommendations to completely transform the state’s family violence services.</p>
<p>The royal commission <a href="http://rcfv.archive.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Community-Consultations.html">involved</a> more than 1,000 written submissions, 44 group sessions attended by some 850 people, and 25 days of public hearings. </p>
<p>It is widely regarded as the largest family violence reform process in Australia’s history. In the past seven years, many have looked to Victoria to gauge what a multi-billion-dollar government commitment to reform can deliver. </p>
<p>Last week, with relatively little fanfare, the <a href="https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-01/230128-Landmark-Royal-Commission-Recommendations-Implemented.pdf?utm_source=miragenews&utm_medium=miragenews&utm_campaign=news">Victorian government announced</a> it has now implemented all 227 recommendations. </p>
<p>Does this mean the royal commission was a success? </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/royal-commission-calls-for-complete-overhaul-of-victorias-family-violence-services-and-responses-56034">Royal commission calls for complete overhaul of Victoria's family violence services and responses</a>
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<h2>Have rates of family violence gone down?</h2>
<p>With <a href="https://www.budget.vic.gov.au/ending-family-violence">$3.7 billion invested</a> in the reforms, it is fair to question what has been achieved. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. Rates of family violence and violence against women in Victoria and across Australia remain stubbornly high. </p>
<p><a href="https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/report/Responding_to_the_shadow_pandemic_practitioner_views_on_the_nature_of_and_responses_to_violence_against_women_in_Victoria_Australia_during_the_COVID-19_restrictions/12433517">Research has found</a> the severity and frequency of intimate partner violence intensified during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. By that point in the reform agenda, many had hoped the state would be starting to see decreasing prevalence rates.</p>
<p>It is critical the Victorian government and others do not view continued high rates of family violence as a failure of the royal commission, and the state continues to invest in efforts to address the issue. </p>
<p>Family violence is a much bigger problem than any one reform cycle. </p>
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<h2>What was achieved?</h2>
<p>Undoubtedly, much has been achieved in Victoria since the royal commission. This is due to the hard work of the family violence sector, victim-survivor advocates and practitioners, alongside the government’s funding and commitment to deliver, especially on the big-ticket reforms. </p>
<p>Among the significant reforms from the royal commission that have been implemented:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the <a href="https://www.vic.gov.au/family-violence-information-sharing-scheme">Family Violence Information Sharing Scheme</a>, which enables sharing of information between organisations to support family violence risk assessment and management </p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.vic.gov.au/family-violence-multi-agency-risk-assessment-and-management">a new framework</a> that supports practitioners to effectively identify, assess and manage family violence risk </p></li>
<li><p>the creation of specialist family violence courts</p></li>
<li><p>the introduction of the <a href="https://www.vic.gov.au/victim-survivors-advisory-council">Victim-Survivors Advisory Council</a> to ensure individuals with lived experience are consulted in the ongoing delivery of the reforms</p></li>
<li><p>and the establishment of <a href="https://www.respectvictoria.vic.gov.au">Respect Victoria</a>, an organisation dedicated to the prevention of violence against women and family violence. </p></li>
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<p>Many of these are nationally leading reforms seeking to deliver a more connected service system based on the principles of victim-survivor safety and perpetrator accountability.</p>
<p>While marking these achievements is important, the royal commission’s reforms should be viewed as the first step in a much longer commitment to end family violence. </p>
<p>Here are four lessons we believe are important as the Victorian government plans its next steps:</p>
<h2>1. We need ongoing strategic vision and leadership</h2>
<p>Creating a cohesive reform agenda out of the sheer size of the recommendations was a formidable task. There were many <a href="https://www.fvrim.vic.gov.au/first-report-parliament-1-november-2017">problems</a> in the early implementation phase. Among them was a tick-box approach to the reforms at the expense of an overarching strategic approach to implementation. </p>
<p>Strong leadership is now critical to ensure women’s safety remains a core government focus as we emerge from the pandemic. Victim-survivors may now be able to access a more connected system compared with seven years ago, and the risks they face should now be more apparent to practitioners. But undoubtedly violence continues at unacceptable rates. </p>
<h2>2. We must not lose sight of prevention</h2>
<p>The royal commission’s recommendations were heavily weighted towards response measures. That is, how family violence is responded to once it has occurred. </p>
<p>Prevention, on the other hand, encompasses work that aims to stop violence from happening in the first place. While it was the focus of fewer recommendations, it is absolutely essential.</p>
<p>Tackling the underlying drivers of violence must be at the forefront of future efforts. Prevention is one of four pillars in the <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/ending-violence">National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children</a>. To align with the national plan, the next steps in Victoria must by focus on whole-of-society prevention measures and early intervention, alongside the need to build a system that supports victim-survivors’ recovery and healing. </p>
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<h2>3. We need a coordinated, national approach</h2>
<p>A key challenge of combating family violence is its complexity. Family violence intersects with many other problems, such as mental health, housing and homelessness, alcohol and drug use. Responses to family violence can involve many different government departments, service settings and jurisdictions.</p>
<p>Such complexity requires a coordinated approach led at the national level but with significant resource commitment from every state and territory. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/ending-violence">The national plan</a>, which has bipartisan commitment, will hopefully guide and coordinate the much needed ongoing action. </p>
<h2>4. We need to focus attention on child victim-survivors</h2>
<p>The royal commission’s report referred to children as the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/silent-victims-royal-commission-recommends-better-protections-for-child-victims-of-family-violence-56801">silent victims</a>” of family violence. </p>
<p>There were only a small number of recommendations directly targeted at improving responses to children who are victims of family violence. As we move forward, it is critical <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-end-gender-based-violence-in-one-generation-we-must-fix-how-the-system-responds-to-children-and-young-people-192839">children are viewed as victim-survivors in their own right</a>. </p>
<p>To achieve this, we need to train practitioners and provide more resources to services that are geared toward children and young people who have experienced family violence. </p>
<p>We will not <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-end-gender-based-violence-in-one-generation-we-must-fix-how-the-system-responds-to-children-and-young-people-192839">eliminate violence in one generation</a> without bringing the children and young people clearly into focus.</p>
<h2>Where to next?</h2>
<p>These overarching lessons merely scratch the surface of what can be learned from this world-leading commitment to end family violence. </p>
<p>Last year was another horrific year for violence against women. A woman in Australia was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/24/horrific-decade-high-number-of-women-killed-in-december-demands-serious-investment-in-prevention">killed by male violence</a> every six days. We must do better. </p>
<p>The national plan and the ongoing commitments by state governments give us a good chance to reduce this number, but the work needs to be driven by a transformational vision, funding commensurate with the scale of the crisis, and greater inclusion of victim-survivors to inform policy and practice. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-national-plan-aims-to-end-violence-against-women-and-children-in-one-generation-can-it-succeed-192497">A new national plan aims to end violence against women and children 'in one generation'. Can it succeed?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198762/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate receives funding for family violence related research from the Australian Research Council, Australian Institute of Criminology, Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety, the Victorian Government and the Department of Social Services. In 2021 Kate led the National Plan Stakeholder and Victim-Survivor Advocates Consultation Projects. This piece is written by Kate Fitz-Gibbon in her capacity as Director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre and are wholly independent of Kate Fitz-Gibbon’s role as Chair of Respect Victoria.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Buys does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many have looked to Victoria to gauge what a multi-billion-dollar government commitment to family violence reform can deliver.Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Director, Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre; Professor of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash UniversityRebecca Buys, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1966622022-12-15T09:31:24Z2022-12-15T09:31:24ZGrattan on Friday: Morrison endures the witness box, while Albanese enjoys being in the box seat with the Senate<p>Scott Morrison will forever be known as “the bulldozer”, and he lived up to his self-description at the Robodebt royal commission this week. </p>
<p>It was vintage Morrison, verbally lumbering about, up and down side streets of varying relevance, as he gave evidence on a scandal that involved appalling treatment of people wrongfully pursued in the name of the “integrity” of the welfare system. </p>
<p>What the inquiry is exposing is the extent of the integrity failure within the former government and the federal public service. </p>
<p>As senior minister at its inception, Morrison might be characterised (fairly or not) as the father of Robodebt: it was developed by the department of human services together with input from his department while he was in the social services portfolio. Someone who saw himself as a tough “cop” on the welfare block, the plan, worked up in the bureaucracy, naturally appealed to him. </p>
<p>The big issue at Wednesday’s hearing was whether he was advised that legislation was needed for the scheme to be legal. Morrison said he wasn’t. </p>
<p>He maintained that, while an early executive minute referred to legislation, the final departmental submission did not indicate that would be required. A box asking whether the proposal would need legislative change was ticked “no”. </p>
<p>Pressed on why he did not pursue the matter, Morrison said he’d assumed the department had done its work. In the end, of course, the scheme was found illegal and the government had to repay a huge amount.</p>
<p>It was less the content of Wednesday’s evidence that was remarkable than the style of its delivery. Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes reprimanded Morrison multiple times for rambling rather than simply answering what he was being asked. </p>
<p>At one point, rather in the manner of a school teacher, she asked him sharply if he was listening. At another, she said: “I do understand that you come from a background where rhetoric is important but it is necessary to listen to the question.”</p>
<p>Senior counsel assisting the commission, Justin Greggery, repeatedly called Morrison back on track, telling him ten minutes had been wasted in one diversion. </p>
<p>Painful to watch, Morrison’s performance was another reminder of how out of touch with his surroundings he can be, which was a major reason he flopped as PM. </p>
<p>While Morrison was having yet another bad week, his successor, Anthony Albanese, was enjoying his latest win, with the government’s energy package passing parliament, which had been recalled on Thursday to deal with it. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-scott-morrison-makes-parliamentary-history-for-the-worst-of-reasons-195648">View from The Hill: Scott Morrison makes parliamentary history – for the worst of reasons</a>
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<p>The legislation caps the gas price for 12 months, gives the government long-term authority to impose a “reasonable” price on gas, and provides a subsidy for the bills of some household and business users (with detail to be worked out over summer). This relief will cost the federal government $1.5 billion, matched by the states.</p>
<p>The legislation was always going to get through. The government is fortunate in having a compliant Senate, and the energy story gave an insight into how it operates. </p>
<p>The government needs the Greens plus one more vote to carry contested legislation. This majority will almost always be there; equally, there will usually be minor power play along the way.</p>
<p>On the energy bill, the Greens have received a promise of measures in the budget to help households and businesses electrify. Details later. </p>
<p>It was a gesture from the government but the Greens also had nowhere else to go if Labor had wanted to resist. Running into Christmas there was no way they were going to hold this up. </p>
<p>In any event, potential federal compensation for coal producers, if the production cost is above the coal cap the states are set to impose, is not contained in this legislation – and that compensation is the Greens’ main objection. </p>
<p>There’s an interesting dynamic in relation to Senate ACT independent David Pocock on the one hand, and Tasmanian crossbencher Jacqui Lambie (who now has a second senator, Tammy Tyrrell, in her Jacqui Lambie Network) on the other. </p>
<p>Pocock, new this term, has been high-profile and receives extensive media attention. The government relied on his vote to get its industrial relations legislation through, and he will be Labor’s natural go-to person.
