A former senior public servant has become emotional after finding out key documents that would have helped end the robodebt scheme were withheld from her investigation.
The royal commission into the illegal scheme is seeking to understand the role of the Commonwealth Ombudsman, whose 2017 report identified a number of flaws but stopped short of declaring the robodebt “income averaging” debt-calculation process unlawful.
Former senior assistant ombudsman Louise Macleod said her team had concerns with how averaging was being used during an investigation of the human services department.
But she had been unable to convince her superior —acting ombudsman Richard Glenn—to include these concerns in a final report….