Robo-debt bureaucrat quits her $900k-a-year defence job
Former top bureaucrat Kathryn Campbell has resigned from her $900,000-a-year AUKUS advisory role after damning findings were made against her by the robo-debt royal commission.
The Defence Department issued a statement on Monday confirming it had accepted Campbell’s resignation, effective last Friday.
Former Department of Human Services secretary Kathryn Campbell was singled out for criticism in the robo-debt royal commission’s final report.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“Defence will not provide further comment on this matter,” the statement said.
Campbell served as secretary of the Department of Human Services between 2011 and 2017, the period in which the illegal income-averaging scheme was introduced. She was subsequently promoted to head of the Department of Social Services and later the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, even as the scheme’s flaws became widely known.
Campbell was removed from her DFAT post after the election of the Albanese government and appointed an adviser on the AUKUS pact in the Department of Defence, for which she received an annual salary of $889,853.
The royal commission, which handed down its report on July 7, found Campbell kept the true nature of the income-averaging scheme secret when advising cabinet because she knew Scott Morrison – at that time the social services minister – wanted to pursue the program.
It also found Campbell deliberately instructed her own legal team to discontinue a request for legal advice on the scheme and that she shelved a damning $1 million audit by PwC into the welfare crackdown just as it was about to finish, because she feared its contents would be damaging.
Campbell went on leave shortly before the findings came out and was suspended from her AUKUS position on July 10, prompting fresh questions about the government’s decision to assign her a top job in a sensitive portfolio. She is yet to comment on the commission’s findings.
Greens senator Barbara Pocock this month accused the government of “backwards engineering” a role for Campbell after documents disclosed via a parliamentary hearing revealed senior mandarins arranged the Defence job for her a week before her termination from DFAT was announced in mid-2022.
The royal commission’s report included a sealed section recommending potential criminal and civil prosecutions against unidentified individuals. This masthead is not suggesting Campbell is named in that section. That information has not been released and is not publicly known.
Assistant minister Tim Ayres said it was important government MPs did not undermine any potential prosecutions.
“It is important people in my position respect that process and don’t say anything that would undermine the process,” he told ABC TV on Monday.
Nationals deputy leader Perin Davey reiterated the call for restraint, saying the Coalition accepted robo-debt was a “very unfortunate point in our history”.
“We all need to be very measured in how we respond, and we need to make sure that we allow those processes to take place without prejudice, without pre-judgment and without some of the over-the-top commentary,” she said.
With AAP
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