Read time: 7 mins
Based on Robodebt and the limits of learning: exploring meaning-making after a crisis by Daniel Casey and Maria Maley, published May 2025.
ANU research shows many public service leaders failed to communicate with staff about the lessons and implications of the Robodebt scandal in the immediate aftermath of the Royal Commission. The absence of meaning-making in times of crisis erodes the conditions necessary for organisational learning and cultural reform.
Read time: 7 mins
Based on Robodebt and the limits of learning: exploring meaning-making after a crisis by Daniel Casey and Maria Maley, published May 2025.
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ANU experts examined how leaders across all 113 APS agencies – including the 16 government departments – communicated with staff about Robodebt in the six months following the Royal Commission Report.
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The lessons from this crisis were not spread widely across the APS: 25 per cent of public servants received no communication from their secretary or agency head following the Robodebt Royal Commission.
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APS culture won’t change if leaders fail to undertake meaning-making after major crises.
The automated debt recovery program Robodebt was a public administration failure of unprecedented scale, with far-reaching consequences.
The scheme’s pursuit of debt recovery against Australians – many of whom had no debt to pay – was, in the words of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a “gross betrayal and a human tragedy”.
In 2023, a Royal Commission report identified that one of the key causes of this policy failure was rooted in a cultural issue at the heart of the Australian Public Service (APS): over-responsiveness.
According to the report, some senior public servants were overly responsive to the wishes of ministers, to the detriment of the general public. Since then, experts have raised concerns about the controlling and hierarchical culture in the APS.
Research shows that a critical step in addressing such cultural issues is meaning-making – a process where leaders respond to a crisis by communicating what went wrong, why it happened and what should be done to remedy the situation or reset the organisation.
Against this backdrop, ANU experts analysed post-crisis communication in the APS, exploring how administrative leaders communicated with staff in the first six months after the release of the Royal Commission report – a crucial period for effective learning.
Using data obtained under the Australian Freedom of Information Act, the study critically examined communication all 113 public service agencies, including the 16 departments, non-corporate (NCCEs) and corporate (CCEs) entities.
Materials examined included internal communications such as all-staff and Senior Executive Service (SES) e-mails, agendas of executive and board meetings, speaking notes and videos.
ANU research found that, while 81 per cent of departments communicated with their staff about Robodebt in the period studied, only around half of non-corporate agencies and around one-third of corporate agencies did so.
The 50 agencies that remained silent in the immediate aftermath of the Royal Commission more than 45,000 public servants – more than 25 per cent of the entire public service.
Although department heads were generally more likely than agency heads to engage with staff, there were notable exceptions.
Three of the largest and most influential government departments did not communicate with their staff about Robodebt in the immediate aftermath of the Royal Commission: Defence, Home Affairs, and Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts.
While more than half of agency leaders issued internal communications about Robodebt, these messages often did not bode well for future organisational learning.
In many cases, leaders downplayed or implicitly denied the need to learn from Robodebt – mirroring the silence of those leaders who said nothing at all.
Furthermore, only four departments directly confronted the elephant in the room: over-responsiveness to ministerial pressure.
Given departments have the closest ties to ministers, ANU experts expected an open recognition of this deep issue. But they argue that its absence in most departments suggests cultural and organisational learning from Robodebt is unlikely to take place.
On the positive side, many agencies, such as IP Australia and Services Australia, took a more constructive approach, encouraging open dialogue through townhalls, staff emails, and videos.
Details of those agencies’ communications are available in the full research paper.
According to ANU experts, these agencies stood out by rejecting top-down control in favour of open two-way communication, a key ingredient for double-loop learning and lasting organisational change.
A work culture where staff feel supported when they seek to raise difficult issues with their superiors is fertile ground for meaningful organisational change.
But ANU experts argue such cultural transformation in the APS is a long-term learning project.
It requires rebalancing the competing obligations of public servants: serving elected ministers, while also serving all Australians by ensuring probity, fairness and legality.
When leaders fail to communicate after a crisis, they send a powerful message – that the issue was either not relevant or not serious. A ‘not my problem’ mentality shuts down learning before it can begin.
All in all, Robodebt illustrated the harm that occurs when the balance tips too far towards ministers and away from the public interest.
Preventing future crises requires a cultural shift, and that starts with leaders speaking plainly about what went wrong.
"A work culture where staff feel supported when they seek to raise difficult issues with their superiors is fertile ground for meaningful organisational change."