On IR, the government gave some concessions to clinch a deal with Pocock, including agreeing to a new body that will review social security payments before each budget and provide recommendations. </p>
<p>Lambie, who was often in the news during the Morrison years, has been put somewhat in the shade by the arrival of Pocock and the configuration of the new Senate. It is not a position she’s used to. So it was unsurprising this week that Lambie was out of the blocks early, supporting the energy legislation. That meant Pocock’s vote wasn’t needed. </p>
<p>Jostling among the Senate crossbenchers – perhaps Pauline Hanson will deal One Nation into the play at some point – is something we’re likely to see in the months ahead. Crossbenchers need to be able to say to their voters they have the ability to “deliver”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-niki-savva-on-her-book-bulldozed-scott-morrison-and-the-liberals-woes-195562">Politics with Michelle Grattan: Niki Savva on her book Bulldozed, Scott Morrison and the Liberals' woes</a>
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<p>The energy package is the second major piece of legislation (the other was the IR bill) on which the government has clashed with business interests.</p>
<p>Business groups complained that the widening of multi-employer bargaining in the IR legislation would lead to more strikes. The government responded that its priority (and election commitment) was to get wages moving. </p>
<p>The handling of that legislation told business something it might have anticipated. Despite Albanese insisting he and the business community have a good relationship, when the crunch comes, the government won’t shy away from a fight with it. </p>
<p>The energy package has drawn protests and threats from some resource companies, with claims the government’s interventionist approach will deter investment. </p>
<p>Time will tell whether this is just hot air. Clearly the government judged it had little choice but to do something, given the massive increases householders and enterprises are facing in their bills. </p>
<p>Whatever the longer-term fallout, the government knows whose side the public will be on – and it won’t be that of the resource companies. And within business, manufacturers are happy at anything that restrains the magnitude of the price hikes. </p>
<p>Industry Minister Ed Husic has taken the lead on confronting the gas companies. This week, speaking to the Australian Financial Review, he accused them of “behaving just like big tech in threatening nations when they don’t like a regulatory response that’s done in the national economic interest”. </p>
<p>Labor’s major pieces of legislation go to two of the biggest issues the government faces – real wages that are a long way from increasing, and energy bills that will keep on rising. The government’s actions will to an extent ameliorate, but won’t solve these problems. </p>
<p>Wages and energy will remain dominant issues in 2023, continuing to put a lot of pressure on the Albanese government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196662/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It was vintage Morrison, as he gave evidence on a scandal that involved appalling treatment of people wrongfully pursued in the name of the “integrity” of the welfare systemMichelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1875282022-08-09T02:10:33Z2022-08-09T02:10:33ZIndigenous people with disabilities face racism and ableism. What’s needed is action not another report<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478001/original/file-20220808-25-zgdv5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=32%2C57%2C5431%2C3579&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mitchell-plateau-wa-australia-may31-600w-1907228092.jpg">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://engage.dss.gov.au/royal-commission-into-violence-abuse-neglect-and-exploitation-of-people-with-disability/draft-terms-of-reference/">Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability</a> continues. Its terms of reference acknowledge “the particular situation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and culturally and linguistically diverse people with disability”.</p>
<p>Recent <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/rounds/public-hearing-25-operation-ndis-first-nations-people-disability-remote-and-very-remote-communities">public hearings</a> aired the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities and their engagement with the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in remote communities. </p>
<p>According to the 2015 Survey of Disability, Ageing, and Carers (the most reliable survey of disability prevalence in Australia) there were around 38,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability living in outer-regional and remote regions. </p>
<p>As an Aboriginal disability scholar, I know governments have long been aware of the key issues affecting us mob living in remote communities but have continually failed us. </p>
<h2>The art of political distraction</h2>
<p>Like the old <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/842291#:%7E:text=The%20%22bread%22%20that%20Juvenal%20refers,racetrack%20called%20the%20Circus%20Maximus.">Roman breads and circuses</a>, it seems that when government wants to delay action on a social or political problem, they call an inquiry. We’ve seen this with <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/bringing-them-home-report-1997">child protection and the stolen generations</a>, <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Indigenous_Affairs/Educational_Opportunities#:%7E:text=Inquiry%20into%20educational%20opportunities%20for%20Aboriginal%20and%20Torres%20Strait%20Islander%20students,-In%20this%20section&text=On.">education</a> and <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Committees_Exposed/atsia/indigenousemployment/report">employment</a>.</p>
<p>As far back as the early 1980s, the <a href="https://biography.senate.gov.au/grimes-donald-james/">Grimes report</a> informed the development of 1986’s Disability Services Act and 1985’s Home and Community Care Act. But the Grimes report only mentioned Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability living in remote communities in a few hundred words. </p>
<p><a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/IELAPA.201100784">My research</a> and <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/disability-support-for-indigenous-australians">that of others</a> shows the challenges faced by this group were always characterised as a “specialised field”. This means governments were aware of the issues but still failed to properly engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability in remote regions.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-aboriginal-voices-need-to-be-front-and-centre-in-the-disability-royal-commission-115056">Why Aboriginal voices need to be front and centre in the disability Royal Commission</a>
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<h2>Defining disability in language</h2>
<p>Many people and government agencies state “<a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/voices/health/article/2017/07/07/if-you-have-no-word-disability-your-language-how-do-you-get-care-you-need">there is no Aboriginal definition of disability</a>”. This statement has the effect of scuttling debate and unjustifiably throwing the blame or responsibility on us mob. </p>
<p>Firstly, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289400715_Conceptual_framework_for_policy_and_research_development_with_Indigenous_people_with_disabilities">it’s true</a> that so far we haven’t found a word equivalent to the English collective noun “disability” in any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander language. </p>
<p>However, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages around the country have traditional words for disability types, such as deafness and physical disabilities. There are <a href="https://www.npywc.org.au/what-we-do/tjungu-aged-and-disability/">examples</a> from the NPY Women’s Council and recorded as far back as Edward Curr’s 1886 colonial reports in the <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/873585">Australian Race</a>. If disability service providers claim to be <a href="https://www.ndp.org.au/images/factsheets/346/2016-10-person-centred-approach.pdf">person-centred</a> they should be able to tailor disability services in a culturally and linguistically respectful way. </p>
<p>Secondly, government has never had a consistent concept of disability for their funded and administered disability services and programs. </p>
<p>The Disability Support Pension has a different definition to that of the NDIS. ABS census surveys use different definitions of disability among their data collection instruments and methodologies. </p>
<p><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1753-6405.12838">The research I’ve done with colleagues</a> shows people and government authorities have incorrectly stated that around 40% of the Aboriginal population experiences disability. This figure is taken from the <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/4714.0">National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey</a> (NATSISS). If this statistic was true, then <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/profile-of-indigenous-australians">official population projections</a> mean over 350,000 Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander people would be experiencing disability today.</p>
<p>The NATSISS <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/disability/people-with-disability-in-australia/contents/employment/employment-participation-needs-and-challenges">blends</a> disability and identified health conditions into one category. As such, the Royal Commission has situated and justified itself on incorrect and poorly understood <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2020-11/First%20Nations%20people%20with%20disability%20-%20Infographic.pdf">statistics</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Staying in your own community is incredibly important for people with disability.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Acknowledging the experience of ‘racial-ableism’</h2>
<p>The Commission has captured and acknowledged experiences of racism and ableism. <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/john-gilroy-5847">I coined the term</a> “racial-ableism” to capture the intersectionality of these experiences at the cultural interface. Separating the two is impossible. </p>
<p>This <a href="https://disabilityphilanthropy.org/resource/intersections-between-racism-and-ableism/">intersection</a> has been noted in other parts of the world too. Racism and ableism have been <a href="https://www.aapd.com/racism-and-ableism/">described</a> as “parallel systems of oppression” that ignore the experience of people of colour/ethnicity with disabilities and also how their circumstances may be pathologised in racist and colonial ways. In simplest terms, I experienced this as a child as playground insults that referred to my speech and hearing impairment in the same phrase as a racial slur about my skin colour.</p>
