Kathryn Campbell, Finn Pratt testify about role in robodebt to royal commission

Kathryn Campbell, who ran the Human Services department from 2011 to 2017, described her involvement in developing options for then social services minister Scott Morrison to raise more than $1 billion from recovery of welfare overpayments that came to be known as the unlawful robodebt scheme.

But the legislative changes she knew were needed to make the debt-recovery scheme lawful was not something she concerned herself with when she and another official, Malisa Golightly, were implementing the scheme.

"We had left that to the Department of Social Services with responsibility for the legislation. I had not subsequently seen the details that were finally agreed by the government in the lead up to the budget," Ms Campbell said.

Originally proposed to raise a little over $1 billion, the scheme eventually resulted in a Federal Court settlement worth at least $1.8 billion for wrongly pursued Centrelink clients.

The former secretary described having searched through her documents to see whether she saw the final proposal before it was considered by government, but found no evidence she had.

Ms Campbell will continue to give evidence on Friday.

Finn Pratt, who ran the Social Services department between 2014 and 2019, admitted to not knowing the details of the scheme and had accepted the assurances of his staff that Centrelink's Automated Debt Raising and Recovery System was implemented lawfully.

Mr Pratt even signed a letter attesting the scheme was lawful, in response to a Commonwealth Ombudsman report in 2017, on advice of his deputy secretary Serena Wilson. She testified earlier this week to having advice in earlier 2017 that the scheme was unlawful but did not pass on the advice to Mr Pratt.

Counsel assisting the royal commission, Justin Greggery put the contradiction to Mr Pratt: "Does your opinion change about whether you were duped or not?" Mr Finn responded that he did not believe that was possible.

"Ms Wilson is one of the finest public servants I've had the privilege of working with. She was highly intelligent, highly expert, and highly ethical ... In my view, if I think people have discharged their responsibilities in good faith, then I take responsibility as secretary."

He admitted to not asking if what Human Services was doing with the scheme.

"This was one headache which wasn't my headache," he said. "Please understand there was extensive, endless media, on the NDIS, on the cashless debit card, on all sorts of things which DSS was responsible for. I'm not trying to shirk responsibility here. I am not trying to blame DHS."

READ EARLIER ROBODEBT ROYAL COMMISSION COVERAGE:

Mr Pratt said he agreed with Justice Bernard Murphy who precided over the class action that it came down to "stuff up versus conspiracy", siding with the former.

"Commissioner, in my experience in public service, it is almost always a stuff up. I cannot think of any examples where a conspiracy has been co-opted by people to do something, deliberately."

Bureaucrats "can be pretty good at trying to minimise the damage" from negative media coverage, he said, but had a clear requirement to answer all questions about the welfare debt recovery program.