The robodebt royal commission has been recruiting for a range of roles, according to the APS jobs website.
No specific job title was mentioned; however, the job posting within the Attorney-General’s Department said positions “may” be available in areas such as policy, legal, HR, finance, counselling, administration, and communications.
The other areas listed were data and research, ICT, and “information and knowledge management”.
The APS classifications for the roles range from APS Level 3 up to EL2.
The length of the non-ongoing roles run for an initial period of 18 months, with the possibility of extension and the closing dates for the roles was listed as 23 February 2023.
The royal commission will look into, among a range of issues, the establishment, design and implementation of robodebt as well as when the government knew or ought to have known there were issues with the scheme.
The final report for the commission is due on 18 April 2023.
“While there will be different requirements and peak periods, we would expect many staff to be required to this point and for a short period after to finalise records and other elements involved in decommissioning a royal commission,” a spokesperson from the Attorney-General’s Department told The Mandarin.
Meanwhile, the robodebt royal commission is set to have its first public hearing, on Tuesday, September 27.
No witnesses will be called on Tuesday, but commissioner Catherine Holmes and senior counsel assisting Justin Greggery will make opening statements.
Prime minister Anthony Albanese announced the robodebt royal commission last month, putting senior public servants who were involved in the scandal on notice.
At the time of the announcement, minister for the NDIS Bill Shorten commented that the responsibility of the scandal rests both with the ministers responsible and senior public servants.
“Until we have these answers, we’ll never be able to have full restitution for the victims, nor can we guarantee that it can never happen again,” Shorten said.
The role of public servants in the robodebt scheme were commented upon by Federal Court judge Bernard Murphy in a $1.8 billion settlement to those wrongly issued Centrelink debts last year, as previously reported by The Mandarin.
Murphy said the failures of robodebt “should have been obvious” to senior mandarins.
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Senior public servants to be scrutinised in robodebt royal commission
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