Rick Morton

@squigglyrick.bsky.social

18786 Followers 394 Following

I write. Author of Mean Streak and other things. Reporter. I write a decent newsletter: https://rick-morton.ghost.io

Credit Card statement excerpt showing two charges for $1900 each for vet bills
Picture of the Canal Saint Martin in Paris at sunset on a warm day, the banks are filled with people sitting outside in groups talking and drinking.
Screenshot of the article which reads: There is a certain duality to Kilgour’s failure of imagination; it only fails sometimes. The former deputy secretary of the Department of Social Services Serena Wilson was found, correctly, to have engaged in serious corrupt conduct for her role in misleading the Commonwealth Ombudsman about the legality of the robodebt program in 2017, two years after it began. In whacking Wilson, Kilgour appealed to matters of “common sense and ordinary human experience” as well as quite correct observations about the role of senior public servants. “But it is only to be expected that Ms Wilson, as a deputy secretary, would have had systems, procedures and assistance in place to isolate more important communications from the dross, and thus to devote to the former the time and attention they deserved,” she writes. Fair. Not so for Campbell, though. Campbell, Kilgour says, was far too busy to be across the detail even though it was Campbell who first briefed the concepts of robodebt to Scott Morrison — not the more senior DSS secretary — and who directed that the briefs be prepared, and who was so intimately involved in the development of the policy that later became the cabinet submission. Kilgour states as fact something that could only have come from Campbell’s testimony about the development in 2015: “Ms Campbell’s focus was elsewhere on the Welfare Payments Infrastructure Transformation program (WPIT)1397 which was a vast program involving the establishment of new arrangements and IT upgrades with multiple other agencies.” Her focus was elsewhere. Says who? Campbell.
Screenshot of part of the article which reads: Morrison was the cabinet minister responsible for both Social Services and Human Services matters, and if he was a "junior" minister in the Coalition government, then he was also seen as its biggest conservative rising star, fresh from having so infamously "stopped the boats" with a stop-at-nothing approach to border security. He was a man on the make in private and championed as such in most of the mainstream press. Campbell had a preternatural talent for managing politics. It's what made her so effective at the job and her own survival. In any event, what transpired was that both Morrison's and Campbell's career prospects took off after robodebt. Campbell was promoted to lead the senior policy department in DSS and then, by Scott Morrison himself as prime minister, handpicked to lead the Department of Foreign Affairs in a move seen as cronyism and widely considered to have been a disaster. One does not need to prove beyond doubt that these could be conceived as rewards for her loyalty and fervour, only to recognise the mind-boggling folly of a deputy commissioner of the NACC writing — in ink! — that the potential rewards for Campbell in her hypothetical reconstruction of motive "could never have been more than an unprovoked hope" that this "junior minister" of another department could "determine, and be able, to secure the public servant's career advancement". His motives aside, that is in fact exactly what happened. For Kilgour to argue in this manner casts serious doubt over the rest of her findings.
Screenshot of part of the article that reads: While Britton was never directly copied into legal advice that the Department of Social Services possessed that stated unequivocally that robodebt’s use of wholesale income averaging to raise debts was unlawful, the royal commission found he was sent a key list of DSS dot points that said as much. “The proposal fundamentally changes the assessment of income within the social security system and is not supported by current policy or legislation,” the dot points said. Royal commissioner into the robodebt scheme Catherine Holmes said that, during their oral evidence, Mark Withnell, Scott Britton and Jason Ryman all accepted that “Mr Ryman and Mr Britton’s response to the DSS Dot Points did not provide any sensible response to the legal advice in the DSS Dot Points”. “There is no doubt that Mr Britton received and read the DSS Dot Points which Mr Withnell emailed to him; he sought Mr Ryman’s assistance with a response to them, and provided that response to Mr Withnell.”