<p>I continue to fight and observe this form of discrimination everyday, at both the personal and policy level. The Commission must place more emphasis on racial-ableism as this oppresses Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability to the lowest classes of Australia at a systemic level from childhood to adulthood. The existence of racial-ableism in Australia contravenes the <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities/article-3-general-principles.html">United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons</a> to which it is a signatory. The UN convention cites “full and effective participation and inclusion in society” as a core principle.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-why-the-planned-ndis-reforms-discriminate-against-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-people-160183">Here's why the planned NDIS reforms discriminate against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people</a>
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<h2>Toxic foundations</h2>
<p>The Royal Commission has not properly focused on the ideological foundations of the NDIS for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in remote communities. Instead, government has been heavily focused on actuarial studies of the “<a href="https://data.ndis.gov.au/reports-and-analyses/market-monitoring">market</a>” to ascertain where disability service gaps exist in these regions. </p>
<p>The NDIS is a model that attempts to blend the “for profit” values of the <a href="https://socialequity.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/2598497/Choice-Control-and-the-NDIS.pdf">business sector</a> with the “not for profit” values of the charity sector. Business profits are only achieved where there exists a “supply” and “demand”. Reports have repeatedly shown the NDIS has not yet fairly benefited Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in remote, rural, and regional communities because the absence of local services. This is because there is no “business market” compared to the metropolitan regions and can be seen in <a href="https://data.ndis.gov.au/reports-and-analyses/market-monitoring">provider shrinkage</a> in areas such as East Arnhem land. This is geographic discrimination and racial-ableism.</p>
<p>All of the money spent on the Royal Commission should have been spent on grounded community initiatives under the NDIS in regional, rural, and remote communities. These could have included advocacy programs, secondary and tertiary education programs, long-term government service funding agreements, training of NDIA and allied health staff, Aboriginal employment in the NDIA, and Aboriginal-owned and operated disability support programs. </p>
<p>It is not time for another inquiry and another report. It’s time for action. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/first-nations-people-in-the-nt-receive-just-16-of-the-medicare-funding-of-an-average-australian-183210">First Nations people in the NT receive just 16% of the Medicare funding of an average Australian</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187528/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Gilroy receives funding from the ARC. </span></em></p>Reports of barriers facing Indigenous people with disability in remote communities are not new. Let’s stop relying on old excuses.John Gilroy, ARC Research Fellow in Indigenous Health, Disability and Community Development, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1758432022-01-27T07:25:17Z2022-01-27T07:25:17ZPolitics with Michelle Grattan: Anthony Albanese’s challenge is to define himself to voters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442888/original/file-20220127-14-1ey6was.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=155%2C17%2C3838%2C1976&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan now includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation politics team.</p>
<p>In this episode, politics + society Senior Deputy Editor Justin Bergman and Michelle canvass Anthony Albanese’s address to the National Press Club this week, billed as the opposition leader seeking to outline what sort of PM he would be. </p>
<p>They also discuss whether the Coalition will lean on its perceived strengths – the economy and national security – in the lead-up to the federal election, as well as the calls coming from across the political spectrum for a royal commission into Australia’s pandemic response and whether this will play a role in the election. </p>
<p><strong>Additional audio</strong>
Gaena, Blue Dot Sessions, from Free Music Archive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175843/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Michelle Grattan discusses politics with politics + society Senior Deputy Editor, Justin BergmanMichelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1734942021-12-09T19:10:14Z2021-12-09T19:10:14ZA century on from the 1919 influenza inquiry, NZ needs a royal commission into its COVID-19 response<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436530/original/file-20211209-141213-qa2kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4820%2C2992&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The National Party’s <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/454602/national-calls-for-royal-commission-into-delta-response">recent call</a> for a royal commission of inquiry into New Zealand’s pandemic response may have been part of a wider political strategy, with former leader Judith Collins highly critical of the government’s handling of the Delta outbreak. </p>
<p>But the idea predated its recent advocate, and there are good, non-political reasons for holding such an inquiry – not least that it would be powerful and independent. Royal commissions reach further and dig deeper than parliamentary select committees, and are free from partisan sway.</p>
<p>Nor is this a novel recommendation. In 1919, the <a href="https://atojs.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/atojs?a=d&d=AJHR1919-I.2.2.4.45&e=-------10--1------0--">Influenza Epidemic Commission</a> investigated what happened after the arrival of the disease in New Zealand the previous year. That commission’s influence can still be felt today.</p>
<p>The 1918-19 pandemic killed at least <a href="https://assets-global.website-files.com/5e332a62c703f653182faf47/5e332a62c703f61cbc2fdadb_A-disease-deadlier-than-war.pdf">8,831</a> people (still probably an underestimate), with Māori making up almost a quarter of the total, the single worst human disaster recorded in New Zealand history.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436529/original/file-20211209-19-jrnbny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436529/original/file-20211209-19-jrnbny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436529/original/file-20211209-19-jrnbny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436529/original/file-20211209-19-jrnbny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436529/original/file-20211209-19-jrnbny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436529/original/file-20211209-19-jrnbny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436529/original/file-20211209-19-jrnbny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436529/original/file-20211209-19-jrnbny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The 1918 Influenza Pandemic Memorial at Pukeahu War Memorial Park in Wellington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GettyImages</span></span>
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<h2>The 1919 inquiry</h2>
<p>Parts of the 1919 commission report read like they were written today. The virtues of masks, quarantine, ventilation, the importance of Māori settlements, and basic health education are all canvassed.</p>
<p>Other parts are simply curious, such as the discussion of whether alcohol helped, with some medical witnesses testifying two or three whiskeys and soda a day were the best medicine. But there are also surprisingly accurate predictions of what inoculation might look like in the future.</p>
<p>Mostly, however, the commission was concerned with questions of how the pandemic made it into the country, how local health systems had collapsed, and what could be done to prevent history repeating.</p>
<p>Its answers provided the <a href="http://www.nzjh.auckland.ac.nz/docs/1988/NZJH_22_1_02.pdf">foundations</a> for the <a href="http://www.nzlii.org/nz/legis/hist_act/ha192011gv1920n45141/">1920 Health Act</a>, which provided the basis for the <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1956/0065/latest/whole.html">current law</a>, on which much of the contemporary legal and policy responses to COVID-19 have rested.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-aucklanders-anticipate-holiday-trips-maori-leaders-ask-people-to-stay-away-from-regions-with-lower-vaccination-rates-172682">As Aucklanders anticipate holiday trips, Māori leaders ask people to stay away from regions with lower vaccination rates</a>
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<h2>The right forum</h2>
<p>A royal commission, then, is the appropriate forum for assessing New Zealand’s COVID response and making recommendations that will stick. It’s the highest form of official inquiry into <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2013/0060/48.0/whole.html#DLM1566112">matters of public importance</a>, more powerful than a government inquiry.</p>
<p>Such commissions have been <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/interactive/33416/commissions-of-inquiry-1909-2011">used extensively</a> throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, including after the <a href="https://christchurchattack.royalcommission.nz/">Christchurch terror attack</a>, the <a href="https://canterbury.royalcommission.govt.nz/">Canterbury earthquakes</a> and the <a href="http://pikeriver.royalcommission.govt.nz/">Pike River mine disaster</a>. Right now there is a royal commission investigating the historical <a href="https://www.abuseincare.org.nz/">abuse of children in state care.</a></p>
<p>There can be no doubt New Zealand’s handling of the pandemic justifies the same attention. It has overshadowed everything in the past two years, and no New Zealander has been untouched by it in some way.</p>
<p>But such a commission would certainly differ greatly from the 1919 influenza inquiry, if only because of the scale and duration of COVID-19 and the relative success of government policy in combating it.</p>
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<h2>Areas of inquiry</h2>
<p>With <a href="https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/nz">44 deaths</a> recorded so far, the government’s first duty to keep its population safe appears to have been met, at least when compared to the horrors experienced in other countries, and indeed during the 1918-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>However, that success has come at a cost – to mental health, the economy, rights and freedoms and, to a degree, social cohesion. All of these will be important elements of an inquiry.</p>
<p>While most people suffered in some way, the burden has not been equally shared. In particular, the impact on Māori – currently the subject of a <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/457343/covid-19-response-waitangi-tribunal-hearing-into-whether-te-tiriti-breached-begins">Waitangi Tribunal hearing</a> – will be a focus of inquiry.</p>
<p>Similarly, a royal commission will need to look at how women, children, people with disabilities, the elderly, and anyone affected by international border closures or access to vaccines and health care have fared.</p>
