You will know of the Robodebt scheme, whereby an algorithm was deliberately used to exact wrongly calculated payments from welfare recipients to the Australian Government. How did it come to this, though? Mean Streak represents Rick Morton’s attempt to answer that question with a comprehensive analysis of Robodebt’s architects, its implementers and protagonists, its victims and its demise.Â
In her overview to the 2023 Royal Commission into Robodebt, the Commissioner, Catherine Holmes, reflected on the “mindsets one can adopt in relation to social welfare policy”. She contrasted a willingness to provide support “adequately and with respect” with the “alternative approach” of regarding welfare recipients as “a drag on the national economy”:
“… by casting [them] as a burden on the taxpayer, by making onerous requirements of those who are claiming or have claimed benefit, by minimising the availability of assistance from departmental staff, by clawing back benefits whether justly or not, and by generally making the condition of the social security recipient unpleasant and undesirable. The Robodebt scheme exemplifies the latter.”
Morton covers in great detail the shocking behaviour of those responsible for Robodebt, including many senior civil servants and prominent politicians. On the basis of irrefutable evidence, he concludes that these people willingly conspired to implement a debt recovery scheme they knew was illegal and inhumane while others, at best, turned a blind eye to what was happening.
Their motivation, Morton reminds us, was to reduce government debt, not to help people in need. The automated computer system at the heart of Robodebt, for instance, was constructed to put the onus of proof of the repayment amount on the recipient, with the full knowledge that most recipients would not have the skill, knowhow or information to effectively dispute the amount demanded.
One of the great strengths of the book is that Morton never loses sight of the extreme human cost of the scheme – of the immense harm and distress it inflicted on thousands of people, which in some cases even led to suicide. This becomes even more shocking as he unpacks in horrifying detail the shameful fact that Robodebt was not merely the result of incompetence, but was deliberately designed to raise revenue.
So, at times, Mean Streak makes for difficult and uncomfortable reading. This is not due to Morton’s style, which is lucid and engaging. It is difficult because it can be hard to take in the complexities of the processes of large bureaucracies such as the Department of Social Services. And it is uncomfortable because the reader will be forced to believe the unbelievable over and over again, such as when Morton reveals how “ashamed and terrified of embarrassing themselves and their superiors, some officers within the Department of Social Services were about to dive headlong into a cover-up rather than admit the Original Sin of Robodebt”.
He also has a talent for conveying the sometimes surreal nature of the way those involved must have rationalised their own actions. For instance, in relation to a particular document and its contents:
The not-a-report was now a report twice over. It was a spectral presence in the Department of Human Services, which was able to both receive the information in the report and never have received the information in the report in a single breath.
It is not surprising that, in the final pages of the book, Morton reveals the fact that writing Mean Streak literally made him unwell. “Temporarily or otherwise, I cannot say. If there is a note of despair in the text, it grows from a proximity to the material over many years; almost non-stop since late 2022.”
For Morton also covers the punishingly slow process of bringing Robodebt to an end, documenting how the scheme was finally found to be unfair, unconscionable and illegal. Reading this book you will get a better understanding of the difficulties faced by people seeking compensation. And you may even be cheered by learning about those who helped expose the scheme and whose work led to the appointment of the Royal Commission.
Even though this book is aimed at the general reader, it would benefit from the type of well-constructed index many academic works boast; among other things, it would make it easier to follow the personal trajectories of certain individuals throughout the sad saga.
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But really, we should only be grateful that journalists like Morton exist to help keep us honest and well-informed; he has demonstrated immense journalistic skill in this detailed exposé. For people interested in our political system and in social justice, this book is a must. Given that the Robodebt scheme happened under our very noses, we need to know the how and why, and what can be done to prevent something like it from ever happening again.Â
Mean Streak, Rick Morton
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 9781460717448
Format: Paperback
Pages: 512pp
Publication date:16 October 2024
RRP: $35.99