The matter gets worse from here. On 27 March, the AGS provided the draft advice for the Masterton case (as advanced from the prospects advice being 'not hopeless'). This was devastating to the whole of the Robodebt scheme: 'There is no statutory basis in the SSA, or related legislation, for deeming apportioned fortnightly income to be accurate or provide a sufficient basis on which to raise and pursue a debt'. That is game over. On 29 March the advice made it to Leon. The same day a final draft of the new Ombudsman's report was received in the department and neither that day nor any other did Leon or anyone in her department go back to the Ombudsman's Office and update their previous firm position of utter certainty on Robodebt by informing them of this seismic and fundamental shift. Commissioner Holmes found: "Having adopted the position consistent with the representation to the Ombudsman that the legal position of the Scheme was "not uncertain," it was incumbent on Ms Leon to correct the record when that position changed." She did not do so.
Screenshot of the newsletter which reads: On 5 March, the Australian Government Solicitor provided draft prospects advice to DHS about the Masterton matter which was passed to Leon as Secretary. Two things are important here. The AGS had been briefed that the department did not want to have the Federal Court rule on the legality of the Online Compliance Initiative (Robodebt) and, secondly, that according to the AGS advice Masterton's case was 'not hopeless. Not. Hopeless. To quote the Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes: This aspect of the advice was significant. What was, in effect, a legal challenge to a fundamental feature of the Scheme - that is, the use of averaging to determine social security entitlement - had been described by AGS as not appearing to be hopeless; a roundabout way of saying that it had prospects of success. While the 5 March 2019 advice did not descend into any analysis of those prospects, it should have been clear at this time to Ms Leon and other readers of the advice that the legality of the Scheme was far from certain. Despite this, on 8 March, Leon wrote to the Commonwealth Ombudsman to formalise her opposition to his investigation discussing the legal footing of the compliance regime. She wrote: "Our position is and remains that the legal position in relation to the program is not uncertain. Accordingly it would be premature for your report to suggest the legislation needs amending. I am concerned that your comments clearly imply that there is doubt as to the legality of the... system."
Excerpt of the linked newsletter which reads: At the turn of the 20th Century there was a German horse called Clever Hans – Kluge Hans, way more fun – who seemed to learn how to count and would scuff his hoof on the ground to answer complicated oral or even written mathematical questions. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. A genius! But, of course, Hans didn't really know how to count at all and certainly could not do fractions. He was responding to subtle, even subconscious, cues from the people giving him the questions that indicated when he had arrived at the correct answer. This was me on the phone to the depanner, dragging my mental hoof until such a time as the automated messaging system let me through to the next round. Our clever horse was eventually drafted into World War I, making him the first documented case of a Hans looking for arms, some nine decades before UN weapons inspector Hans Blix in Iraq in 2002. Clever Hans, according to researchers, 'was killed in action in 1916 or was consumed by hungry soldiers' for his troubles. For mine, I was allowed to speak to a French person.
Picture of Rick Morton, wearing a red sweater and light brown lags with dark brown shoes and a loosely wrapped scarf in the grand foyer of the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris. The room is filled with enormous chandeliers and gilded columns. People are staring up at the ceiling panted by Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry.
Screenshot of part of the linked article which reads: In making this finding, Treston has also put other senior public servants on notice. “Misfeasance in public office claims are extraordinarily difficult to make out, because of the high legal standard required,” one lawyer with experience in the specialised field tells The Saturday Paper. “It is not for nothing that they are so infrequently litigated. That makes this a very significant decision and may provide guidance for plaintiffs in future misfeasance claims. “The judgement is highly critical of the defendant’s conduct, particularly given the significant authority exercised by the director of the Professional Services Review agency. As the trial judge said, ‘With such power, comes responsibility.’ It is rare to see a judgement so critical of public sector conduct – going so far as to find that the director ‘failed the test of public probity’ in her conduct.”
Screenshot of linked article that reads: As it stands, the way the new assessment tool is being rolled out will dramatically limit the rights of disabled people to appeal against their outcomes. Currently, NDIS participants who are unhappy with the amount of support for which they have been funded can ask for an internal review and argue the line-by-line case on merit. If this decision remains unchanged, they can take their case to the Administrative Review Tribunal – an imperfect system that entails considerable stress and cost, but which can make orders for funding and support items to be included in a plan. For years, the NDIA has been one of the worst performers at the ART and its predecessor, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, with thousands of decisions overturned, remade or settled before a substantive hearing. For some time now, though, the agency has been ignoring the appeal body. Data provided in response to a budget estimates question on notice shows that in 2024/25 the agency reassessed 837 participant plans within 12 months of a tribunal decision, but in 372 of those cases “plans were approved at a lower value than what the ART had determined”. The NDIA declined to elaborate on why it had disregarded the tribunal orders.
