Thread by @SquigglyRick

Is Twitter still doing the rate limit thing? I’ll use this tweet as the start of the Robodebt thread for today, until I’m unable to continue updating for technical reasons. So if you want to follow along I’ll do my best to update as I go.

What we know so far:

📝 the Robodebt Royal Commission report will be about 900 pages (about 50 Olympic swimming pools)

📝 it will have a sealed section dealing with referrals to law enforcement agencies and the National Anti-Corruption Commission

📝 Adverse findings public

As an aside, I said yes to doing every bit of media on Robodebt that I could fit in around filing on the actual report. It was a lot. Now I can't remember when all the different times are.

Check out how much Morrison et al spent on legal fees for the Robodebt Royal Commission. Almost $500,000. Same Keenan. Of course Christian Porter, former AG, spent almost $800k. This is just for inquiry hearings, not the report itself if that is required of them. Tabled this morn

Dutton saying the Robodebt RoCo report is political because it comes out a week before the Fadden by-election. Bud, take it up with Stuart Robert who, um, is responsible for the Fadden by-election.

There is so much here and I am on a bonkers deadline. But right down to Jason Ryman in DHS, they knew: "The Commission concludes Mr Ryman... was aware
that DSS had advised that the proposal was inconsistent with social security legislation and policy."

Kathryn Campbell knew income averaging was to be used in the policy proposal. That's critical.

Cabinet was misled. By the public service! (Not the end of this story, still figuring through Morrison's ultimate role in all this).

Oof. Mark Withnell, who suffered an extraordinary lapse of memory on the stand, not only knew he was misleading Cabinet but he was a "party to the process."

"The Commission’s view is that Mr Withnell engaged in deliberate conduct designed to mislead Cabinet."

Serena Wilson may have been naive to begin with, but later her reaction is "of someone who felt
she had some degree of responsibility for what occurred and was anxious to obscure what had really happened."

Campbell: "The weight of the evidence instead
leads to the conclusion that Ms Campbell knew of the misleading effect of the NPP but chose to stay silent,
knowing that Mr Morrison wanted to pursue the proposal." Wow.

Marise Payne off the hook.

Scott Morrison "allowed Cabinet to be misled" because of a pathological incuriosity about the sudden change in language that told him legislation was no longer required. It was his own department that said it, he didn't follow up.

Commissioner Holmes finds that despite all of this, obvious in its own way, there really was no way to argue ignorance by early 2017. By then the probably illegality, certainly the cruelty, of Robodebt was well founded. And yet it continued.

"Mr [Christian] Porter could not rationally have been satisfied of the legality of the Scheme." This is in his role as Social Services Minister.

Alan Tudge wanted to make improvements but these were mostly about being able to "allow him, as minister, and the government, to 'save face' and to minimise public embarrassment."

Tudge engaged in "abuse of that power" vested in him as a Minister of the Crown. Key phrase that one.

Wow, Commission found Kathryn Campbell deliberately instructed her own legal team to discontinue a request for legal advice on Robodebt from the Aus Govt Solicitor because she was worried about being found out.

DSS senior officials including dep sec Serena Wilson engaged in "deception" of the Commonwealth Ombudsman in 2017.

I stopped for a while there as I had to file. Which I now have. Need to have a lay down for 45 before everything starts back up again. Will continue on as I find interesting things.

Was going to do the next radio interview from bed but I have to move because the dog is snoring.