<p>Of course, how the <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/money/06-12-2021/the-real-impact-of-new-zealands-economic-response-to-covid-19">economy</a> weathered the pandemic will form a significant part of an inquiry: how much was spent and where, who benefited or lost, and what will be the long term consequences?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-disinformation-and-extremism-are-on-the-rise-in-new-zealand-what-are-the-risks-of-it-turning-violent-172049">COVID disinformation and extremism are on the rise in New Zealand. What are the risks of it turning violent?</a>
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<h2>Lessons for the future</h2>
<p>Finally, the entire legal framework surrounding the government’s response needs the scrutiny only a royal commission could provide.</p>
<p>In the past two years, the country’s legal system has creaked and groaned in response to the myriad decisions that affected the lives of ordinary New Zealanders in unprecedented ways.</p>
<p>Critical pieces of legislation curtailing personal rights and freedoms were <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/452580/parliament-goes-into-urgency-over-covid-19-response-bill">rushed urgently</a> through parliament, arguably weakening existing democratic safeguards. Where these decisions have been legally challenged (unsuccessfully so far), the courts have been left to find the delicate balance between individual and collective rights.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/scotlands-covid-inquiry-must-be-credible-timely-and-thorough-heres-what-needs-to-happen-167009">Scotland's COVID inquiry must be credible, timely and thorough – here's what needs to happen</a>
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<p>A royal commission would allow for these personal, economic and democratic costs to be fully documented, measured and evaluated. Most importantly, it can recommend improvements and remedies. And it should be scheduled to start on March 19, 2022 – two years exactly from when New Zealand first closed its borders to the outside world.</p>
<p>Present generations have learned some hard but valuable lessons from COVID-19. Given the possibility of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/06/covid-not-over-next-pandemic-could-be-more-lethal-oxford-jab-creator">future pandemics</a>, it’s vital those lessons are passed on to future generations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173494/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A royal commission of inquiry would take the politics out of assessing New Zealand’s pandemic response – and help safeguard future generations.Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of WaikatoClaire Breen, Professor of Law, University of WaikatoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1656962021-08-05T12:27:43Z2021-08-05T12:27:43ZGrattan on Friday: We will need an inquiry to learn from rollout mistakes<p>We are living simultaneously in two COVID worlds.</p>
<p>On the one hand we’re talking about how life will be when 70% or 80% of eligible people are fully vaccinated.</p>
<p>On the other, what we can call our third wave of COVID is spreading, hitting young people, infecting children, resisting efforts at suppression. Sydney is in dreadful shape, NSW regions are under threat (there’s a lockdown in the Hunter), south east Queensland is shuttered, as is Victoria, and the rollout remains beset by difficulties.</p>
<p>We must, of course, have the conversation about exiting the pandemic. We need to consider issues including how a vaccination passport would work, when home quarantine can kick in, and much else around “opening up”.</p>
<p>“Transition” and “campaign” plans abound – from national cabinet last week and rollout tsar Lieutenant General JJ Frewen this week. </p>
<p>All good but there’s a pie-in-the-sky element about them when we’re moving forward so slowly.</p>
<p>Unfortunately but perhaps inevitably Frewen, the logistics expert, this week found himself caught on the political fly paper, after Anthony Albanese made his populist call for everyone who’s vaccinated by December 1 to receive $300.</p>
<p>Even in this age of the money tree, providing $6 billion not just to give the hesitant an incentive but also to reward those who need no encouragement would seem profligate.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-shadow-treasurer-jim-chalmers-on-promoting-vaccine-uptake-and-a-modest-spending-program-165624">Politics with Michelle Grattan: Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers on promoting vaccine uptake and a 'modest spending program'</a>
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<p>The government, either worried the Labor proposal might catch on or because it wanted to pursue Albanese, launched a massive attack on on this “bubble without a thought”.</p>
<p>Frewen was dragged in because he’s canvassed various incentives. His position seems to be: possibly some cash, but not now. Both sides invoked his name in making their cases for and against the Labor proposal.</p>
<p>Morrison is using Frewen as a political shield, just as he once used former chief medical officer and now Health Department Secretary Brendan Murphy.</p>
<p>This has brought claims Frewen is being politicised, a perception the general needs to avoid, because it could make him less credible to the public, and is bad for the military.</p>
<p>It would have been better if Frewen had performed his role in civvies rather than in uniform, but Morrison no doubt likes the khaki. Certainly Frewen should guard against being drawn on political questions.</p>
<p>The Doherty Institute modelling presented publicly on Tuesday by professor Jodie McVernon showed how the rollout’s limitations have undermined our fight against the Delta variant and will continue to do so.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/accelerated-jabs-for-younger-people-after-doherty-modelling-shows-its-vital-to-vaccinate-them-quickly-165555">Accelerated jabs for younger people after Doherty modelling shows it's vital to vaccinate them quickly</a>
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<p>The modelling’s message was that the super spreaders are the younger adults, those between 20 and 40. As McVernon said, they infect both their children and their parents.</p>
<p>But they’ve been the worst catered for in the rollout. They were initially placed at the back of the queue, after the most vulnerable, key workers, and the middle aged. And Pfizer, the vaccine preferred for them – although they are now being urged to take AstraZeneca – has been in short supply.</p>
<p>Belatedly, vaccinations for them are being somewhat accelerated, but it is all ad hoc and unclear.</p>
<p>The politicians like to talk about the “learnings” (aka lessons) coming out of the experience of this pandemic. At some point, when we are much further down the exit road, there should be a comprehensive inquiry into how decisions were made and what went right and wrong, at both federal and state levels, particularly in the rollout but in other areas too.</p>
<p>In this context, Thursday’s decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal that the national cabinet is not, as the federal government tried to claim, a cabinet committee and therefore not subject to cabinet confidentiality, is a welcome development.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/morrison-government-loses-fight-for-national-cabinet-secrecy-165693">Morrison government loses fight for national cabinet secrecy</a>
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<p>We can perhaps understand – while still strongly criticising – how the federal government, not expecting the problems with AstraZeneca, failed to order enough Pfizer or to have sufficient alternatives.</p>
<p>But how come on Thursday, when people were being shouted at to get the jab, an inefficient booking system in NSW was hampering many doing that?</p>
<p>And why, way back when, did the government put so much weight on the doctors in delivering the early months of the rollout? The pharmacists have only recently been brought in. If they’d been involved from near the start, we would likely be in a lot better position, at least with the AstraZeneca coverage.</p>
<p>The question has to be asked: how much did doctors’ lobbying influence the initial shape of the rollout? What clout did they have with senior health officials?</p>
<p>In February, the Australian Medical Association issued a statement headed “GPs, not pharmacists, best placed for vaccine rollout”.</p>
<p>It said AMA president Omar Khorshid had written to Health Minister Greg Hunt to express the AMA’s concerns.</p>
<p>The release went on: “Dr Khorshid told Sky News that the AMA would prefer that the rollout remained part of usual GP interactions.</p>
<p>"We do have significant reservations about the place of vaccination in pharmacy, [he said].</p>
<p>"In the very, very rare occurrence of a severe reaction like anaphylaxis to a vaccine, it’s something that we really can’t expect a pharmacist to be able to manage[…]</p>
<p>"But the main reason is that we think that vaccination is part of a primarily holistic care package where people have a healthcare home. They know to go and see their local GP for their healthcare needs.”</p>
<p>In the AMA’s defence, this was as the program was about to get underway and reaction to the vaccines had unknown elements. But the reference to the “main reason” is a giveaway. As is sometimes said, the AMA is the country’s most powerful trade union. It fights doggedly to protect its turf.</p>
<p>When the Coalition came to power it launched a royal commission into the pink batts scheme. This was seen, and was, a political exercise. Nevertheless, it did identify faults in planning and administration.</p>
<p>The pink batts program and its problems pale against the importance of, and the inadequacies in, the rollout.</p>
<p>An inquiry into the handling of the pandemic should not be driven by political motives, but rather by the need to understand the reasons for the mistakes and how to be better prepared in future.</p>
<p>This isn’t to diminish how well, comparatively, Australia did earlier in the pandemic. But the good side of the record shouldn’t be an excuse to avoid rigorous scrutiny of the negatives.</p>
<p>You won’t find provision for an inquiry in the government’s exit plan. But it should be there, in stage four.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165696/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We are living in two COVID worlds - the world of a plan which promise an 80% vaccination rate, and the world of the third wave, writes Michelle Grattan.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1603482021-05-06T05:51:45Z2021-05-06T05:51:45ZThe government has pledged over $800m to fight natural disasters. It could be revolutionary — if done right<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399112/original/file-20210506-21-h9dkks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C12%2C2791%2C1848&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>To help Australia adapt to climate change and manage the disasters that come with it, the federal government this week pledged <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/05/coalition-allocates-600m-for-new-resilience-agency-to-help-combat-threat-of-natural-disasters">A$600 million</a> towards establishing the National Recovery and Resilience Agency, and <a href="https://www.miragenews.com/a-new-national-climate-service-for-australia-554530/">$210 million</a> for the Australian Climate Service initiative. </p>