Screenshot of an Adobe PDF AI assistant offering to summarise the document I'm reading because it "appears to be a long document".
Screenshot of a Herald Sun article headline that reads 'Epstein: Only one winner in sad and sorry Neale saga."
Screenshot from the article. The text reads: Illustrative of the government's approach to the system is an app the DEWR claims it built to provide "alerts on known risk areas". , including providers booking dodgy appointments that can penalise jobseekers. When the ombudsman asked to see it, the department had to admit the app does not yet exist. "Later in the investigation when we sought further information on this data App, DEWR changed its previous advice, stating that the risk monitoring data App for monitoring TCF [Targeted Compliance Framework]-related data was in fact not complete and was expected to be gathering data by late 2025," the ombudsman wrote. The ombudsman revealed a catalogue of other examples where the department or Services Australia, which administers the welfare cancellations and occasionally checks the work of providers issuing suspensions, made misleading claims to his office, to him, to jobseekers and to the public.
Photo of the Walkley Awards Instagram page announcing Mean Streak by Rick Morton as the winner of the Walkley Book Award.
Screenshot of the linked article, the text of which reads: None of these instances were about providing advice to government. In any event, as the APSC noted in its code of conduct report: the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (PGPA) Act already imposes a legal obligation on all public servants to keep appropriate records. That they don’t, at apparently strategic moments in time, invites a novel conclusion that, inconveniently for the government, would not allow it to keep more secrets, more tightly. Officials should be compelled to write down their advice and that advice should be reasonably available to the public. This is how accountability works. The robodebt disgrace is a near consequence-free zone, even where there are, at least in theory, legal directives that oblige officials to act with honour and integrity. Any real concern – as there must be – about record keeping in the public service would manifest in a complete overhaul of the PGPA Act. That is not what we are getting. It is a sick joke to leverage the horror of that debt recovery scheme to remove the precious few protections, already so abused, available to the public, and for this reason alone the proposed FOI amendments should be treated with the contempt they deserve.
Screenshot of the book Mean Streak by Rick Morton. The text reads: for the past decade and half, when conclusive certificates were discontinued, is counterproductive to the Parliament’s intent. ‘When it comes to deliberative material, FoI does not ensure transparency (because advice is not being written) and it undermines integrity (because advice is not being written).’ So officials don’t put things in writing because they might get released under Freedom of Information laws, therefore the FoI laws aren’t working? Grow up. De Brouwer is not alone in his views. Former secretaries have been doing the rounds making exactly these kinds of noises, as if the outcome of poor professional behaviour is the result of some law and not … poor professional behaviour.
Screenshot of part of the newspaper article in this thread. It reads: At the end of July, a final response to the clarifications sought by Knight and the other person were being prepared. UTS chief legal counsel Kylie Gould reviewed the statement. So did KPMG. Vice-chancellor Parfitt directed it be sent out by his acting chief of staff, Danielle Woolley, herself a partner at KPMG until she was hired by the university. “I can confirm that no master spreadsheet of research staff as referred to was produced or delivered in partnership with KPMG,” Woolley wrote, without indicating whether any versions of the spreadsheet existed. “I trust the above clarifies the matter.” Now it has been produced and confirmed delivered, although the university maintains it was never finished and was not used. By way of explanation, UTS inserted a “context” page just before the sudden appearance of the Excel spreadsheet and emails between McGrath and KPMG. “As part of this work at that time KPMG began developing a list of D to E researchers but the Deputy Vice Chancellor Research intervened, and upon reviewing and seeking to validate this data with our own research data insights team, the work was discontinued,” the university says in its explanation. Instead, it says, the university used “aggregate” data from its own internal systems “in order to consider whether any proposed OSI changes would impact on our research activities”. Coincidentally, UTS says, the resulting insights are the same as if they had relied on the KPMG analysis.
