Less than a week after she was officially suspended from her senior Aukus advisory job without pay, former senior public servant Kathryn Campbell has resigned in the wake of the the royal commission report into the robodebt scandal.
A statement issued by the Department of Defence on Monday said it could “confirm it has accepted Kathryn Campbell’s resignation from the department with effect from Friday 21 July 2023,” adding it would “not provide further comment on this matter”.
Last Thursday, Campbell was officially suspended without pay from her $900,000 a year Department of Defence job, effective Monday 10 July.
Three days earlier, the royal commission report was lodged, a report that had accused Campbell of being “responsible for a department that had established, implemented and maintained an unlawful program”.
Campbell “did nothing of substance” when she learned of the illegality of the income averaging scheme— a program that argued for debts raised between July 2015 and November 2019 using the average annual income of welfare recipients were owed to the government.
Campbell had “failed to act” even after she was presented with the chance to seek legal advice. She ignored the advice from Department of Social Services to change the policy proposal, saying it was because Scott Morrison wanted to “pursue the proposal and that the government could not achieve the savings” that were guaranteed without income averaging.
“In oral evidence, Ms Campbell accepted that the NPP [new policy proposal] was apt to mislead cabinet,” the report said.
“She contended that her failure to eliminate its misleading effect was an ‘oversight’. That would be an extraordinary oversight for someone of Ms Campbell’s seniority and experience.”
Commissioner Catherine Holmes concluded the report saying that “the weight of the evidence instead leads to the conclusion that Ms Campbell knew of the misleading effect of the NPP but chose to stay silent”.
On the same day Campbell was suspended, prime minister, Anthony Albanese confirmed her suspension, telling ABC Radio that the royal commission was “very clear about failings” in the Morrison government and its rollout of the robodebt scheme.
“It’s appropriate that there be a response to that,” Albanese said.
With her resignation, Campbell is expected to be paid out any unused leave, though she will not be immune to potential investigations under the Australian public service code of conduct, which states that employees who resign during an investigation can still be interrogated if an agency head chooses to pursue legal processes in determining whether a breach of the code had occurred.
The Australian Public Service Commission has appointed Stephen Sedgwick as an independent reviewer to determine whether any individuals referred for possible civil action and criminal prosecution in the report have breached the APS code of conduct.
Last Friday, Albanese told a press conference in Canberra that, “Agency heads are of course empowered to take immediate action, pending further investigations, and I am very confident that they will.”
In early 2011, Campbell became the Secretary of the Department of Human Services. She headed the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for a year between 2021-22.
In June 2022, shortly after the federal election, Campbell commenced her new role overseeing Aukus.
When she was questioned at the royal commission, Campbell said she believed the scheme was lawful and that she had “never been in a department that sought to mislead. And I have never been involved in an operation that has sought to mislead the government.”