<p>The sizeable investments make sense, as Australia’s threat landscape has changed. Climate change, drought, land clearing, urban growth and other activities have significantly increased the chances of natural hazards and disasters Australia-wide. All of which are costly to recover from. </p>
<p>The new organisations could deliver revolutionary benefits to Australia by better aligning policy and practice in a more agile way that matches the complex set of threats we face.</p>
<p>There are, however, issues that warrant attention. It’s not yet clear how the government plans to bring together Australia’s best experts — including policy thinkers, emergency managers, researchers and practitioners — to address the complex, evolving threats. Currently, it seems the role of universities has not been adequately defined. </p>
<h2>Australia’s recent disasters</h2>
<p>The 2019-20 bushfire season was arguably the most extreme in living memory. It started earlier than what might normally have been expected and made history for its severity and widespread damage to life, property and the environment. </p>
<p>Bushfires weren’t the only natural hazard Australia dealt with during this period. Insurance claims from hailstorms, flooding and bushfire damage for the 2019-20 period <a href="https://www.insurancecouncil.com.au/media_release/plain/575">exceeded $5.19 billion</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399113/original/file-20210506-23-1fnld6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man and woman use a kayak to travel up a flooded street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399113/original/file-20210506-23-1fnld6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399113/original/file-20210506-23-1fnld6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399113/original/file-20210506-23-1fnld6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399113/original/file-20210506-23-1fnld6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399113/original/file-20210506-23-1fnld6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399113/original/file-20210506-23-1fnld6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399113/original/file-20210506-23-1fnld6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The March floods in western Sydney peaked at a staggering 12.9 metres.</span>
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<p>Then came the <a href="https://theconversation.com/sydneys-disastrous-flood-wasnt-unprecedented-were-about-to-enter-a-50-year-period-of-frequent-major-floods-158427">severe flooding</a> across New South Wales in March, which peaked at 12.9 metres. As of March 23, policyholders had lodged up to <a href="https://www.insurancecouncil.com.au/media_release/plain/620">11,700 insurance claims</a> associated with these storms.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-world-endured-2-extra-heatwave-days-per-decade-since-1950-but-the-worst-is-yet-to-come-141983">The world endured 2 extra heatwave days per decade since 1950 – but the worst is yet to come</a>
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<p>While these recent disasters were unprecedented in their scale and impact, we can expect disasters in the future to worsen due to climate change, from <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-world-endured-2-extra-heatwave-days-per-decade-since-1950-but-the-worst-is-yet-to-come-141983">longer heatwaves</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/cyclone-seroja-just-demolished-parts-of-wa-and-our-warming-world-will-bring-more-of-the-same-158769">intensifying cyclones</a> and a range of cascading and cumulative impacts on society. </p>
<p>This is why the federal government’s announcement this week is extremely important.</p>
<h2>So what will these initiatives do?</h2>
<p>The new organisations are in response to recommendations from the recent bushfire royal commission, and as part of next week’s federal budget. </p>
<p>The National Recovery and Resilience Agency will be led by former Northern Territory chief minister Shane Stone, and brings together the responsibilities of the national agencies in charge of <a href="https://www.directory.gov.au/portfolios/prime-minister-and-cabinet/national-drought-and-north-queensland-flood-response-and-recovery-agency">flood</a> and <a href="https://www.bushfirerecovery.gov.au/">bushfire</a> recovery.</p>
<p>Its job is to oversee $600 million that will go towards new programs for disaster preparation and mitigation. It’ll focus on minimising disruptive impacts on communities and assist in making them ready to face future disasters. It will also administer the $2 billion <a href="https://www.bushfirerecovery.gov.au/funding">National Bushfire Recovery Fund</a> on an ongoing basis. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sydneys-disastrous-flood-wasnt-unprecedented-were-about-to-enter-a-50-year-period-of-frequent-major-floods-158427">Sydney's disastrous flood wasn't unprecedented: we're about to enter a 50-year period of frequent, major floods</a>
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<p>A key enabler of this is the <a href="https://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/adaptation/strategy">National Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy</a>, which is currently getting updated after its first release in 2015. The new strategy will be released later this year, and should be vital in underpinning the direction of the new agency. </p>
<p>The government must ensure the strategy provides guidance that matches the goals of the new agency - in particular that of building resilience. It’s important to recognise that while disaster response is generally similar across the board, the effects of disasters vary depending on the community, urban and physical features, as well as socioeconomic levels and access to services. </p>
<p>And the Australian Climate Service initiative will, <a href="https://www.miragenews.com/a-new-national-climate-service-for-australia-554530/">according to</a> Environment Minister Sussan Ley: </p>
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<p>help provide an environmental road map in our planning for infrastructure, housing and basic services like power, telecommunications, and water [and in] anticipating and adapting to the impacts of [a] changing climate. </p>
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<p>Together, the benefits of both new organisations have the potential to be revolutionary. </p>
<p>They — along with a new national research centre focused on hazard resilience and disaster risk reduction (announced in <a href="https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/karenandrews/media-releases/881-million-new-world-class-disaster-research-centre">July last year</a>) — may be the largest realignments in disaster management policy and practice for a generation.</p>
<p>But how they’re implemented and coordinated will, ultimately, determine this. </p>
<h2>There’s more to do</h2>
<p>A potential issue with the Australian Climate Service Initiative that might limit its effectiveness is its emphasis on the roles of the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Geoscience Australia. </p>
<p>This collaboration means the initiative has access to huge amounts of data, information resources, and links to the National Environmental Science Program and Great Barrier Reef Restoration and Adaptation initiatives.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-know-our-community-better-than-they-do-why-local-knowledge-is-key-to-disaster-recovery-in-gippsland-158703">'We know our community better than they do': why local knowledge is key to disaster recovery in Gippsland</a>
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<p>But we shouldn’t forget many Australian universities have considerable relevant expertise at their disposal, too. Not including the network of expertise and experience of universities means we may be shooting ourselves in the foot. </p>
<p>What’s more, the National Recovery and Resilience Agency intends to provide accredited training for people working in disaster recovery. The deep training and development expertise of universities is a perfect fit for this goal. </p>
<p>To really embed the benefits, we need to break down historical silos between national, state and local agencies. On-the-ground efforts for disaster risk reduction, emergency management and response, and the broad social aspects of recovery are largely state and local government responsibilities. </p>
<p>Crisis response planning and action is a team-based sport, so getting the federal, state and local governments — and the private sector — involved will help streamline the application of the new disaster policies and protocols embodied in the announced changes across the continent. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/national-and-state-leaders-may-not-always-agree-but-this-hasnt-hindered-our-coronavirus-response-136152">National and state leaders may not always agree, but this hasn't hindered our coronavirus response</a>
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<p>We saw this type of team-based effort at a national level when the emergency national cabinet was established to oversee <a href="https://theconversation.com/national-and-state-leaders-may-not-always-agree-but-this-hasnt-hindered-our-coronavirus-response-136152">collaborative decision-making</a> in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s joined-up thinking that enables rapid and more complete decision- making. </p>
<p>In short, we need better collaboration. How we can work together and utilise all our capabilities and capacities are questions that need to be at the forefront of national thinking.</p>
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<p><em>This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. It is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay foundation. You can read the rest of the stories <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/disaster-and-resilience-series-97537">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160348/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Paul Barnes is a Research Fellow in Urban disaster Resilience at the University of New South Wales (Sydney). </span></em></p>Australians have endured floods, bushfires and hailstorms and more over the last two years. The government is better aligning policy to deal with disasters, but its plan is somewhat half-baked.Paul Barnes, Research Fellow (Disaster & Urban Resilience), UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1592312021-04-20T20:10:53Z2021-04-20T20:10:53ZWe studied 50 years of royal commissions — here’s how they make a difference<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395936/original/file-20210420-21-ijbbub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joel Carrett/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Monday, Scott Morrison <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/scott-morrison-announces-royal-commission-into-death-by-suicide-for-veterans/a03ee04a-1600-4cc0-a9e8-97804c45ce0f">announced</a> a royal commission into veteran suicides — the fourth royal commission set up under his prime ministership.</p>