Screenshot of article excerpt that reads: What Butler could not do in his press club speech, or subsequently, is guarantee children will not be negatively affected by agency decisions in advance of any rollout. He told the audience that any child “enrolled in the NDIS now – or who become enrolled before that time [2027] – will remain on the scheme, subject to its usual arrangements, including reassessments”. These “reassessments” have been turbocharged after a significant investment in the agency’s access and eligibility team. The Saturday Paper has previously revealed the agency was sending out thousands of eligibility reassessment letters suggesting people may no longer have a right to support, and demanding further unspecified evidence within 28 days. This process resulted in people being wrongfully removed from the scheme. Some who were able to appeal managed to be reinstated. The Saturday Paper later revealed the agency relented under pressure to extend this timeframe to 90 days but, under the direction of then chief executive Rebecca Falkingham, used a deliberately bastardised version of this process to kick a disability advocate off the scheme without evidence. The advocate was later reinstated with an extra disability recognised under the act. Villamanta Disability Rights Legal Service says these abuses of power are becoming more common and materialise in both policy decisions taken by the agency and in a new flex of its power made with the backing of legislative reforms that began in October last year. “More matters are being met with intransigent conduct by the NDIA at the Tribunal, resulting in an increase in other funded advocacy services seeking our assistance for support with their work,” the service says in a report obtained by The Saturday Paper.
Screenshot of end of the article that reads: NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister did not respond to questions from The Saturday Paper about whether the conduct of the agency executive should be investigated, but a spokesperson for the minister said: “We are focused on ensuring the NDIS operates transparently and delivers fairer and more consistent decisions.” A spokesperson for the agency said all participants have a right to review at tribunal and “new information” was provided that allowed them to reinstate access for the participant in this case before it went to hearing. The Saturday Paper asked if the agency was confident the conduct of its executives was within the bounds of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act that regulates Commonwealth Officials. “The agency has at all times in this matter conducted itself legally and in line with the NDIS Act 2013,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
2.69 On 26 July 2023, the complainant made a second complaint to a more senior official about the manner in which their initial complaint about stakeholder engagement had been handled. Following a meeting between Health and the complainant, the complainant requested that their original and second complaint be dealt with independently of the department’s Aged Care Group. In September 2023, Health engaged Sparke Helmore Lawyers to investigate the two complaints. The investigation concluded that: (a) the conduct, the subject of the Complaints, does not constitute a suspected breach of the APS Code of Conduct; and (b) [the officials’] conduct falls below the standard of behaviour that would reasonably be expected in the circumstances, particularly when engaging with a stakeholder. 2.70 Sparke Helmore Lawyers relied in part on records provided by the official who was the subject of the initial complaint. The official’s records did not reveal that the complaint had been shared with external parties (see paragraph 2.68). The investigation report stated that Sparke Helmore Lawyers had been instructed that Health did not have a policy to deal with complaints made by third parties or stakeholders. This was incorrect. The 2021 complaints management policy applied to members of the general public, Health’s customers and clients, and other external stakeholders.
2.68 Health received a number of complaints from stakeholders about the Future Fit program. The ANAO examined the handling of one complaint relating to stakeholder engagement. On 25 July 2023, a MoW stakeholder emailed a complaint directly to the business area about the behaviour of a Health senior official. The complaint alleged that the official was refusing to engage with a MoW stakeholder and that they had not behaved in a manner consistent with the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct, among other matters. Health did not deal with the complaint in a manner that was consistent with its complaints management policy: Health officials did not triage and escalate the complaint appropriately; communication with the complainant was not always respectful and courteous; and the complainant’s privacy was not respected, as the complaint was shared with individuals outside of Health
Screenshot of the newsletter post containing the words: 13: 'It is not clear where this submission fits into the appellant’s notice of appeal. On the assumption that it does, however, it must be rejected'. This is the judicial equivalent of rescuing a disoriented homing pigeon and releasing it into a ceiling fan.
