Stuart Robert’s refusal to take the blame for robodebt isn’t just offensive, it’s terrifying

Truth has endured a blustery week. We’ve heard that one of the world’s most powerful media proprietors, Rupert Murdoch, acknowledged in hindsight that the stolen presidential election narrative being promulgated by his serially overwrought Fox News hosts was false, and yet that false claim was allowed to stand on his network.

Closer to home, the exploding cigar that is the former cabinet minister Stuart Robert acknowledged he loyally promulgated the official cabinet script about robodebt and income averaging while harbouring what he characterised as a “personal view” or a “personal misgiving” that contradicted much of what he was saying in the public domain.

Murdoch’s stunning admissions came in a deposition for a legal action that Dominion Voting Systems is pursuing against Fox News in the United States. Robert’s ripping adventures in truth-adjacency-being-the-price-of-cabinet-solidarity played out during a hearing of the robodebt royal commission late this week. Given recent evidence suggests we can no longer rely absolutely on the truth setting us free, the good news is we can rely on legal proceedings to flush out conduct that could otherwise remain hidden.

It really is hard to find words that would do justice to Robert’s performance. But I’ll give this a go.

Some quick context first. The Queensland Liberal appeared as a witness at the robodebt royal commission this week because after the federal election of May 2019, his friend and confidante, the then prime minister, Scott Morrison, promoted him to cabinet as minister for government services. Robert had served previously in the ministry of the Turnbull government but resigned in 2016 after a furore over a “private” trip he made to Beijing to oversee a mining deal involving a major Liberal donor. After the right faction turfed Turnbull out of the top job a couple of years later, Robert played a central role in ensuring Morrison had the numbers to become prime minister. The Queenslander was rewarded with a return to the ministry. After the election a few months later, Robert was sitting in cabinet, with responsibility for robodebt.

Now to the insights of the week. When it came to recounting his role in managing (if that remains a relevant word in this context) an unlawful scheme, Robert presented Robert as active sometimes. Other times, entirely passive. Robert took “absolute responsibility” for implementing a program that should never have been implemented. “But I also take responsibility for being the minister to call it out to say we’ve got to get advice and stop it.”

Before Robert appeared on Thursday, we heard from Renee Leon, the former human services secretary. Earlier in the week, Leon told the royal commission Robert had dismissed the import of high level legal advice suggesting the scheme was dubious. According to Leon, Robert told her legal advice was “just advice.”

Robert flatly rejected Leon’s version of events. He said he told his officials to engage the solicitor general. He contended further officials proceeded to sit on legal advice for weeks before it finally reached him in late 2019. Once it did, Robert (by his own account) marched boldly into Morrison’s office and told him the scheme needed to be stopped.

But this sense of purpose, and clarity, seemed to wax and wane in Robert’s narrative. When he wasn’t marching into Morrison’s office, Robert was flotsam. A cog in a deliberative wheel.

The robodebt program was supposed to deliver substantial budget savings and Robert recalled “getting a fair bit of pressure from the cabinet office … to meet the savings requirement”. Rather than pushing back against that pressure and exercising ministerial agency in processes that are supposed to be contested for the greater good, Robert noted “you generally don’t have the luxury of saying no”.

This really was an extraordinary thing to say, and the royal commissioner Catherine Holmes didn’t hide her incredulity. She mused: “So ministerial responsibility is subject to the cabinet secretary’s desires?” Robert countered: “The cabinet secretary speaks on behalf of the prime minister, commissioner. If the cabinet secretary is not happy the next call is coming from the prime minister.”

Before anyone could say “so what”, or “sucks to be you M8”, Robert resumed swerving between man of action, cog in a cabinet wheel and good soldier promulgating the approved talking points about robodebt. While he was mouthing this script, Robert (by his own account) had significant reservations about the legalities. (In Leon’s account, Robert intended to defend the scheme until the last man and the last shilling because high-level legal advice was akin to a horoscope – something you could take or leave.)

Good soldiering apparently required supplying inaccurate or less-than-candid statements during media interviews (including, but certainly not limited to deriding the ultimately successful class action against the unlawful scheme as a “political stunt”) because “ministers are required to defend the government’s programs as part of cabinet solidarity regardless of [whether] they agree with them or not”.

Robert ploughed on with the post-modernism, or relativism – or whatever this creed was: “I have implemented many things I passionately disagree with, but I’m still required as a minister to represent them and defend them and that’s what I’ve done here, regardless of my personal sense or belief.”

At another point in proceedings, our warrior philosopher suggested this level of professional selflessness was a constant among the cabinet cohort. “As a dutiful cabinet minister, ma’am, that’s what we do,” Robert said. The commissioner didn’t miss the moment, responding: “Misrepresent things to the Australian public?”

At another memorable juncture, Robert recounted the experience of deflecting after being asked a direct question by my colleague Paul Karp at the National Press Club about whether he had confidence in the legality of the scheme. Counsel assisting the royal commission noted “the truthful response to questions from members of the press gallery at that point in time would have been to acknowledge the government had reached the point where averaging was unlawful”.

Robert replied that observation “may well be truthful” but he wasn’t “permitted” to do anything other than obfuscate because candour required sign-off from Morrison and other colleagues.

Memorably, Robert observed: “So I’ve got to answer [Karp] … in a way that says something, and says nothing – a dreadful place for a minister to ever be in.”

Well, as the kids say, a tissue for your issue minister. A tissue for your issue.

There are many victims in the scandal that is robodebt, but I’m entirely confident Stuart Robert isn’t one of them.

While we can leave it to the royal commission to resolve the specifics of this history war, what we can say very clearly at this point is Robert, like all the other actors in this catastrophic failure of governance, had options. People had choices.

Cabinet government is a team sport, requiring confidentiality, compromise and, periodically, acts of loyalty.

But I’m unaware of any provisions in the cabinet handbook that require ministers to be yes men to prime ministers desperate for budget savings that can be dressed up as hairy chested crackdowns on undeserving welfare cheats, because being tough on alleged welfare cheats is easier than coming after tax concessions or other goodies that benefit your own base.

I’m also unaware of any stipulation in the ministerial code that sanctions telling porkies at the National Press Club or 7.30 or Insiders because those new talking points saying “whoops, guess this scheme was unlawful after all” haven’t rolled off the printer in the prime minister’s office yet.

If the culture of a government and the officials standing behind it is built on distortions, omissions and evasions; if ministers and bureaucrats aren’t game to speak up candidly, and early, before things run entirely off the rails; if people aren’t prepared to put their careers on the line when it counts, then the whole apparatus of the commonwealth is in serious peril because these protagonists have parted ways with the core requirement of the job: defending the public interest.

Robert’s “I’m-kind-of-responsible-but-not-really” shoulder shrug at the royal commission on Thursday isn’t just insufficient or offensive.

Frankly, it’s terrifying.