<p>But while Morrison says he hopes this will be a “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-19/australian-veteran-suicide-government-announces-royal-commission/100078292">healing process</a>” and it comes after sustained community lobbying, we know royal commissions don’t always fix problems. </p>
<p>Only last week, we marked <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-15/deaths-in-custody-30-years-since-royal-commission/100068872">30 years</a> since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Far from a celebration, much of the commentary about the anniversary has emphasised the <a href="https://theconversation.com/indigenous-deaths-in-custody-inquests-can-be-sites-of-justice-or-administrative-violence-158126">lack of progress</a> since the commission’s final report.</p>
<p>We have a long tradition of royal commissions in Australia — dating back before federation. And their powers and capabilities for scrutinising evidence mean they can have an impact for decades to come. But royal commissions can also fail to generate policy change. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8500.12441">recent study</a>, we reviewed royal commissions from January 1970 to December 2019 to identify the factors that can increase policy influence. </p>
<p>We found royal commissions that had major influence used three key strategies: a clear and useful definition of the problem, working together with advocates, and making recommendations that can work in the real world. </p>
<h2>Framing the problem</h2>
<p>Policy problems — such as the quality of aged care or responses to disasters — are often extremely complex, with many different attributes. So framing exactly what the problem is and how the royal commission looks at it is important. </p>
<p>Another component here is the royal commission also needs to develop a compelling narrative around how to address the problem.</p>
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<img alt="Prime Minister Scott Morrison holding a copy of the aged care royal commission report." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395942/original/file-20210420-23-4a5s0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395942/original/file-20210420-23-4a5s0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395942/original/file-20210420-23-4a5s0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395942/original/file-20210420-23-4a5s0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395942/original/file-20210420-23-4a5s0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395942/original/file-20210420-23-4a5s0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395942/original/file-20210420-23-4a5s0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Royal commissions need to tell a story, both in terms of the problem it is addressing and how to fix it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dean Lewins/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>For example, the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission was established by the Whitlam government in 1973. In the <a href="https://apo.org.au/node/36136">final report</a>, commissioner Edward Woodward framed his land rights recommendations as the natural progression of an earlier commitment that needed to be honoured by Australia — rather than a radical break from existing policy. The historic <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/aboriginal-land-rights-act">Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Bill 1976</a> followed on from these recommendations. </p>
<p>Here, Woodward successfully defined a potentially political problem as a practical issue with a natural fix. </p>
<h2>Building a support base</h2>
<p>Although members of royal commissions cannot be expected to establish or lead social movements, they do have opportunities to engage with stakeholders, advocates and policymakers. If they do this well, they will have a ready-made coalition of experts and interested parties to support the implementation of the report recommendations. </p>
<p>This also makes it much harder for governments to ignore important recommendations. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/next-months-federal-budget-is-the-time-to-stop-talking-about-aged-care-and-start-fixing-it-158951">Next month’s federal budget is the time to stop talking about aged care and start fixing it</a>
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<p>An example is provided by the 2009 <a href="http://royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Commission-Reports/Final-Report.html">Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission</a>. Here, the royal commission kept the affected communities and broader public engaged and involved, holding 26 community consultations and 55 days of hearings that were live-streamed and open to the public and media. It then developed its recommendations reflecting the theme of ongoing shared responsibility. Among the commissioners, there was <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8500.2010.00702.x">similar importance</a> placed on cohesion.</p>
<p>As a result, the government of Victoria accepted all but one of the recommendations and committed more than <a href="https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/documents/20143/202133/royal_commission_implementation_plan.pdf/fbe16664-6aad-985f-0964-b1b922b58384">A$900 million</a> to implement them. </p>
<h2>Looking ahead to implementation</h2>
<p>Policy change needs recommendations that are feasible and politically acceptable. </p>
<p>The final report of the <a href="https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au">child abuse royal commission</a> made 409 recommendations in 2017. These recommendations were directed at Commonwealth and state governments, but also at institutions such as churches, schools, local governments, and the criminal justice system.</p>
<p>Since then, the commission has been regarded as having a strong and ongoing impact — for example, the National Redress Scheme is <a href="https://www.nationalredress.gov.au">securing compensation</a> for victim-survivors. The federal government also <a href="https://www.childabuseroyalcommissionresponse.gov.au">reports annually</a> on progress.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Commissioners at the final hearing of the child abuse royal commission." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395944/original/file-20210420-21-1gswx2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395944/original/file-20210420-21-1gswx2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395944/original/file-20210420-21-1gswx2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395944/original/file-20210420-21-1gswx2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395944/original/file-20210420-21-1gswx2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395944/original/file-20210420-21-1gswx2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395944/original/file-20210420-21-1gswx2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Australia has seen more than 130 royal commissions since 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Royal commission/ AAP</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>This can be attributed to the commissioners’ careful planning and their efforts to strike a balance between what needed to be done and what was politically feasible. For example, they held a series of review hearings that followed up with institutions to assess what, if any, measures had been taken since the initial hearings. This allowed them to avoid duplicating recommendations and provided a chance to reflect on previous suggestions. </p>
<p>In an example of what to avoid, the <a href="https://agedcare.royalcommission.gov.au">aged care royal commission</a> made 148 wide-ranging recommendations for the fundamental reform of the aged care system. However, the commissioners disagreed on a number of recommendations and this undermines their influence. It also gives governments far more leeway to adopt policies that suit them, and ignore those that don’t.</p>
<h2>No guarantees</h2>
<p>As the federal government moves to set up a new royal commission, our research shows royal commissions can have significant policy influence. But this is not guaranteed. </p>
<p>Royal commissions have long served as vital contributors to policy-making and continue to serve a significant role. So it is extremely important those who lead them and those who observe them appreciate the strategies they can use to raise the odds they will leave enduring legacies of public value.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/one-veteran-on-average-dies-by-suicide-every-2-weeks-this-is-what-a-royal-commission-needs-to-look-at-157582">One veteran on average dies by suicide every 2 weeks. This is what a royal commission needs to look at</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159231/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We have a long tradition of royal commissions in Australia — dating back to before federation. But we know from bitter experience they can fail to generate change.Michael Mintrom, Professor, Monash UniversityDeirdre O'Neill, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, Monash UniversityRuby O'Connor, Research Officer, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1557592021-02-23T08:39:41Z2021-02-23T08:39:41ZMelbourne finally has a Crown royal commission — is this going to stop crime and gambling harm?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385707/original/file-20210223-13-1xhjiuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Dodge/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Victorian government has announced a <a href="https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/royal-commission-crown-melbourne">Royal Commission</a> into Crown Melbourne, following the damning findings of the <a href="https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/la/papers/Pages/tabled-paper-details.aspx?pk=79129">Bergin inquiry</a> into <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/crown-not-suitable-to-hold-licence-for-sydney-casino-inquiry-finds-20210209-p570uv.html">Crown’s Sydney casino licence</a> earlier this month. </p>
<p>The inquiry found Crown Sydney Gaming was “not a suitable person” to operate the Sydney casino. </p>
<p>It also found Crown Resorts was “not suitable to be a close associate of the licensee,” pointing to the infiltration and exploitation of Crown’s Melbourne and Perth operations by “criminal elements, probably including international criminal organisations”.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/not-suitable-where-to-now-for-james-packer-and-crowns-other-casinos-154938">'Not suitable': where to now for James Packer and Crown's other casinos?</a>
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<p>Last week, the Western Australian government announced an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/17/crown-resorts-to-face-wa-casino-inquiry-as-pressure-grows-on-more-directors-to-resign">inquiry</a> into the operations of the Perth casino. Now, it is Victoria’s turn. </p>
<p>The Victorian royal commission will look specifically at the suitability of Crown Resorts Ltd (the parent company) to be the operator of the Melbourne Casino. The <a href="http://www.gazette.vic.gov.au/gazette/Gazettes2021/GG2021S083.pdf">terms of reference</a> are narrowly oriented towards Crown’s compliance with Victorian law and regulation, rather than focusing on regulation more broadly. </p>
<h2>What about existing regulation?</h2>
