How robodebt added a decade to urgent service delivery reforms

If there is one deep irony within the entire robodebt disaster and its attendant royal commission, it’s that the conceptual kernel at its very root might have worked brilliantly — and possibly still could — if senior public servants and their ministers had been more creative and less impatient.

To be clear, the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme is chartered with finding out who allowed a clearly undercooked and defective policy program to be bowled up to Scott Morrison, who was immediately mesmerised by the prospect of seizing $1.7