Ruchira Abeyratna

The Robodebt Royal Commission Report, published in July 2023, was a sobering reminder of the dire consequences of ineffective government accountability. The Albanese Federal Government’s recent commitment to adopting all the recommendations of the Royal Commission, at least in principle, represents a potential step towards preventing future disastrous misadministration. However, healing the wounds inflicted by the Robodebt scheme requires more than political promises. It requires substantial reflection and discourse on how public institutions should operate to effectively hold the government accountable.

This article will posit that while the judiciary adequately scrutinised the government’s administration of Robodebt, its dispute-dependency meant that justice was far from immediate. Thus, non-judicial institutions must be adequately empowered to take proactive and rapid action when the government acts unlawfully or against the principles of good government. I advance two suggestions on how this can be achieved. Firstly, imposing a positive duty on the Ombudsman to act when it reasonably suspects unlawful or unprincipled governmental conduct. Secondly, bolstering the protection of non-judicial accountability institutions from governmental interference.

Julie Falck, Jessica Kerr and Marco Rizzi

This is a story about the edges of the law and the limits of accountability. It involves some of the most stringent public health measures ever imposed by an Australian government at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those measures are no longer in force and, in the eyes of the Western Australian (WA) Government, they are accordingly no longer of interest to the public. They have effectively disappeared from public view. The effort required for three academic lawyers to find them, during the submission period for an ongoing independent review of the Government’s pandemic response, was alarming. This post offers a snapshot of how this issue has evolved in WA, and where we stand in 2023.

Kate Griffiths

During the 2022 federal election campaign, then-Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese promised Australians a new kind of politics: one that would regain respect from the people. Australians backed this new politics – not only in their support for a new government, but also for a wave of ‘Teal’ candidates who put integrity front and centre in their campaigns.

Now, almost a year into the job, the Albanese Government faces a test of this commitment to new politics.