<p>The royal commission appears to be a vote of little confidence in the <a href="https://www.vcglr.vic.gov.au">Victorian gambling regulator</a>. The Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation has at least three inquiries already underway into Crown. These include a review of the Bergin findings and a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/no-answers-from-urgent-crown-casino-probe-one-year-later-20200908-p55tl4.html">review announced</a> after <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/gangsters-gamblers-and-crown-casino-how-it-all-went-wrong-20190725-p52aqd.html">2019 media revelations</a> about links to organised crime. These is also a <a href="https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/government-announces-crown-casino-review">regular review</a> of the casino licensee, brought forward from 2023. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Crown Casino in Melbourne." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385742/original/file-20210223-24-17fuwmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385742/original/file-20210223-24-17fuwmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385742/original/file-20210223-24-17fuwmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385742/original/file-20210223-24-17fuwmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385742/original/file-20210223-24-17fuwmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385742/original/file-20210223-24-17fuwmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385742/original/file-20210223-24-17fuwmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Victorian government called the royal commission on Monday.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Dodge/ AAP</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Then again, in her report, Commissioner Patricia Bergin recommended regulation of casinos should be undertaken by an independent casino commission. She also said this body should be armed with the powers of a standing royal commission. </p>
<p>The logic here is conventional regulators lack the power to properly inquire into, and demand evidence of, the workings of a business that is a magnet for criminal involvement and money laundering. </p>
<h2>Don’t forget pokies</h2>
<p>Of course, any proper investigation into gambling regulation needs to look far beyond what happens in casinos. </p>
<p>Poker machines in Australia’s clubs and pubs take about <a href="https://responsiblegambling.vic.gov.au/about-us/news-and-media/latest-edition-australian-gambling-statistics-2019/#:%7E:text=total%20casino%20expenditure%20in%20Australia,a%207.1%20per%20cent%20increase">$A13 billion</a>) from punters every year, more than twice the $A5 billion lost at casinos. Much of what is lost at casinos goes into poker machines. Harm and money laundering are also endemic in suburban pubs and clubs. </p>
<p>Crown, perhaps more than other gambling venues, is a locus of gambling harm. It has more than 2,600 poker machines, each making about $A170,000 per year, or <a href="https://www.crownresorts.com.au/CrownResorts/files/09/09b9547d-9e41-4d83-962f-09c0efbe7757.pdf">$A462.7 million</a> in total, as Crown’s annual report reveals. The “high rollers” are the cream on top of the profitable “grind” of the main floor — the term casino operators apply to their regular customers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Poker machines" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385745/original/file-20210223-19-uny8xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385745/original/file-20210223-19-uny8xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385745/original/file-20210223-19-uny8xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385745/original/file-20210223-19-uny8xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385745/original/file-20210223-19-uny8xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385745/original/file-20210223-19-uny8xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385745/original/file-20210223-19-uny8xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Crown’s gaming machines make more than $460 million a year.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Across Australia, there are <a href="https://www.qgso.qld.gov.au/statistics/theme/society/gambling/australian-gambling-statistics">nearly 200,000</a> poker machines operating in other casinos and suburban clubs and pubs. These are also magnets for <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-13/wilkie-says-clubs-non-compliant-with-money-laundering-laws/11958254?nw=0">money laundering</a> and tax evasion. This might be at a smaller scale individually, but in the aggregate, is it as big a problem as those identified at Crown.</p>
<p>This is easiest in NSW, where poker machines have a “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/poker-machines-used-to-launder-cash-and-avoid-tax-20200617-p553fs.html">load-up limit</a>” of $A7,500. Laundering drug profits, or some cash-in-hand payments, is as easy as a quick visit to the local club. </p>
<p>So, any scrutiny of Crown’s suitability surely needs to consider how the casino addresses its legal obligation to provide gambling responsibly. </p>
<p>There is certainly evidence this is a significant issue for Crown. It has previously been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/apr/27/crown-casino-fined-300000-in-victoria-for-poker-machine-tampering">fined</a> for tampering with poker machines and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-27/regulator-takes-action-against-crown-casino/10945328#:%7E:text=Melbourne's%20Crown%20Casino%20has%20been,industry's%20Victorian%20regulator%20has%20said.">reprimanded</a> by the Victorian regulator for not taking harm minimisation seriously. </p>
<h2>Too big to fail?</h2>
<p>Crown is touted as a large employer, a contributor to tax revenue, and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/victorian-premier-warns-crown-could-lose-melbourne-casino-licence-20210223-p574x9.html">a major entertainment and tourism venue</a>. </p>
<p>It may be all of these things, but as far as employment goes, the <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/employment-and-unemployment/labour-force-australia-detailed/latest-release#industry-occupation-and-sector">Australian Bureau of Statistics</a> tells us gambling activities across Australia employed 26,000 people in November 2020, while the creative and performing arts employed 50,000. </p>
<p>As a contributor to tax revenue, <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/government/taxation-revenue-australia/latest-release#data-download">the Bureau of Statistics</a> also says Crown contributed less than 1.0% of Victoria’s state tax revenue in 2018-19, or about $A228 million. Lotteries contributed more than twice that, and poker machines in clubs and pubs nearly five times as much. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/not-suitable-where-to-now-for-james-packer-and-crowns-other-casinos-154938">'Not suitable': where to now for James Packer and Crown's other casinos?</a>
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<p>It’s entirely possible the net value of the operation to Victoria may be overstated, to put it mildly. </p>
<h2>First steps</h2>
<p>On Monday, the Victorian government <a href="https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/royal-commission-crown-melbourne">said it would</a> “legislate” later this year to “give effect to any findings of the royal commission”. It also said it had started work to set up an independent casino regulator. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1364004533387464707"}"></div></p>
<p>This would be a solid step, but it also needs to encompass the regulation of all forms of gambling. There is no doubt Crown’s malfeasance in Melbourne and Perth went apparently undetected for so long because regulation was under-powered, under-resourced, and frequently undermined by political parties of both major persuasions. </p>
<p>There is also no doubt legislative and regulatory breaches by suburban pokie pubs and clubs are going undetected. There is ample <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16066359.2017.1314465">evidence</a> the requirements to protect people harmful gambling habits are not being met, including by <a href="https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/woolworths-alh-gambling-inducing-fined-033011899.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAuQU3dCIXTPwRpQmPQakXUaiQuUZOE_tct_e-xdvIx7kcGtsM8YCRjmPixEMhswa-dV6120fvCNbE9587MaqZNKG-DJVEP1b_XsSZVaG-vVeKEqyad8pjpEwpphWxzNFRSjlqGWXaMJYScWAgqcbAawfrJ-4ItzWsMP5AOnvRgb">Australia’s largest operators</a>.</p>
<h2>What happens next?</h2>
<p>Melbourne’s Crown royal commission needs to report back by August. This is an ambitious timeline. </p>
<p>In the meantime, it will be fascinating to observe how Crown remakes itself, as has been <a href="https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/articles/crown-needs--root-and-branch--change--says-chairman.html">promised</a> by chair, Helen Coonan, who is now also <a href="https://www.afr.com/companies/games-and-wagering/coonan-s-pay-up-1-8m-as-crown-sinks-to-120m-loss-20210218-p573kh">CEO</a>.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-has-a-long-way-to-go-on-responsible-gambling-101320">Australia has a long way to go on responsible gambling</a>
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<p>Even more fascinating will be whether the other inquiries, reviews, and assessments also now underway actually produce any real change. </p>
<p>Only when the regulator, the system of regulation, and the legislation that underpins it all are robust, suitably powered, and properly resourced, will there be real change. </p>
<p>Until then, we can expect periodic scandals to engulf gambling operators, and the machinery of gambling harm production to grind on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155759/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Livingstone has received funding from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the (former) Victorian Gambling Research Panel, and the South Australian Independent Gambling Authority (the funds for which were derived from hypothecation of gambling tax revenue to research purposes), from the Australian and New Zealand School of Government and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, and from non-government organisations for research into multiple aspects of poker machine gambling, including regulatory reform, existing harm minimisation practices, and technical characteristics of gambling forms. He has received travel and co-operation grants from the Alberta Problem Gambling Research Institute, the Finnish Institute for Public Health, the Finnish Alcohol Research Foundation, the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Committee, and the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand. He was a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council funded project researching mechanisms of influence on government by the tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries. He has undertaken consultancy research for local governments and non-government organisations in Australia and the UK seeking to restrict or reduce the concentration of poker machines and gambling impacts, and was a member of the Australian government's Ministerial Expert Advisory Group on Gambling in 2010-11. He is a member of the Australian Greens.