On October 15, a Nous principal wrote to the ANU provost and COO: “At our meeting on Monday, I offered to start the thinking on your upcoming paper to Council that combines the principles and approach to get to [redacted]. Attached is that straw dog for your critique, noting that we will, of course, format the Figures in the back into ANU branding and similar cleaning up if you’d like them included in a final paper.” Why the Nous involvement has been so heavily guarded is not clear. The secrecy has led the university into fractious debates before the Australian parliament, however. Last month the ANU had to pull several of its official responses to questions in budget estimates hearings, in which it falsely stated that no consulting firms were ever involved in cost-saving and restructuring work at the university. Two months after she signed the pre-approval for Nous’s exemption to work on cost saving at the university, Bell and her team appeared before Senate estimates – making the ANU the only university to be called before Commonwealth parliament. They were asked whether consultants were engaged in cost-cutting work. “I initially engaged the Nous Group a number of months ago to help think about how to look at the role and the changing role of universities in a global landscape,” Bell said. “I was interested in what were the ways that universities thought strategically and what was a global survey. Since then, we’ve been continuing to work with them in order to understand best practice around service infrastructure and support services.”
The NDIA had decided the girl did not need the clinical expertise of a registered nurse (RN) on shift, or “duplicate” forms of support such as hydrotherapy in addition to physiotherapy. It proposed shifting the care to a delegated model staffed by “high intensity support workers” with no daily RN support and rejecting art and music therapy because the young girl “enjoys” them, which it argued meant they could not be therapeutic. The tribunal rejected this argument as “concerning”. “I am concerned that the risks to [the girl]’s safety are very high. There is no indication that the agency has given consideration to the best interests of the child in this matter,” general member Justin Toohey found. “There is also no indication that the Agency has assessed the risks and safeguards in relation to [the girl] as required by Rule 4.1(c).” Toohey granted an increase in registered nursing hours and the therapy that experts recommended. He admonished the NDIA for taking an “adversarial approach which was directed at defending their [original] decision”. “[T]he agency should consider whether their conduct in this matter was consistent with good practices in taking a trauma-informed approach and supporting participants and their families in all their dealings with the agency,” he wrote.
I also make the point here of observing that nowhere in the Respondent’s final submissions is any reference made to the circumstances as to why Mr Paul abruptly ceased giving his oral evidence. They also did not refer to his subsequent admission to hospital. I consider these to be serious omissions given the serious assertions in the closing submissions as to Mr Paul’s lack of credibility and evasiveness when giving his evidence.
screenshot of an unsolicited email that is headlined “AI that writes like you” and says: “If you’re sceptical about using AI in your writing, you’re not alone. We hear this all the time: ‘I don’t want my work to sound robotic’. That’s exactly why we created two things to help.”
Screenshot of article that reads: NSW Health Minister Ryan Park has repeatedly said it would cost the state $11 billion to meet the demands of the doctors’ union. The demands include a 30 per cent catch-up pay rise and measures to install safer working conditions. Doctors have struggled to work out how that figure came about. The entirety of the staff expenses bill for Health in the state this financial year is budgeted at $19.5 billion and doctors make up just 10 per cent of that workforce. When questioned, Park’s office conceded that figure is conceived over four years and is broken down further: $1.8 billion for pay increases, $4.7 billion for changes in conditions and $1.3 billion for “staff uplifts”. It did not say where the remaining $3.2 billion was allocated.
Character Agnes Harkness from Parks and Recreation performing an exaggerated wink with her right eye.
Email from a sender whose address is redacted with the subject line “Mean Streak.” It says: “Mean Streak, page 34. Oslo is in Norway, you dunce!”
If I have reasonable concerns that the system may not be operating in accordance with the law, I have a duty to urgently address this. The implementation of mutual obligations profoundly impacts on people’s experience of the employment services system and critically, their payment. I have taken action where I have received advice that decisions impacting on people’s payments are not being made in alignment with the legal framework, or where I consider that decision making processes are not as robust as they must be in this area. In taking these decisions, I have considered my legal duty to administer the law and take decisions as intended by the law. I also have considered my current level of confidence in how the system, and decision-making processes within the system, is operating and the impact of these decisions on people. Of critical importance is that people subject to these frameworks are often our most vulnerable, including those who are homeless, First Nations people and people with a disability.