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NACC investigation into Robodebt reveals public service corruption, but it will take much more to fix the system

48 0
11.03.2026

The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) has released its much-anticipated investigation into the six people referred by the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme.

The report reveals the identity of the referred people, which was previously not public knowledge: five bureaucrats and former prime minister Scott Morrison, who was social services minister at the time.

NACC found that two of the six individuals (Mark Withnell and Serena Wilson) had committed serious corrupt conduct. Notably, Morrison had no findings of corruption made against him.

Why did NACC decide to investigate?

On July 6 2024, the Robodebt royal commission referred six people involved in the Robodebt scheme to the NACC.

Initially the NACC declined to investigate, stating that the issues had been fully ventilated by the royal commission.

Following hundreds of complaints from the public about this decision, the inspector of NACC conducted an investigation into NACC’s decision not to investigate. She found it was flawed due to the NACC’s commissioner’s conflict of interest with one of the referred persons.

Read more: NACC belatedly to investigate whether six Robodebt referrals engaged in ‘corrupt conduct’

Former High Court judge Geoffrey Nettle was then appointed in December 2024 to reconsider whether and how the NACC should deal with the referrals. Nettle determined each referral raised a corruption issue under the NACC act, and it was in the public interest for the NACC to conduct a corruption........

© The Conversation