</span></em></p>The royal commission needs to report back by August. This is an ambitious timeline.Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1478362020-11-30T06:25:33Z2020-11-30T06:25:33ZLawyer X inquiry calls for sweeping change to Victoria Police, but is it enough to bring real accountability?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371860/original/file-20201130-20-1oe4hm5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z4kDCeUVt0&t=626s">ABC730/YouTube</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Few stories have rocked Victoria as much as the so-called “lawyer X” scandal, which revealed that high-profile criminal barrister Nicola Gobbo had been used by police as an informant.</p>
<p>It triggered a royal commission into the affair, which after months of explosive evidence, has now <a href="https://www.rcmpi.vic.gov.au/final-report">released its findings</a>.</p>
<p>The Victorian Royal Commission into Police Management of Informants has revealed a gaping hole in police accountability. It has also put a spotlight on a problematic police culture. The police use of a criminal defence barrister as an informant against her own clients is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lawyer-x-scandal-is-a-massive-blow-to-the-criminal-justice-system-heres-why-111342">massive blow</a> to the criminal justice system. During the course of the commission, two of Gobbo’s former clients had their convictions overturned.</p>
<p>So, how will the police in Victoria be held to account and what needs to change to ensure such behaviour is never repeated? </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lawyer-x-scandal-is-a-massive-blow-to-the-criminal-justice-system-heres-why-111342">The Lawyer X scandal is a massive blow to the criminal justice system: here's why</a>
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<h2>Key findings and recommendations of the report</h2>
<p>The four-volume report has laid bare “the far-reaching and detrimental consequence” of the behaviours of Gobbo and the Victoria Police, which may have denied a large number of people their rights to a fair trial. The commission found the convictions or findings of guilt of 1,011 people may have been affected by the police’s use of Gobbo as a human source. </p>
<p>The commission has recommended the conduct of both Victoria Police and Gobbo be referred to a special investigator to consider whether there is evidence to bring criminal charges and, in the case of serving police officers, disciplinary charges. </p>
<p>It has also recommended a suite of reforms to increase accountability and transparency in relation to Victoria Police’s use and management of informants. This includes independent external oversight and legislation to </p>
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<p>ensure that their use is necessary, proportionate, justified and compatible with human rights. </p>
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<h2>Who polices the police?</h2>
<p>The royal commission findings, while focused on the relationship between one informant and Victoria Police, brings into sharp focus the broader issues of police accountability and police culture.</p>
<p>The system for investigating police misconduct, corruption and criminality in Victoria is hopelessly flawed. As it stands, 98% of such cases are <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-04/calls-for-overhaul-of-victorias-police-oversight-system/10200952">investigated by police</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ibac.vic.gov.au/">Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission</a> (IBAC) lacks the resources to carry out investigations in most cases and is hamstrung when it does. IBAC considered the <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/will-anyone-make-gobbo-police-face-the-courts-20200904-p55sh9.html">Gobbo case in 2015</a>, then sent it back to Victoria Police for investigation. The police showed little interest in probing further.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/expanding-victorias-police-powers-without-robust-independent-oversight-is-a-dangerous-idea-146758">Expanding Victoria's police powers without robust, independent oversight is a dangerous idea</a>
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<p>It is worth noting that Gobbo acted as an informant for years before it was revealed publicly. According to the royal commission, more than 100 people within Victoria Police knew about Gobbo, but none raised concerns with the internal Ethical Standards Department or with IBAC. </p>
<p>Police investigating themselves always raises issues of conflict of interest. But this is even more pronounced when a matter involves senior police, or former police commissioners, as in the Gobbo case. </p>
<p>The chair of the royal commission, Margaret McMurdo, has <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/victoria-police-ibac-can-t-investigate-gobbo-cops-top-corruption-lawyer-says-20201020-p566vz.html">decided not to name</a> any current or former police implicated in criminal conduct, so as not to prejudice future legal proceedings.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371912/original/file-20201130-13-61du6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371912/original/file-20201130-13-61du6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371912/original/file-20201130-13-61du6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371912/original/file-20201130-13-61du6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371912/original/file-20201130-13-61du6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371912/original/file-20201130-13-61du6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371912/original/file-20201130-13-61du6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">McMurdo took aim at Victoria police who ‘lacked the moral clarity, vision and ability’ to fix the flaws in its system.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants</span></span>
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<p>In 2018, a <a href="https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/ibacc/article/3802">joint parliamentary inquiry report</a> into how claims of police misconduct are investigated made 69 recommendations for reforming police oversight in the state. These included better resourcing for IBAC, and that it, rather than police, investigate all cases of serious misconduct.</p>
<p>More than two years since that report was released, the government has not implemented its recommendations. </p>
<h2>Police oversight in other countries</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.academia.edu/22365608/_Un_controlled_Operations_Undercover_in_the_Security_Control_Society">Covert operations</a> have long been recognised as providing fertile ground for police corruption and criminality. </p>
<p>Northern Ireland is a telling case. During the decades of the “Troubles” through to the peace process at the turn of the millennium, the covert arm of policing, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/28/amnesty-demands-action-over-bbc-findings-on-northern-ireland-killings">Special Branch</a>, acted as a force within a force. Some police engaged in and facilitated criminality, including murder. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/northern-irelands-police-transformation-may-hold-lessons-for-the-us-141259">Northern Ireland's police transformation may hold lessons for the US</a>
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<p>Radical reforms were made as part of the peace process through the <a href="https://www.policeombudsman.org">Police Ombudsman Northern Ireland</a>, which was established to provide independent oversight of policing, including their use of covert investigatory powers. </p>
<p>As such, Northern Ireland’s police accountability system is now widely recognised as the <a href="https://www.ulster.ac.uk/transitional-justice-institute/events/unfinished-peace">gold standard</a>.</p>
<p>The UK’s <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents">Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act</a> also provides a basis for increased control of police human intelligence sources, including intense frontline supervision of officers, clear internal guidelines, and authorisation procedures, performance management and integrity testing of officers. </p>
<p>In addition, the <a href="https://www.ipco.org.uk/">Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office</a> provides independent oversight of police and other public authorities’ investigatory powers, including the use of human sources. </p>
<p>The Victoria royal commission specifically made reference to the role of the UK’s Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office and the UK law, but did not specifically recommend them as models for Victoria, instead urging consultation with stakeholders to develop a legislative framework. </p>
<h2>When the ends do not justify the means</h2>
<p>The commission found evidence of “systemic failure in Victoria Police” and </p>
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<p>a pervasive and negative cultural emphasis, led from the top down, on getting results, with insufficient regard to the serious consequences for the rights of individuals and the proper administration of the criminal justice system. </p>
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<p>Even after the High Court blasted the Victoria Police for “<a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/high-court-blasts-police-for-reprehensible-conduct-over-informer-3838-20181203-p50jv6.html">reprehensible conduct</a>” in 2018, its former chief commissioner, Graham Ashton, continued to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/05/lawyer-x-how-victoria-police-got-it-profoundly-wrong-with-informant-nicola-gobbo">defend the police’s actions in the media</a>, on the basis of getting results in the “gangland wars”. </p>
<p>This “ends justifies the means” rationale, often referred to as “noble cause” corruption, belies an above-the-law mentality. Much evidence was put forth at the royal commission to suggest that Victoria Police rejected or set out to thwart or co-opt systems designed to deliver independent scrutiny.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371454/original/file-20201126-23-xfy9z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371454/original/file-20201126-23-xfy9z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371454/original/file-20201126-23-xfy9z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371454/original/file-20201126-23-xfy9z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371454/original/file-20201126-23-xfy9z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371454/original/file-20201126-23-xfy9z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371454/original/file-20201126-23-xfy9z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The royal commission findings suggest a change of culture within Victoria Police is urgently required.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span>
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<p>There have been a series of reviews and inquiries into Victoria Police over the past two decades. They have pointed to deficiencies in its management of informants, along with broader issues related to culture and leadership. Despite this, the royal commission findings reflect many of the same issues.</p>
<p>The commission maintains it is “encouraging” that the new chief commissioner of Victoria Police, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-01/new-victoria-police-chief-commissioner-named-shane-patton/12306964">Shane Patton</a>, has stated publicly the police will heed the recommendations of the inquiry. </p>
<p>If things are to substantially change, however, reforms need to extend beyond these recommendations. </p>
<p>The recommendations of the 2018 parliamentary inquiry also need to be implemented to ensure that in all cases of serious misconduct, police are investigated by an independent body that has sufficient resources and powers to carry out such investigations effectively.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147836/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jude McCulloch has in the past received funding from Victoria Police to engage in research on counter-terrorism, hate crime and family violence. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Maguire does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The system for investigating police misconduct, corruption and criminality in Victoria is hopelessly flawed. A culture of integrity within police will take time to build.Jude McCulloch, Emeritus Professor Monash University, Monash UniversityMichael Maguire, Adjunct professor (practice), School of Social Sciences, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.