Rick Morton

The National Anti-Corruption Commission has betrayed its core obligation and failed to carry out its primary statutory duty by refusing to investigate six public officials referred by the robodebt royal commission, according to former New South Wales Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy.

Former Department of Human Services secretaries Kathryn Campbell and Renee Leon have both been found to have breached the Public Service Code of Conduct in relation to their handling of the illegal robodebt scheme. They are among a total of 12 current and former officials who have been found to have breached their obligations 97 times.

Before I became a support worker and coordinator in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, I helped my brother transition to the program. We successfully applied to get him more services to maximise his independence and quality of life goals.

Canberra is a small city. Forget six degrees of separation. If you're not actually living across the road from the prime minister, you could well be next door to his chief of staff, married to his press sec, playing golf with his departmental head, sitting next to his driver at the footy, passing him and his partner walking up and down Red Hill at the weekend.

The Albanese government has approved three coalmine expansions that are now set to unleash 1.3bn tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades.

An extraordinary legal move to reopen the robodebt class action, which was settled by agreement in 2021, will rely on pleading a case that the Commonwealth either deliberately or mistakenly withheld critical documents from lawyers who were attempting to sue them over the illegal debt scheme.

The head of the federal corruption watchdog, Paul Brereton, told a deputy commissioner “not to get too hung up on whether there is a corruption issue” as the agency rationalised why it would take no further action against six people referred to it by the robodebt royal commission.